ment in hell? What I build this computation upon, are some expressions of St. Peter; 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20. where Christ is said to preach unto the spirits in prison, which some time were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah; some have supposed, that this text informs us of Christ's descent into hell after his death, and then preaching to those rebels who were drowned in the flood, near two thousand four hundred years before, in order to awaken them to repentance and salvation: Whereas others think this text may be bet ter expounded concerning the Spirit of Christ given to Noah, which made him a preacher of righteousness, when he foretold and threatened a flood of waters, and called men to repentance. But if it should be granted, that those rebellious. spirits among the dead did all repent, and were delivered by this preaching of Christ, would you chuse to indulge the delights of sin for a short season, and twenty-four hundred years of tornsultai an vaqadnu or ment for it?

Yet further, the devils have lain under punishment near six thousand years, viz. four thousand before Christ came, and almost two thousand years since, which may be thus computed from what St. Jude says of them. The angels who kept not their first station, they were cast into chains of darkness, probably before the creation of this our world, for they were fallen and tempted Adam to sin as soon as this world was made: And they had been confined in these chains from that time about four thousand years before Christ came, and are waiting still for yet sharper punishment at the judgment of the great day; Jude, 1. this terror verse 6. And it is evident that they are conscious of this and this future increase of punishment, for they expostulated with our Saviour; Mat. viii, 29. Art thou come to torment us be fare the time? Now it is near two thousand years since Christ came, and from the time of their sinning, unto this day, it is almost six thousand years: And when the great day of judgment comes, their fiercer punishment is but then to begin And are not the devil and his angels sentenced and confined to dwell together with the wicked children of Adam, when they shall be consigned at that dreadful day to the same everlasting fire and torment, which was prepared for those evil spirits? And who knows when their torment will end? Now what folly and hardto continue neasson of heart, or rather what madness is it for men in their sins, to delay their return to God, and abandon the grace of under this foolish flattery and wild

tion,

csump

the gospe on, that above six thousand years hence perhaps a certain day may come when the worm of conscience will die, and the fire of ss and hell will be quenched? Such presumption is disLraction rather than reasoning.

1

3

Objection II. The second objection is derived from the

1

justice and equity of God: Surely may some person say, the justice of God will proportion the punishment to the offence but since our sins are but the actions of mortal and short-lived creatures, and are committed in a few years of time, why should the punishment be immortal, and the anguish be lengthened out to eternity? Can a righteous God pronounce such a severe and unjust sentence, and execute it in its full dimensions. 10 STE

Answer. It is not the length of time which wicked men spent in committing their sins,nor the nature of the persons who have sinned, that determines the measure of punishment, but the dignity of that infinitely glorious Being, against whom sin is committed, that gives such a high aggravation as to require punishment without end. How many, instances are there amongst men wherein offenders against their neighbours, or against a magistrate, who spent but a few moments in the crime, yet are doomed to imprisonment for monthis and years? And a lower degree of trespass against a king, which is short of high-treason, is sometimes punished with confiscation of goods, and with poverty and close imprisonment for life; and by the same reason, the sins of men being committed against a God of infinite majesty, require an endless punishment, as I have proved in the second argument: And therefore divine justice pronounces, or inflicts no longer penalty than the crimes of men deserve, according to their aggravations. If any sinners tarry then till they have paid the utinost farthing to divine justice, I grant God will release them, but he has given us no hope before.

"

Objection III. The third objection is drawn from the Sovereignity and goodness of God. It is granted, say they, that the threatenings of eternal death, are denounced against sinners in scripture, yet it is not necessary God should execute them to the full. When a law is made, the threatenings of it only declare what punishment the offender shall be exposed to, and shall be obliged to bear when it is inflicted; but these expressions' in a law do not oblige the government to inflict that sentence with all its terrors. It is granted, that in the case of promises, truth and veracity oblige the promiser to fulfil them punctually, because the right of the thing promised passes over to that other person to whom the promise was made, and he hath such a right to require it, that it is injustice to withhold it from him; and therefore everlasting felicity must be given to the righteous: But in threatenings the case is other wise for though the full punishment is due to sinners, yet they will never require the execntion of it; and the goodness of Got will incline him to relieve the sufferer, and to release him from the severity of such punishment, where his veracity or truth does not forbid it. To this I answer two ways

I. I will not debate this point of law now, how far a gover

nor of sovereign and absolute authority can dispense with his own threatenings, can omit the execution of them, relax the degree of threatened punishment, or shorten the duration of it; But let it be considered, that here is not only the threatening of a God, the universal governor, but the prediction of this eternal punishment, by a God who cannot lie. God's own truth and veracity are concerned in this case, since his Son Jesus, who is the greatest of his messengers, together with the prophets and apostles, have in the name of God often foretold, that these punishments shall be eternal: And therefore whatsoever an absolute governor might do, as to shortening the punishment threatened, in a way of mercy and relaxation; yet I cannot see how the truth and veracity of God himself, or the veracity of his Son Jesus Christ, who is the great prophet, or the truth of the rest of his prophets and messengers can be maintained, if this punishment be not executed according to the many express predictions of it. These all agree to tell us, by inspiration from heaven, in various forms of speech, that the torments of hell shall be everlasting; and as I hinted, the man Jesus, who pronounces this eternal sentence as a Lord and judge, foretels it also as a prophet, that the execution of it shall be to all everlasting.

