REFACE TO THE " SECOND VOLUME OF THE OCTAVO EDITION." IN the first volume of these discourses, I made an introduction to them, by endeavouring to prove, that " at the departure of the soul from the body by death, the rewards or punishments, that is, the joys or the sorrows of the other world are appointed to commence: And I hope I have there given, from the evidence of scripture such arguments to support this doctrine, as that the faith of christians may not be staggered and confounded by different opinions, or made to wait for these events, through all the many years that may arise between death and the resurrection. I know nothing besides this that is made a matter of controversy in that volume: and I hope those sermons and these that follow -by the blessing of God, will be made happily useful to christians, to auaken and warn them against the danger of being seized by death in a state unprepared for the pre- since of God, and the happiness of heaven, and to raise the comforts and joys uflmany pious souls in the lively expectation of future blessedness. The last discourses of this second volume, especially the eternity of the punishments of hell, have been in latter ,and former years made a matter of dispute ; and were I to pursue my enquiries into this doctrine, only by the aids of the light of nature and reason, I fear my natural tenderness might warpme aside from the rules and the demands of strict justice, and the wise and holy government of the great God. But as I confine myself almost en- tirely to the revelation of scripture in all my searches into things of revealed religion and Christianity, I am constrainedto forget or to lay aside that soft - ness and tenderness of animal nature which might lead me astray, and to fol- low the unerring dictates of the word of God. Thescripture frequently, and in the plainest and strongest manner asserts the everlasting punishment of sinners in bell ; and that by all the methods of expression which are used in scripture to signify an everlasting continuance. - God's utter hatred and aversion to sin, in this perpetual punishment of it, are manifested many ways: 1. By the just and severe threatening of the wise and righteous Governor of the world, which are scattered up and down in his word. 2. By the veracity of God in his intimations or narratives of past events, as Jude verse 7. " Sodom and Gomorrah suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." 2.' By his express predictions ; Mat. xxv. 46. These shall go away into everlastingIntnishment. 2 Thess. i. 9. Who shall be punish- ed with everlasting destruction; and I might add, 4'. By the veracity and truth of all bis holy prophets and apostles, and his Son Jesus Christ, at the head of them, whom he has sent to acquaint mankind with the rules of their duty, and the certain judgment of God in a holy correspondence therewith, and-that in such words as seem to admit of no way of escape, or of hope for the condemned criminals. I must confess here, if it were possible for the great and blessed God any other way to vindicate hisown eternal and unchangeable hatred of sin, the in- flexible justice of his government, the wisdom of his severe threatenings, and the veracity of his predictions; if it were also possible for him, without this
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