Day of Judgment: the one, particular; the other, universal: the one, of the soul only, presently after Death; the other, both of soul and body united together, presently after the Resurrection.

First. There is a Particular Day of Judgment, that follows immediately after every man's Death.

There is no such thing as a neutral state of the soul; a state, wherein it is neither happy nor miserable; a state of slumber, wherein, as some men dream, it sleeps away the time until the Resurrection, without sense either of pain or comfort. We know, saith the Apostle, that if this earthly house.....be dissolved, that is, as soon as it is dissolved, we have.....a house.....eternal in the heavens: 2 Cor. v. 1. and, which is a convincing and demonstrative argument, the Apostle Phil. i. 23. desires to depart hence, and to be with Christ. Should his soul have been kept from Christ till the Day of Judgment, what reason was there for him to desire death; since his very desire of death was only for this end, that his soul might the sooner enjoy Christ? for, if his soul must have slept with his body till the Resurrection, whether he had died sooner or later, or not died at all, but lived to the very end of the world, it had been all one, as to his enjoyment of Christ. So the Wise Man also, Eccl. xii. 7. The dust, that is, the body, shall return to the earth.....and the spirit, that is, the soul, shall return unto God, who gave it: it shall return to him, that so it may receive its sentence from him; either a sentence of absolution, according to our faith and obedience; or of condemnation, according to our unbelief and impenitence. We are apt to look upon the Day of Judgment as afar off; some hundreds, or, it may be, thousands of years hence; and think it will never overtake us: be it so: yet, certainly, thy Day of Judgment is near at hand; and what relief is it, that the Last Day shall not be till some hundreds of years hence, if yet thy soul must lie in hell all those years under insupportable torments? How know we, but that death may be now striking us, the worms may be now expecting us, our bell may be now tolling, our grave now digging? Howsoever, doubtless these things will shortly be shortly we shall all breathe our last, and give that gasp that will discharge our souls from our bodies; and then is our Judgment Day. And, Oh! what strange discoveries will that last moment make! we shall there see, what we have heard and believed of eternity here: sentence will be instantly pronounced, while the soul is as yet warm from the

body and, accordingly, either angels will wing it away into Abraham's bosom, to heaven, the seat of eternal joy; or devils, who are present about sick-beds, watching for their prey, will drag it down to eternal torments. And, according to the sentence passed upon every soul in this particular judgment, so shall they have the foretastes and essays, either of happiness or misery; in which the whole man, both soul and body, must abide for ever. This is the First Judgment-Day.

Secondly. There is an Universal Judgment. And this is to begin presently after the Resurrection.

The former judgment proceeded according as death, God's grim serjeant, arrested such and such a particular soul, and brought it before him: but, here, all, who ever have been or shall be in the world, shall, together, stand before Christ's tribunal, to receive their doom; and that not only naked souls, but soul and body united. There is but one time, when heaven and hell shall be quite empty of souls; and that is, at the Resurrection: for, before God proceeds to judgment, he will first set the gates of heaven and hell wide open, and send out the whole multitude of souls, each to find its own body: one meets it with joy and embraces; the other, with curses: it curseth itself: it curseth those members, into which it must now again enter; those members, which were once instruments of sin, and must be always partners with it in torments. Both righteous and wicked, all alike, must appear in their bodies: and, though they do, beforehand, know themselves to be either acquitted or condemned; yet this is the time for the solemn and conspicuous pronouncing of the sentence, and distribution of rewards. It is remarkable, that the Scriptures do point out that Great Day to us, as the time, wherein mercy and forgiveness, rest and refreshing, joy and gladness, redemption and salvation, rewards and crowns, shall be bestowed upon God's children; and, on the contrary, wrath, and destruction, and everlasting vengeance, shall be executed upon the wicked: not to heap up places, see both of these, 2 Thess. i. 6, 7, 8. It is a righteous thing with God, to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and, to you, who are troubled, rest with us: but when must this two-fold recompence be made? when the Lord Jesus, saith the Apostle, shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels, In flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, nor obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: so Luke xiv. 14. Thou shalt be recom

pensed at the resurrection of the just what! not before? yes, as soon as the soul parts from the body, it receives its recom pence: but, because the great and solemn time of retribution is the Day of Judgment, when God will manifest his justice to all the world, angels and men; therefore, the Scriptures ascribe rewards and punishments to this day.

Now, in farther treating on this subject, I shall insist upon these general heads:

The Certainty of a future judgment.

Who it is, that is appointed then to be the Judge.

Who shall be Assessors on the bench, and Assistants in the Judgment.

The Apparatus, the Manner and Method, of the whole transaction.

Who they are, that shall be judged.

What they shall be judged for; and what Account they must give.

According to what Law they shall be judged.

The Witnesses, that shall appear against them.

The Pleas and Excuses, which the accused will then make for themselves; and the Invalidity of them.

