DISCOURSE III. 5.5 that sleeping sinners can be awakened into the spiritual and divine life. The voice of the Son of God, that breaks the monu- ments of brass, and makes tombs of hardest marble yield to his call, shall never break one heart of stone, which is gone down to death in its native and sinful hardiness : That almighty voice, that must awaken the nations of the dead, and command their bodies up from the grave, shall never awaken one dead soul, when they are past the limits of this life. The compassionate calls of a Saviour, and the offers of mercy, are then come to their utmost period : And if we refuse to hear the call bf mercy to the moment of death, we shall then be terribly constrained to feel the loss of it, but never able to obtain the blessing. Obstinate sleepers shall be awakened to see God, but only as Balaam was: I shall see him, but not nigh; Numb. xxiv. 17. The saints, in this life, have God near them in all their tri- als, as a Father and a friend to uphold, to comfort, to sanctify, though they see him but darkly through a glass, and behold but little of his power or glory : The sinner, awaking in hell, shall perhaps have a clearer and more acute perception of what God is, than any saint on earth : But he shall behold him as an enemy, and not a friend : If he beholds him in the glory of his grace, it is at a dreadful and insupportable distance : there is no grace for him: He sees him in his holiness, but he cannot love him, he has no meltings of true penitence for his former rebelli- ons against God, his heart is hardened into everlasting enmity, and shall never taste of his love. Hence arise all the foul and gnawing passions of envy, malignity, and long despair, which are the very image of Satan, and change mankind into devils. These impenitent sons and daughters of men shall grow into the more complete likeness of those wicked spirits, and under the impressions Of their guilt and damnation, they shall rival those apostate and cursed creatures, in the obstinate hatred of God, and all that is holy. IV. Hence it will follow, in the last place, that the sinner, who is " fast asleep, in his sins, at the hour of death, shall awake into such a life as is worse than dying." He shall be sur- prized, all at once, into darkness and fire, which have no gleam of light, and sorrows without mitigation, and which can find no end. The punishment of hell is not called eternal death, to de- note a state of senseless and stupid existence; but death being the most opposite to life, and all the enjoyments of it, the misery of hell is described by death as the most formidable thing to na- ture, as a world that puts a period to all the enjoyments of this mortal life, and stands directly opposite to a life of joy and glory in the immortal world. Happy would it be for such souls, if they could sink into an everlasting sleep, and grow stupid and sense- less for ever and ever ; but this is a favour not to be granted to F 3
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