of life, and seldom was it interrupted by fear or by fufpicion. But oh! thofe fatal joys! Amidst deceiving fmiles that banished apprehenfion, they were fecretly leading me to that dreadful precipice from whence they have at length, caft me into this tormenting lake! The mercies of divine vidence, which if they had been enjoyed with moderation, and with gratitude, might have prepared my foul for heaven, have, alas! been employed only to nourish this body for the flames that now confume it. pro Add to the comforts and pleasures of life, thofe excellent means of grace with which God may have favoured him for the attainment of his falvation-Poffibly, happy natural talents and difpofitions —an ufeful education-a pious domeftic example -the counfels and concern of friends, of parents, of the miniflers of religion who would have led him to the true objects of duty-the reflections of an improved reason -the admonitions of an enlightened confcience-the inftructions of the word and providence of God-and, co-operating with all thefe, the fecret fuggeftions of the holy fpirit. Thefe ineftimable mercies, which are defigned to cultivate the foul for the fociety of the bleffed, must aggravate the condemnation of thofe who refift or defpife them. The recollection of abused privileges that once placed him so near the gate of heaven, would urge the sting of remorse the deeper in his breast. But These are the pains of memory. fome more direct punishment by an avenging fire feems to be implied in his bitter exclamation, I am tormented in this flame. This is the third circumftance in his fufferings that deferves your most serious atten tion. The language of the holy fcriptures hardly leaves us room to doubt but that divine juftice will employ an elemental fire as a minifter of its dreadful decrees on the finner. And it is of importance to inculcate this truth upon mankind: for, while they conceive that the torments of hell fhall confift chiefly in mental pains, finners, who have been accustomed to manage their confcience in this world, will fill hope to elude its reproaches in the next. Suffering gives the chief force to the fentiment of guilt. And certainly, nothing can be more awful than the denunciations of the holy fpirit upon this fubject-" The fon of man fhall fend forth his angels, and they fhall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and those who do iniquity, and shall caft them into a furnace of fire. "The There fhall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."* Lord Jefus fhall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jefus Christ, who fhall be punished with everlasting deftruction from the prefence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power."+ If any man worship the beaft-he fhall be tormented with fire and brimstone-and the fmoke of their torment afcendeth up forever and ever; and they have no reit day nor night."Ah! what a picture of mifery and defpair! The finner, forever penetrated by avenging fires, finds his being ftill repaired by an invifible power, and growing again to the flame-forever walling, yet never deftroyed. *Mat. xiii. 41, 42. In the midft of the fire that is not quenched, is the worm that never dies, and fills thofe dreadful abodes with eternal wailings and gnashing of teeth. Under the anguifh of fuch fufferings, in what fearful execrations. will the reprobate children of despair vent the bitterness of their rage, or pour forth their complaints to their unpitying dungeons! They curfe the day that firft fhone upon a wretched being-they curse the reafon that made them capable of finningthey curfe the author of their miserable exiftence-they curfe that exiflence that makes them only fenfible of pain. Their fweeteft confolation would be, to be blotted out of the works of God. Ah! how dreadful is the state that forces them to cry for eternal death, as a refuge from eternal fufferings! How much more dreadful is it when death invoked will never come! This is the laft circumftance. of terror in these fufferings, that they will be endless. The eternal duration of the punifhments of the wicked, in a future ftate, is declared to us in terms fo exprefs in many paffages, and is fo applied in the whole flyle of the P facred writings, that it requires the most ftrained criticisms to make them speak any other language. This is among the doctrines which we ought to receive implicitly from the word of God, according to the moft fimple and obvious meaning of the terms in which it is declared. We are unable to penetrate even by probable conjectures, into the eternal world; and our reafon, or our fenfibilities muft form the moft inadequate measures, by which to judge of the moral plans of infinite wifdom, and infinite juftice. For proof of this we need go no farther than those innumerable scenes of mifery that exift in the prefent world. What a different fyftem of things would the prefumptuous mind of man have prescribed to the wisdom of the Deity? If it were not witnefs of the facts, would it not have denied the poffibility of their existence in the works of an infinitely benevolent being? Incompetent then, as we are, to determine what is wife or good in the boundless and eternal fyftem of the Creator, our wifdom and our fafety confifts in receiving submissively, and without any modifications fuggefted by our own feelings, what he hath been pleafed to revcal concerning the inferutable fubjects |