The Proportioning of the Sentence, according to what hath been here done in the body, whether goodor bad.

I. I shall begin with the CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT.

That there shall be a judgment to come, is both certain and necessary. This great and terrible day of the Lord will come, and will not tarry. God's hand is continually turning over our days and years, like the leaves of a book: there is something written on every one of them: the last is coming; and that, like the index or table, must give account of all the rest. There must be a Last Day, as there was a First: and this Last Day will bring to public view and knowledge, whatsoever hath been done all the days which the world hath stood.

This is clear, both from Scripture-evidence, and likewise from Rational Grounds and Arguments.

The Scripture is both plentiful and express, that there shall be such a general, such a solemn and dreadful judgment. We have a full description given of it by our Saviour, Matth. xxv. 31, &c. The Son of Man.....shall sit upon the throne of his glory,

attended with angels; all nations standing before him, whom he will separate, some on his right-hand to everlasting life, and some on his left-hand to unquenchable fire. So, Luke viii. 17. There is nothing hid, which shall not be revealed: and when revealed, but in that day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ? As it is, Rom. ii. 16. so, in the 14th and 15th verses of Jude, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, To execute judgment upon all: and many other places too long and numerous to be here related.

And, beside Scripture, Reason also itself doth clearly shew, that there shall be a future judgment, in which God will render. to every man according to his works.

i. This appears from THE ACCUSING OR EXCUSING OFFICE OF

CONSCIENCE.

Whence proceeds that regret, those gnawings and stingings of conscience, for sin, which sometimes the very worst of men feel? but that every man doth, as it were, naturally presage, that there shall be a Day of Judgment, wherein those sinful actions shall be brought to an account, and they punished for them? Even the consciences of Heathens themselves, who never had the light of the Scripture to reveal to them the Judgment of the Last Day, would witness against them, disquiet, and trouble them, when they sinned against their natural light: their conscience would bear witness, and their thoughts accuse, or else excuse them; as the Apostle speaks, Rom. ii. 15: now what was it that could trouble their consciences, but only some secret hints and obscure notions of a judgment and wrath to come? We find them all strongly possessed with the apprehensions of a future state, in proportion to their present actions; hence, their Barathrum and Elysium, their Hell and Paradise: hence, their three severe and impartial judges: hence, their strange invented punishments, bearing a correspondence to the crimes of those who were said to undergo them; which though they were but the fictions of their poets, yet the very consent of nature and of nations dictated, that there were torments to be suffered, according to the sins here committed. The very workings of natural conscience, therefore, strongly prove, that there shall be a judgment.

ii. This too may be evidently proved, from THE EQUITY AND

JUSTICE OF GOD'S NATURE, COMPARED WITH THE SEEMINGLY STRANGE AND UNEQUAL DISPENSATIONS OF HIS PROVIDENCE.

Justice obligeth to do good, to those, who are good; and to inflict evil, upon those, who are evil. But, yet, Providence, in this life, seems to dispense affairs quite otherwise: whatsoever this world calls good, the riches, the power, the glory of it, are usually heaped upon wicked men, who swagger and flaunt it here, and fight against God with those very weapons which he puts into their hands; whereas, many of those, who are truly holy and the sincere servants of God, are oftentimes pinched by poverty, persecuted causelessly, opposed unjustly, despised and ⚫ trampled upon, by every one who will but take the pains to do it. This is God's usual dealing and method with men, in this world. And it seemed so unjust and unequal, that hereupon, alone, many of the ancient Heathens denied, that the world was governed by Providence. What! can I think, that a just God rules the world, when I see a wicked Dives feasting in purple, carousing on the tears of widows mingled with the blood of orphans? and a godly Lazarus, all naked and sore and hungerstarved, lying prostrate at his gate; an object so miserable, as needed even the charity of the very dogs that licked him? here a grandee, a great and potent man in the world; and yet a drunkard, a swearer, an unclean wretch, a hater of God and goodness: another, perhaps, wandering about in a forlorn and destitute condition; and yet a saint, truly loving and fearing that God who afflicts him? And can there be equity in such an administration of affairs as this? It is true, indeed, that this were a charge hardly answerable, were this world the only place of dispensing out rewards and punishments. There is, therefore, a judgment to come: and then, Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him; for he shall eat the fruit of his doings; but, Woe unto the wicked! then, it shall be ill with them; for the reward of their works shall be given them: Isa. iii. 10, 11. This shall be the day, wherein God will clear up the equity of his justice, in all the inequality of his providence. And what, then, are all the fine and gay things of this world? believe it, a poor saint, who hath on him the robe of Christ's righteousness, will be found much better clothed than ever Dives was, with all his purple. What will it avail this and that gallant, that they have here ruffled and ranted it in this world? alas! they have already received their good things. Now come the afflicted, the distressed, the derided saints, to inherit the kingdom; when poten