nounced the tenders of divine mercy: I chose the paths of sin, and folly, and madness, though I knew they led to everlasting misery and death. Wretch that I was, to chuse those sins and these sorrows, though I knew they were necessarily joined together! I am sent into those regions of misery which I chose for myself, against all the kind admonitions and warnings of God and Christ, of his gospel and his ministers of grace! O these cursed eyes of mine, that led me into the snares of guilt and folly! These cursed hands that practised iniquity with greediness! These cursed lips of mine which dishonoured my Maker! O these cursed appetites aud passions, and this obstinate will, which have wrought my ruin! This cursed body and soul, that have procured their own everlasting wretchedness!" These thoughts will be like a gnawing worm within, which will prey upon the spirit for ever. The fretting smart arising from this vexatious worm must be painful in the highest extreme, when we know it is a worm which will never die, which will for ever hang at our heart, and sting our vitals in the most tender and sensible parts of them without intermission, as well as without end.

Here on earth the stings and scourges of conscience meet with some intervals of relief, from necessary business which employs the mind, from gay company which diverts the heart, from the refreshments of nature by day, or from the sweet repose of the returning night: But in the world to come every hour shall be filled up with these cutting sorrows, for there is no season of refreshment, no diversion of mind, no sleeping there: All things are for ever awake in that world; there are no shadows and darkness to hide us where this torment shall not find us, for it is bred and lives within. There is no couch there to lull the conscience into soft repose, and to permit the sufferer to forget his agonies. Ancient crimes shall rise up and stand for ever before the eyes of the sinner in all their glaring forms, and all their heinous aggravating circumstances: These will sit heavy upon the spirit with teazing and eternal vexation. O dreadful state of an immortal crcature, which must for ever be its own "tormentor, and shall know no relief through all the ages of its immortality! Think of this bitter anguish of soul, O sinner, to guard thee from sin in an hour of strong temptation.

II. Another spring of this torment will be the "overwhelming sense of an angry God, and utter despair of his love which is lost for ever." It was the thought of the displeasure of God, which pierced the soul of David with such acute pain, when he remembered his sins; Ps. i. 3, 4.-My sin is ever before me : Against thee, against thee only have 1 sinned, and done #this evil in thy sight: And again he pleads with God Ps. vi. I. O Lord, chasten me not in thy anger, nor sex me in thy

sore displeasure. He could face a host of armed men without fear, but he could not face an angry God, whose loving-kindness is life, and the loss of whose love is wore than death; Ps. lxxvii. 3. I remembered God, said he, and was troubled, that is, lest he should be favourable no more, and shut up his tender mercies in everlasting anger. This was the terror of that good man, under a deep sense of his crimes, and of God hiding his face from him, and this even while he was in the land of the living, and was not cast out beyond all hope. But when the grave shuts its mouth on the sinner, and he is thrust out into utter darkness, where the light of God's countenance never shines, nor will shine, how unsupportable must such anguish be? Here in this life perhaps a profane wretch has imagined he could live well enough without God in the world, and was content to have nothing to do with him in a way of worship or dependence here: He determined with himself, that the less he could think of God the better, and so forgot his Maker days without number: But in those regions of hell whither the sinner shall be driven, he can never forget an angry God, nor fly out of the reach of his terrors.

"I am now convinced saith he, but too late, that happiness dwells in his presence, and " rivers of pleasures flow at his right-hand;" but this happiness I shall never see, these streams of pleasure I shall never taste; he is gone for ever with all his love and with all his blessings, God is gone with all his graces and pardons beyond my reach: He stands afar off from my groanings. He told me of it heretofore in the ministry of his word; but, wretch that I was! I would not hearken, I would not believe I was invited by the Son of his love to receive his gospel, and to partake of forgiving mercy; he stretched out his hands with divine compassion, and offered to receive my soul to his grace, and to wash away my defilements with his own blood; he beseeched me to repent and return to God, and assured me be would secure his Father's favour to me, and a place among the mansions of his glory: But cursed rebel that I was to despise this salvation, and resist the offers of such love, and to renounce such divine compassion! These offers of mercy are for ever finished, I shall never see him more as surrounded with the blessings of his grace, but as the minister of his Father's justice, and the avenger of his abused mercy. There is no other Saviour, no other intercessor to procure divine favour for me, and my hopes are overwhelmed and buried in the eternal despair "'of his love."

III. There will be found also among the damned "a constant enmity, and malice, and hatred against the blessed God, which ch can never satisfy nor ease itself by revenge." It seems very strange indeed that a creature should design revenge against

his Maker; but thus it is in these dismal regions of hell: Every wicked man is by nature at enmity with God, and in a state of rebellion; and when this enmity is wrought up to malice, under a sense of his punishing band, then arises that cursed and detestable desire in the soul of revenging itself against its Maker. The fallen angels, those wicked spirits have found this dismal temper of mind reigning in them: They hate the blessed God with intense malice, because his governing justice sees fit to punish their pride and other iniquities, and they would fain be revenged of him by destroying mankind who were made after bis image: Their malice cannot reach him in the heights of his glory, but they can reach man his creature made in his likeness, and they began to take their revenge there near six thousand years ago. All the sins, and all the miseries of the sons and daughters of Adam, from the beginning of the world to this day, are owing to this madness of malice, this hatred of God in the hearts of evil angels who were cast out from heaven and the regions of happiness: They began to exert this malice early, and still they are everlasting tempters of men, in order to avenge themselves upon a righteous God.

