DISCOURSE XIII. 305 . in their most frightful colours, and set them in ther full and ever- lasting extent, before the sinners which attended his ministry ? And did he ever give any hint that they should be understood in a milder sense ? Have not the apostles followed their Lord in the same dreadful display of the sharp and ever during punish- ments of hell ? And have they taught us to qualify these terrors by gentler interpretations of them ? And have not such kind of discourses been abundantly blessed in the providence of God, both in ancient and later ages, to awaken and save multitudes of the souls of men? How many holy and happy spirits are now rejoicing before God, and before the throne of his love, and encompassed with all the joys of immortality, who owe the beginnings of their re- pentance, and the first turn of their souls towards faith and sal- vation to such words of terror as these ? How many of the saints on high have been first awakened from their deadly sleep in sin by the ministrations of this eternal vengeance of God ? How many have been frighted out of their indolence at first by the discovery of these everlasting horrors of conscience and agonies of soul? The dread of the worm that never dies has affrighted their consciences from a course of sin : The fiery indig- nation which shall never be quenched has flashed in their bosoms from the lips of the preacher, and has set them all over tremb- ling, and filled all their inward powers with dismay and anguish: Their tongue has broke into loud and earnest enquiries, Who shall deliver me from this eternal death ? How shall I escape this everlasting wrath to come ? And the Spirit of God by de- grees has led them to Jesus, and his atoning blood, his gospel, his righteousness and his converting grace, as the only way of deliverance and salvation. How unreasonable a thing is it for ministers in their preach- ing to soften these terrors of the Lord, to cut short these endless horrors and anguish, and tó mitigate the miseries of hell and damnation, since even all that length and eternity in which Christ and his apostles preached these terrors, have not been sufficient to reclaim mankind from their iniquities ; but multitudes ofthem, in the face of all these threatenings, still persist in the broad reay to destruction and death ? Can we possibly do any honour to the ministry of our blessed Lord, or is there any real service done to the souls of men by our fond and vain reasonings to shorten these sorrows, and put a period to these threatened torments ? Will the blessed Jesus, when he sits on the throne of judgment, give us thanks for run- ning counter to the language of his own ministry, and for daring to contradict his denounced vengeance ? By the various expressions and representations of this mat- ter in scripture, in such §olemn and dreadful language, must I VOL. vtl. U
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