toward his Maker. When we are under the smarting rebukes of providence, we are ready to compare ourselves with others who are in peace, and then the envious and the murmuring humour breaks out into rebellious language, "Why am I thus afflicted more than others? Why hast thou set me as a mark for thy arrows? Why dost thou not let loose thy hand and cut me off from the earth?

But in heaven there is a glorious reverse of all such unhappy scenes: There is no pain nor any temptation to murmur at the dealings of the Almighty: There is nothing that can incline us to think hardly of God: The days of chastisement are for ever ended, and painful discipline shall be used no more. We shall live for ever in the embraces of the love of God, and he shall be the object of our everlasting praise. Perfect felicity without the interruption of one uneasy thought, forever forbids the inhabitants of that world to repine at their situation under the eternal smiles of that blessed Being that made them.

7. To add no more, "Pain and anguish of the flesh have sometimes prevailed so far as to distract' the mind as well as destroy the body." It has overpowered all the reasoning faculties of man; it has destroyed natural life, and brought it down to the grave: The senses have been confounded, and the understanding overwhelmed with severe and racking pain, especially where there hath been an impatient temper to contest with them. Extreme smart of the flesh distresses feeble nature, and turns the whole frame of it upside down in wild confusion: It has actually worn out this animal frame, and stopped all the springs of vital motion. The gout and the stone have brought death upon the patient in this manner and a dreadful manner of dying it is, to have breath, and life, and nature quite oppressed and destroyed with intense and painful sensations. But when we survey the mansions of the heavenly world, we shall find none of these evils there; No danger of any such events as these; for there is no pain, no sorrow, no crying, no death nor destruction there. The mind shall be for ever clear and serene in the ease and happiness of the separate state: And when the body shall be raised again, that glorified body, as was intimated a little before, shall have none of the seeds of distemper in it, no ferments that can rack the nerves or create anguish; no fever, or gout, or stone, was ever known in that country, no head-ache or heart-aclie have ascended thither.

That body also shall be capable of no outward wounds nor bruises, for it is raised only for happiness, and leaves all the causes of pain behind it. It is a body made for immortality and pleasure; there the sickly christian is delivered from all the maladies of the flesh, and the twinges of acute pain which made him groan here on earth night and day. There the mar

tyrs of the religion of Jesus, and all the holy confesssors are free from their cruel tormentors, those surly executioners of hear then fury, or antichristian wrath: They are for ever released from racks, and wheels, and fires, and every engine of torture and smart. Immortal ease and unfading health and chearfulness run through their eternal state, and all the powers of the man are composed for the most regular exercises of devotion and divine joy. Thus I have endeavoured briefly to set the different states of heaven and earth before you under this distinguishing character, that "all the tempting, the distressing, and mischievous attendants and consequences of pain," to which we are exposed in our mortal life, are for ever banished from the heavenly world.

SECT. II. The second general enquiry was this, "What just and convincing arguments or proofs can be given, that there are no pains or uneasy sensations to be felt by the saints in a future state, nor to be feared after this life." My answers to this question shall be very few; because I think the thing must be sufficiently evident to those who believe the New Testament, and have liberty to read it.

Argument I." God has assured us so in his word, that there is no pain for holy souls to endure in the world to come ?” My text may be esteemed a sufficient proof of it; for whatsoever particular event or period of the church on earth this prophecy may refer to, yet the description is borrowed from the blessedness of heaven; and if there shall be any such state on earth, much more will it be so in the heavenly world, whereof that period on earth is but a shadow and emblem. We are expressly. told; Rev. xiv. 13, in order to encourage the persecuted saints and martyrs, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth, for they rest from their labours or pains, and their works follow them; that is, in a way of gracious recompence.

It is granted indeed by the papists themselves, that in heaven there is no pain; yet they suppose there are many and grievous pains for the soul to undergo in a place called purgatory after the death of the body, before it arrives at heaven. But give me leave to ask, does not St. Paul express himself with confidence concerning himself and his fellow-christians" that they shall be present with the Lord when they are absent from the body," 2 Cor. v. 8? Surely the state wherein Christ our Lord dwells after all bis sufferings and agonies, is a state of everlasting ease without suffering; and shall not his followers dwell withr him? Do we not read in the parable of our Saviour; Luke xvi. 22. that "Lazarus was no sooner dead, but his soul was carried by angels into the bosom of Abraham, or paradise ??? Every boly soul, wherein the work of grace is begun, and sin hath received its mortal wound, is perfectly sanctified when it is

released from this body; and it puts off the body of sin and the body of flesh together, for nothing that defileth must enter into paradise, or the heavenly state; Rev. xxi. 27.

The word of God has appointed but two states, viz.heaven and hell, for the reception of all mankind when they depart from this world and how vain a thing must it be for men to invent a third state, and make a purgatory of it? This is a building erected by the church of Rome between heaven and hell, and prepared by their wild imagination for souls of imperfect virtue, to be tormented there, with pains equal to those of hell, but of shorter duration. This state of fiery purgation, and extreme anguish, is devised by that mother of lies, partly under a pretence of completing the penances and satisfactions for the sins of men committed in this life, and partly also to purify and refine their souls from all the remaining dregs of sin, and to fill up their virtues to perfection, that they may be fit for the immediate presence of God. But does not the scripture sufficiently inform us, that the atonement or satisfaction of Christ for sin is full and complete in itself, and needs none of our additions in this world or another? Does not the apostle John tell us? 1 John i. 7. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin? Nor shall the saints after this life sin any more to require any new atonement; nor do they carry the seeds of sin to heaven with them, but drop them together with the flesh, and all the sources of pain together: Now since neither Christ uor his apostles give us any intimation of such a place as purgatory for the refinement or purification of souls after this life, we have no ground to hearken to such a fable.

