ll1SCQÜRSE XÍt. 259 the 'secret principles and workings of every heart, he alone knows who have practised virtue sincerely from pious principles, and who have had no such principles within them. He well distill. guishes who they are that have complied with the rules of the dispensation under which they have lived, or who have not com- plied with it : And such as may have the good esteem cf men may be highly ojensive to God, who knows all things, and may be worthy of his final punishment; the Judge of the whole earth will do right ;° Gen. xviii. 25. And since he has declared it to be his rule ofjudgment, that he will reward every one according to their works; Mat. xvi. 27: and it shall be much more tolerable for some of those creatures than it shall be for others, by reason of their lesser crimes, or their nearer approaches to virtue and piety ; so it is certain he will act in perfect justice and equity towards every criminal, and none shall be punished above their demerits, though no impeni- tent sinner shall go unpunished. We do not therefore imagine that every condemned criminal shall have the same degree of inward raging passions, the same madness and fury against God and their fellow - creatures, nor the same ,anguish of con- science as those who have been more grossly and obstinately wicked and vicious, and have wilfully refused and renounced the well -known offers of grace and salvation : There are innu- merable degrees of inward punishment and pain, according to the degrees of sin. H. It should be added too, that the world of punishment is also a world of increasing wickedness, and those that have had some natural virtues and some appearances of goodness here; may and will renounce it all in the world to come, where they find themselves punished for their impenitence and irreligion, and their criminal neglect of God and godliness : And the least and lightest of the punishments of damned souls will be terrible enough, and yet not surpass the desert of their offences, They have been all in greater or less degrees treasuring up food foe this fire, which is unquenchable. Besides, it may be added here, that in threatenings the holy scripture generally expresses them in their highest degrees and most formidable appearances, on purpose to secure men front coming near the peril and border of them. This shall suffice to explain the first part of the metaphor in my text, that is, The worm that dieth not. * It hesbeen the opinion of some writers in elder and in later times, that the vast numbers of indifferent persons, who have neither been evidently holy or evidently wicked, shall be sent to a new State of trial in the other world; but I can end nothing of this doctrine in the bible, nor any hint of it, unless, in that obscure text of St. Peter, 1 Pet. iii. 19. where Christ is said T to go and preach to the spirits" of those sinners who were drowned in the flood of Noah, which may be construed to another tense with truth and justice; a 2
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