p RÈFOAM,CTIQN'SERMON, 320 silent and less affect our senses. He ca.n give us up to the lusts of our own heart, and send judicial blindness: He can consign us over to the power of Satan; to our be- loved lethargy and spiritual death : He can suffer the devil " to sear our consciences, and to inspire us from hell to work all uncleanness with greediness ;" Eph. iv. 19. Our understandings may be sold into the hands of strong delusions, and the wisest of us be left to believe a lie ; or God may continue the messengers of his gospel in the. midst of us, but give them a new commission, even that which he gave to the prophet Isaiah for Israel, that ar curse shall attend our exercises of divine worship A drop of this sort of vengeance lighting on us, will turn our eyes into darkness and our hearts into nether mill- stones; and after all this, his full indignation may be poured out. upon the land, in most sensible instances, nor his anger be turned away from us, but his hand stretched out still. Thus he dealt with the Jews his own people : let us read it and fear the parellel; Is. vi. 10. 11. " Go, make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes : lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert and be healed. Then said I, Lord, how long ? And he answered, until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate." The foregoing chap- ters will inform us of the sins that procured this threat- ening, it will be well ifwe do not find our names or cha- racters there, I must not break off this part of my discourse without mention of the final consequent of prevailing iniquity, and that is, that the inhabitants of such a nation shall go down to hell by thousands ; and England that bath been lifted up to heaven by divine favours, shall be thrust down to the bottomless pit for her aggravated abomina- tions. Eternal " death is the wages of sin ;" Rom. vi. 23. and can we bear this thought, that the place of tor- ment shall be thronged withour neighbours and acquaint- ance, and the dominions of hell peopled out of the land of our nativity? « Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, when the heathens shall be awakened, when the Lord shall sit there to judge the nations round about ;" Joel iii. 12, 14. What a terrible forethought- VOL. III. 2 At
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