2

II. Obstinate and impenitent sinners have no reason to expect, that the goodness of God should release them from their miseries, since the justice and the holiness, the righteous government and authority of God in his law require and demand their due honour, as well as his goodiness. Do we not see these honours of divine justice, and of God's hatred of sin, have been continually demanded and executed in the infiuite and innumerable evils, sorrows, miseries, diseases and deaths, that have been spread over this world almost six thousand years because of sin? Nor does his goodness, forbid or hinder it.

And let it be remembered too, that all this immense variety and long succession of plagues and terrors arose originally from the just indignation and resentment of God against one sin, even that of the first-man. Who was it that burned Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from heaven? Who was it that chained fallen angels in darkness to a more terrible judgment? Was it not a God of supreme goodness? Who sent famines and pestilences, and slaughters all over the earth in many distinct generations, whereby mankind have been made abundantly wretched and plunged into millions of distresses? And yet the goodness of God abides for ever. And while the great God is acting according to the glories of his nature and government in punishing rebellious creatures, his goodness will feel no soft and sensible im "pressions from all their groans and outcries; but if I may so express it, will be changed into just indignation without end. And the language of it to those impenitent wretches will be this. Be

cause I have called and ye refused,-ye have set at nought all my counsel and would none of my reproof: I will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall ye call upon me, but I will not answer; ye shall seek me early, but ye shall not find me; for ye hated knowledge, and did not chuse the fear of the Lord: Ye would none of my counsels, ye despised all my rebukes; therefore shall ye eat of the fruit of your own way, and be filled with your own devices; Prov. i. 24-31. Take them angels, bind them hand and foot, and cast them into everlasting fire and utter darkness; there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth; Mat. xxii. 13.

Let us cease then to murmur against the threatenings and the transactions of the great God, till we are become fitter judges of his perfections and their demands. Let us cavil no more against his conduct and government, till we can teach him how far his punishing justice shall go in the execution of his threatenings, and till we can assign to him the point and limit where his goodness shall interpose and restrain that justice.

Objection IV. The fourth objection is derived from the rectitude of the nature of God, or his common equity and mercy united, which has been represented in this manner. Suppose one of the damned spirits among mankind should address himself to the great God in such sort of language as this, "Lord I was created by thy sovereign pleasure without my own will, I did not desire to be made, much less to be born in such a relation to Adam, whereby I brought a sinful nature into the world with me: But I was united by thy power and pleasure to a body which had the seeds of sin and misery in it: There were strong appetites and violent passions mingled with my flesh and blood, which I myfelf had no hand in procuring; they fermented in me with much vehemence, and I was tempted to many excesses: I made some resistance at first, and many times tried to subdue them, but I was overcome: At last I suffered myself to be carried away by the stream of these sinful affections and appetites which I could not possibly avoid, nor easily subdue. Is it agreeable to thy equity, O blessed God, to punish such a poor wretch with everlasting torments? And can thy mercy continue to see this my misery for ever and ever, and not help me? I intreat thee, O thou almighty Author of being, to destroy and annihilate me utterly soul and body; take away this being which I never asked nor desired; nay, which I would not have consented to accept among the sinful race of mankind, because in this tract of generation, and existence I stood much more likely to be miserable than to be happy."

Answer I. As for the reasonableness and equity of the

Bonveyance and communication of the original effects of the sin of Adam through every generation of man, it is granted there are some difficulties attending it but these are generally answered by the writers on that subject; and for me to divert from my present discourse, in order to debate this point here, would be too tedious.

The equity of this wise and awful constitution of God has been lately vindicated in a large treatise on the "Ruin and Recovery of Mankind," especially in the second edition of that book. But it is enough for my present argument to say, that God himself will make the equity of this constitution to appear with much more evidence and conviction in the last great day, when millions of actual criminals shall stand before the judgmentseat, who owe the first spring of their sin and ruin to our common parent, and yet will fall under the righteous condemnation of the judge.

II. When God decreed to give thee a being, O sinner, and designed thee in his eternal ideas to be a man, placed among a thousand blessings of nature and providence, it was then a fayour of thy Creator; for thou wert designed also in this original divine idea to have full sufficiency of power to become wise and happy. It was also a favour from thy Creator that he took all these thy sufficiencies of power, and put them into the hand of one mau, even the Father of thy race, because he was as wise, and holy, and as well able as any man of his posterity could be, to preserve his station in the favour of God, and to secure thy happiness together with his own; and he had much stronger obligations to obey his Maker, and more powerful motives to secure thy happiness than thou thyself, or any single man could possibly have, because he was intrusted with the felicity of so many millions of his own dear offspring as well as his own. Now though Adam, thy first father, being thus furnished with sufficiencies of power and with the strongest obligations to preserve himself and thee, has actually sinned and ruined himself and his offspring; this is indeed an unhappy truth; but the great God is not to blame, who has not only acted wisely but kindly towards his ereatures in this constitution, because, so far as we can judge, it was much more probable that Adam would have maintained bis innocence and his happiness, together with that of his offspring. Again,

When the race of man was ruined, and God saw that every man would come into the world under unhappy circumstances of guilt and corruption of nature, he provided a covenant of grace, and brought thee into some knowledge of it: And this had been effectual to have recovered and saved thee from the ruins of the fall if thou hadst exerted all thy force, employed all thy natural powers of understanding and will for this purpose, and used all