who have deserved more at his hands. Indeed, the wrath, nay the least frown of an Almighty God, is able to sink the stoutest of his creatures into nothing. But, herein, is the dreadful severity of God seen, that the more power he will put forth in punishing them, the more power he will put forth in supporting them; and will, as it were, hold them up in one hand, while he Scourgeth them with the other.

And, if there shall be such a difference of punishments in hell, according to the difference of crimes here on earth, oh then! what desperate folly and madness are most wicked men guilty of, who so go on, adding iniquity to iniquity, as if they were resolved, a single damnation should not content them! Is it, that they despair of mercy, and think that it is but in vain for them to scruple sinning, who are sure of condemnation? why, though they had ground for such a despair, which no man hath, who will speedily repent and be converted; though they had heard God swear aloud, in his wrath, that they, of all men living, should never enter into his rest yet, it is a degree beyond all madness, for men therefore to aggravate their damnation, because they cannot escape it. Believe it, the least degree of God's everlasting wrath is an intolerable hell: and what do you else, by demeriting additional degrees by your repeated sins, but heap up many hells for your torments; and heat the infernal furnace, into which you must be cast, sevenfold hotter than else it would be? There is not the smallest part of torment which the damned now suffer, but, were they for a while rẻprieved and let out of hell, they would do more to escape, than the most holy and laborious Christians do to obtain all heaven itself. All this I speak upon supposition: for, assurance of salvation there may be, but of damnation there cannot be, in this life: and, yet, were it supposed that men could be assured that their souls were cut out on purpose to make firebrands for hell; yet, hereupon, desperately to harden themselves in sin, what were it else, but to set these brands a-burning at both ends? what were it else, but, because they must be prisoners, to strive what they can to deserve the dungeon?

Thus, then, we have seen how men must be judged according to their works: both as to the Kinds of them, which are good or evil; receiving the good of salvation according to the good of obedience, and the evil of damnation according to the evil of sin and, likewise, according to the Degrees of their works, in each kind: and I have shewed it to be probable, that, of those,

whose works have been more holy, the glory shall be more excellent; and to be certain, that of those, whose works have been more sinful, the punishment shall, accordingly, be more intolerable.

ii. The Second Distinction premised was this: That, to be judged according to our works, may denote, that the recompence of our works shall be made, either as THEY ARE CONSI

DERED IN THEMSELVES AND THEIR OWN INTRINSICAL WORTH AND

MERIT; or, else, AS THEY ARE CONSIDERED IN GOD'S COVENANT AND AGREEMENT MADE WITH Us; which covenant promiseth a blessed reward to our good works, and threateneth a severe punishment to our evil works.

And, here, I shall briefly lay down these Two Positions.

1. Wicked men shall, in this Great Day, be judged according to the proper demerits of their own works.

And what that is, the Apostle informs us, Rom. vi. 23. The wages of sin is death. And, certainly, God will not be unjust, in withholding deserved wages from any of the workers of iniquity: but, because they have not as yet received any thing in proportion according to their, deserts, therefore divine justice reserves it for them in hell. The heaviest punishments which they can endure' upon earth, be they outward torments or inward horrors, are but small drops and foretastes of that full cup of wrath and trembling, that God will put into their hands, and force them to drink of for ever. And, therefore, look what Christ suffered for believers, what wrath, fears, and agonies met upon him, as the desert of the sins of those in whose place he stood; the same shall all wicked and ungodly men bear in their own persons: yea, and possibly much more, inasmuch as there is no dignity in their persons to take off from the degrees of their punishments, as there was in him: it was more satisfactory to justice, for a Divine Person, who was God as well as Man, to suffer less, than it can be for such contemptible creatures as men are, to suffer more: and, therefore, if ever any wicked man was affected with a deep sense of what Christ underwent, let him know, that those sufferings do but represent, as in a map, how great and insupportable his shall be, when God shall come to render unto him according to his doings. And, yet, let me add this too, that still there is more demerit in their sins, than the utmost extremity of punishment can reach : sin is an infinite evil; and doth, in itself, merit every way infinite punishment,

infinite in intention as well as extension, in degree as well as duration: yea, the least sin, in itself, deserves as much or more wrath, than the greatest is punished with; so that the very damned themselves may, with truth, say, that they are punished less than their iniquities deserve. It is not possible for a finite creature to bear the full strokes of an infinite justice: and, therefore, God limits his justice within the compass of their limited natures; and brings it to a stint infinitely below their deserts, and yet infinitely above their patience to endure. Oh, how much cursed malignity is there in sin! those sins, which rash and foolish man plays and dallies with; that lay him under as much wrath as can be heaped upon him, and deserve infinitely more!

That is the First Position: Wicked Men shall be judged according to the Desert of their Works.

2. Believers shall be judged according to their works; not considered in their own desert, but as considered in God's gracious covenant and agreement made with them.