But alas, what a wretched satisfaction must the damned spirits of men propose to themselves in such a wild and extravagant attempt? The very name and mention of this iniquity seems to put our souls and our ears to pain, while we dwell in flesh and blood; but as cursed and hateful a temper as this is, it is the very spirit and temper of apostate angels; and this will be thy temper and thy spirit, O wilful and impenitent sinner, when thou shalt have obstinately sinned thyself into damnation, and canst never deliver thyself from the punishing hand of God.

“Think, O my soul, at what a dreadful distance such creatures must be from every glimpse of peace and happiness, whose hearts are filled with such blasphemy and rage, and who would be attempting such vain and impious efforts of mingled insolence and madness. Read, O ye foolish and wilful transgressors, read the temper and conduct of devils in their spite and opposi tion to every thing of God, through all the books of the Old Testament and the New, and remember and think, that such will your temper be, when you also shall be banished from the presence of God for your wilful rebellions, as the fallen angels are, and be for ever shut out from all the blessings of his love, and all hope of his favour."

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IV. A further spring of continued torment is "such fixed and eternal hardness of heart as will never be softened, such impenitence and obstinacy of soul which will never relent or submit.” The hardest sinner here on earth may now and '-then feet a relenting moment, and the most daring atheist may some

times have a softening thought come across him, which may per haps bring a tear into his eyes, and may form a good wish or two in his soul, and wring a groan from his heart which looks like repentance; but when we are dismissed from this body, and this state of trial and of hope, eternal hardness seizes upon the mind: The neck is like an iron sinew hardened more, if I may so express it, in the fire of hell. The will is fixed in everlasting obstinacy against God, and against the glories of his holiness. If Moses and the prophets, if Christ and his apostles in the ministry of the word, could not soften the heart of bold transgressors, what can be expected when all the means of grace and the methods of divine compassion are vanished and gone for ever?

It is granted indeed there will be bitter repentance among the damned in hell, and inward vexation of soul and self-cursing in abundance, for having plunged themselves into this misery, and having abandoned all the offers of divine mercy: But it will be only such a repentance as Judas the traitor felt, when he repented and hanged himself; Mat. xxvii. 5. This is a sort of madness of rage within them for having made themselves miserable. But there will be found no hatred of the evil of sin, as it is an offence against God, no painful and relenting sense of their iniquity, as it has dishonoured God and broken his law, no such sorrow for sin as is attended with a hearty aversion to it, and a desire to love God and obey him; but rather they will feel and nourish a growing aversion to God and his holiness.

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"Ask yourselves my young friends, Did you never feel your hearts indulging an angry and unrelenting mood, and stub born in your wrath against a superior who had sharply reproved you? Or have you never felt an obstinate and unreconcileable hour in your younger years, even against a parent who had severely corrected you? Or have you not found, at some seasons, your soul rising and kindling into violent resentment and a revenge ful temper against your neighbour upon some supposed affront, damage, or mischief he had done you? Call these unhappy minutes to mind, and learn what hell is: Think into what a wretched case you would be plunged, if this wrath and subbornness, this enmity and hardness should become immortal and unchangeable, though it were but against a neighbour: But if this obstinacy and stubborn hardiness of soul were bent against God himself, so that you would never relent, never sincerely repent of your crimes, nor bow, nor yield either to his majesty or his mercy, what would you think of yourselves and of your state? Would you not be wretched and horrible creatures indeed, without the least reason to hope for favour and compassion at his hands? Such is the case probably of every damned sinner. Amazing scene of complicated

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misery and rebellion! A guilty spirit which cannot repent? A rebellious spirit which cannot submit, even to God himself! A hardened soul that cannot bend nor yield to its Maker! Must not such a wretch be for ever the object of its own inward torment, as well as of divine punishment? O the hopeless and dreadful state of every bold transgressor, that is gone to death without true repentance for having offended God, and ingenuous relentings of heart for sin are never found in those regions of future misery! No kindly meltings of soul toward God are ever known there."

V. There will be also " intense sorrow and wild impatience at the loss of present comforts without any recompence, and without any relief. If this world, O sinful creature, with the riches, or the honours, or the pleasures of it be all thy chosen happiness, what universal grief and vexation will overspread all the powers of thy nature, when thou shalt be torn away from them all, even from all thy happinesses by death, and have nothing come in the room of them, nothing to relieve thy piercing griefs, nothing to divert or amuse this vexation, nothing to sooth or ease this eternal pain at the heart?

And yet further, when thou shalt be as the prophet speaks, Like a wild bull in a net, struggling and tossing to and fro to free thyself on all sides, when thou shalt be racked with inward fretfulness and impatience, and full of the fury of the Lord that made thee, and the rebuke of that God that punishes thee; Is. li. 20. Then shall thy heart, hard as it is in an obstinate course of sin, be ready to burst and break, not with penitence, but madness and over-swelling sorrows: And yet it must not break nor dissolve, but will remain firm and hard for ever to suffer these pangs. This is and must be an eternal heart-ache, for there are no broken hearts in hell in any sense whatsover.There the eyes are weeping, and the hands are wringing, and the tongue almost dried with long wailings and outcries, and the teeth gnashing with madness of thought: This is our Saviour's frequent representation of hell, There shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth; Mat. xxii. 13. and yet the heart ever living and ever obstinate, to supply fresh springs of these sorrows, and to feel the anguish of them all..

VI. There will be also "raging desires of ease and pleasure which shall never be satisfied, together with perpetual disappointment and endless confusion thrown upon all their schemes and their efforts of hope." It is the nature of man, while it con tinues in being, that it must desire happiness, and make some efforts towards it: And some divines have supposed, that men of wicked sensuality and luxury in this world, have so drenched their souls in fleshly appetite by indulging dusts, and placing their chief satisfaction and happiness therein, that they will carry