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II. "God has not provided any medium to convey pain to holy souls after they have dropped this body of flesh." They are pardoned, they are sanctified, they are accepted of God for ever; and since they are in no danger of sinning afresh by the influences of corrupt flesh and blood, therefore they are in no fear of suffering any thing thereby. And if, as some divines have supposed, there should be any pure ethereal bodies or vehicles provided for holy separate spirits, when departed from this grosser tabernacle of flesh and blood, yet it cannot be sup posed that the God of all grace would mix up any seeds of pain with that æthereal matter, which is to be the occasional habita tion of sanctified spirits in that state, nor that he would make any avenues or doors of entrance for pain into these refined vehicles, when the state of their sinning and their trial is for ever finished.

Nor will the body at the final resurrection of the saints be made for a medium of any painful sensations. All the pains of nature are ended, when the first union between flesh and spirit is dissolved, When this body lies down to sleep in the dust,

it shall never awake again with any of the principles of sin or pain in it: Though it be sown in weakness, it is raised in power; though it be sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; 1 Cor. xv. 43. and we shall be made like the Son of God, without sorrow and without sin for ever.

III. "There are no moral causes or reasons why there should be any thing of pain provided for the heavenly state." And if there be no moral reasons for it, surely God will not provide pains for his creatures without reason! But this thought leads me to the next general head of my discourse.

Sect. III. The third general enquiry which I proposed to make was this, "What may be the chief moral reasons, motives, or designs of the blessed God in sending pain on his creatures here below; and at the same time I shall shew that these designs and purposes of God are finished, and they have no place in heaven."

I. Then, "Pain is semetimes sent into our natures to awaken slothful and drowsy christians out of their spiritual slumbers, or to rouse stupid sinners from a state of spiritual death." Intense and sharp pain of the flesh has oftentimes been the appointed and effectual means of providence to attain these desirable ends.

Pain is like a rod in the hand of God, wherewith he smites sinners that are dead in their trespasses, and his Spirit joins with it to awaken them into spiritual life. This rod is sometimes so smarting and severe, that it will make a senseless and ungodly wretch look upwards to the hand that smites, and take notice of the rebuke of heaven, though all the thundering and lightning of the word, and all the terrors of hell denounced there, could not awaken them. Acute pain is also a common instrument in our heavenly Father's hand, to recover backsliding saints from their secure and drowsy frames of spirit. David often found it so, and speaks it plainly in Ps. xxxviii, and xxxix. and in Ps. cxix. 67. he confesses, before I was afflicted I went astray; but when he had felt the scourge, he learned to obey, and to keep the word of his God."

But there is no need of this discipline in heaven; no need of this smarting scourge to make dead sinners feel their Maker's hand, in order to rouse them into life, for there are no such inhabitants in that world: Nor is there any need of such divine and paternal discipline of God in those holy mansions, where there is no drowsy christian to be awakened, no wandering spirit that wants to be reduced to duty: And where the designs of such smarting strokes have no place, pain itself must be for ever banished; for God does not willingly afflict, nor take delight in grieving the children of men, without substantial reasons for it; Lam. iii. 33..

2. Another use of bodily pain and anguish in this world is, "to punish men for their faults and follies, to make them know what an evil and bitter thing it is to sin against God, and thereby to guard them against new temptations; Jer. ii. 19. Thy own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee; that is, by means of the smarting chastisements they bring upon men. When God makes the sinner taste of the fruit of his own ways, he makes others also observe how hateful a thing every sin is in the sight of God, which he thinks fit so terribly to punish.

This is one general reason why special diseases, maladies, and plagues are spread over a whole nation, viz. to punish the sins of the inhabitants, when they have provoked God by public and spreading iniquities. War and famine, with all their terrible train of anguish and agony, and the dying pains which they diffuse over a kingdom, are rods of punishment in the hand of God, the Governor of the world, to declare from heaven and earth his indignation against an ungodly and an unrighteous age,

This indeed is one design of the pains and torments of hell, where God inflicts pain without intermission: And this is sometimes the purpose of God in his painful providences here on earth: Shall I rise yet higher and say, that this was one great design in the eye of God, when it pleased the Father to bruise his best beloved Son, and put him under the impressions of extreme pain; Is. liii. 10. viz. to discover to the world the abominable evil that was in sin? While Jesus stood in the stead of sinners, then his soul was exceeding sorrowful even to death, and he sweat drops of blood; Luke xxii. 44. under the pressure of his agonies, to let the world see what the sin of man had deserved: And sometimes God smites his own children in this world with smarting strokes of correction, when they have indulged any iniquity, to shew the world that God hates sin in his own people wheresoever he finds it, and to bring his children back again to the paths of righteousness.

But "in the heavenly state there are no faults to punish, no follies to chastise." Jesus our surety in the days of his flesh, has suffered those sorrows which made atonement for sin, and that anguish of his holy soul, and the blood of his cross, have satisfied the demands of God; so that with honour he can pardon ten thousand penitent criminals, and provide an inheritance of ease and blessedness for them for ever. When once we are dismissed from this body, the spirit is thoroughly sanctified, and there is no fire of purgatory needful to burn out the remains of sin: Those foolish invented flames are but false fire, kindled by the priests of Rome to fright the souls of the dying, and to squeeze money out of them to purchase so many vain and idle