In strict propriety of speech, merit conuotes the dueness of the reward to our actions, antecedently to any compact, or promise made to reward them. Now, if we consider the holiest and best works of the holiest and best Christians, they are only acceptable and rewardable with eternal life, as they are under God's gracious promise in Christ; and therefore cannot be, in themselves, meritorious: and, if we consider them as abstracted from this promise, they are so far from being rewardable with life, that they are punishable, for the defects of them, with eternal death. God, indeed, is become a debtor to our faith and obedience; but St. Augustin well resolves us how: Deus debitorem se fecit, non aliquid accipiendo, sed liberaliter promittendo: " God hath made himself a debtor, not by receiving any thing from us, but by promising liberally to us:" and, so, he is a debtor rather to his own word, than to our works. This, therefore, is the unspeakable happiness of true believers: their weak and imperfect works, if done in faith and sincerity, shall, through Christ's merits and God's promise, be as fully rewarded, as if they were perfect and unspotted obedience.

iii. We must DISTINGUISH OF THE REWARD AND PUNISHMENT, which men shall receive according to their works for that is either PARTIAL and INCOMPLETE; or, else, PERFECT and ENTIRE : the one is to be received at every man's particular, the other at

the last and universal judgment: according as we ourselves are, either partial or complete, so will be our recompence.

1. Before the Resurrection and General Judgment, only one part of man is capable either of glory or torment; and that is his soul. That, therefore, I call a partial reward, that crowns but a part of man; and that a partial punishment, which is inflicted but on a part, viz. the separate soul. The bodies, even of those, whose souls shall be as far distant as heaven and hell, must lie down and sleep together in the same common bed of earth : the saints, whose souls now shine in heaven as the sun in the firmament, if we ransack their graves, we shall not find their dust more glittering than others; nor are the carcases of those sinners, whose souls now burn as firebrands in hell, more black and sooty. The bodies, therefore, of men, shall not receive according to what hath been done in them, until the consummation of all things. Only some few exceptions the Scripture hath noted; as Enoch, Elias, and (as St. Augustin in one of his Epistles supposeth) those saints who were raised at Christ's death, who have already received their entire happiness Indeed, as when Christ lay in the grave, there was still the continuance of the hypostatical union between his dead body and his everliving Godhead; so is there a continuance of the mystical union between the dead bodies, yea between every scattered and loose dust of the saints, and the glorious person of Jesus Christ. Now this, though it be an exceeding great honour, yet we cannot so much reckon any part of the reward, as an assurance of the whole: for, because the bodies of the saints, while separated from their souls, are yet united by an invisible and ineffable band to their Saviour; therefore, do they now rest in hope, and shall hereafter arise in glory: Because I live, ye shall live also: John xiv. 19: and, of all, which the Father hath given me, I must lose nothing, but must raise it up again at the Last Day: John vi. 39. Christ's miraculous resurrection was performed within three days after his death; but his mystical resurrection shall not be until the end of the world: when the saints of all ages shall together rise out of their graves, then riseth Christ's mystical body: and to this very end shall it rise, that the saints, being themselves complete and entire, may then receive a complete and entire happiness; that, as they have on earth glorified God both in body and soul, so in heaven both body and soul may be glorified with God. It is worth ob

VOL. IV.

serving, how gradually God leads his people into the possession of glory; as if he would inure them to bear such an exceeding and eternal weight, as the Apostle calls it, by lifting smaller parcels of it beforehand: and, therefore, in this life, they only receive the earnest of their inheritance, which are the graces and comforts of the Spirit: Eph. i. 13, 14: at death, they receive vast incomes of glory, as much as their souls alone can contain: yet this is but only part of payment, upon which they live splendidly, until the resurrection of their bodies and the process of the general judgment: and, then, as the body shall again receive its soul, so both soul and body shall together receive their full reward; the uttermost farthing of all that Christ hath purchased, the Gospel promised, or themselves expected. So is it, also, with wicked men: sin and the terrors of a guilty conscience are the earnest of hell, in this life: the torments of the separate soul are part of payment: but, still; justice is behindhand with em, till the resurrection of their bodies; and then shall they receive the full measures of wrath, pressed down and running over. And, indeed, it is but meet, that these bodies should be consorts with the soul in receiving, as they have been in doing, good or evil.

2. Now, what this consummate reward and punishment shall be, is altogether inconceivable.

(1) The Complete Reward, which is reserved for believers, is inconceivably glorious.

It is that, which neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard; neither hath it, or can it, enter into the heart of man to conceive, what God hath prepared for those that love him; scarce thoroughly apprehended by the blessed themselves: and, therefore, for us, who are yet at distance, to attempt a description, were but to sully and diminish it. And, therefore, as God, who is infinite and incomprehensible, is better known to us by negatives than affirmatives, by what he is not than by what he is; so also is heaven: you may best conceive it, when we tell you, there shall be nothing to fright, nothing to afflict, nothing to grieve, nothing to lessen the highest, fullest, sweetest delight and satisfaction, that the vast and capacious soul of man is able, either to receive or to imagine: there, we shall be freed from all the cares and sorrows, the pains and miseries of this life: we shall be got above the reach of Satan's temptations, and out of the danger of his fiery darts: we shall be above the clouds of despondency