170 THE WORLD TO COME. whole land of Judea laid desolate with deepest distress, diffused and reigning among all the inhabitants of it : Above a million of them were actually slaughtered and consumed by famine and sword, as a sacrifice to the anger of God for their long provoca- tions, and the cruel barbarous murder of his Son Jesus. And when you have taken all these surveys, then tell me if such ter - rors of the Lord do not give us sufficient warning what unknown agonies and destructions may be expected by obstinate and im- penitent sinners from the hand of God, when the utmost limits of his patience restrain his wrath no longer, but his wisdom gives a loose to all his fiery indignation. To enforce this yet upon your hearts, think again of all the pains and torments of flesh and spirit, which arise from the dis- tempers of body, and from the anguish of soul, even in this present state of trial, this land of hope, this season of divine long-suffering. Go to the hospitals, where the gout and stone, and rheumatism, and a thousand maladies torture the nerves and the joints of men with intolerable smart; and infer thence what God will inflict both on the flesh and spirit, or the soul and body of ,sinners, in the day of his complete vengeance, when his offers of mercy and the years of his grace are come to their last period. Go and survey the fields of battle and slaugh- ter, where thousands of the dead and the dying are mingled in confused heaps, and groan out their souls in long anguish and extreme torture, with bruises and wounds, and all the smarting effects of the instruments of war. Now if all these things come under the conduct of divine providence in a sinful world, which is yet in a way of hope, what may those resolv- ed and obstinate rebels expect, when all the doors of hope are shut up for ever, and providence has nothing to do on earth or in hell, but to execute the vengeance of a God. Shall we take one step yet further, and think of the inward pangs of conscience, which some awakened criminals have felt in this life on the account.of sin, when the arrows of God have been shot into their souls, and the poison thereof lies drinking up their spirits? Think what dreadful ferments of passion and rage, and hatred of God have been found in the hearts of some sinful creatures, when they have grown mad with revenge against God, and against themselves, and envy against all their fellow -, mortals, . who are not in the same circumstances ; think yet again bow terribly their misery must he aggravated, when the torture of everlasting despair attends all the rest of the pains and sorrows they suffer ; and then say if the description of a future hell in the word of God may not be true and real. What anguish beyond all the power of present thought and language, may seize all the powers of wilful and impious rebels against the authority and the mercy of God, when all the stores of his vengeance that have
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