endure but what you were foretold you must endure; and are shut out of that company, from which you first shut out yourselves; and are separated but from them whom you would not be joined with. You could not endure them in your houses, nor in your town, nor scarcely in the kingdom. You took them as Ahab did Elias, for the troublers of the land; (1 Kings xviii. 17;) and as the apostles were taken for men that turned the world upside down; (Acts xvii. 6;) if any thing fell out amiss, you thought all was long of them. When they were dead or banished, you were glad they were gone, and thought the country was well rid of them. They molested you with their faithful reproving your sin. Their holy conversation did trouble your consciences, to see them so far excel yourselves, and to condemn your looseness by their strictness, and your profaneness by their conscionable lives, and your negligence by their unwearied diligence. You scarcely ever heard them pray or sing praises in their families, but it was a vexation to you; and you envied their liberty in the worshipping of God. And is it, then, any wonder if you be separated from them hereafter? The day is near when they will trouble you no more: betwixt them and you will be a great gulf set, that those that would pass from thence to you (if any had a desire to ease you with a drop of water) cannot; neither can they pass to them who would go from you, for if they could, there would none be left behind. (Luke xvi. 26.) Even in this life, while the saints were imperfect in their passions and infirmities, clothed with the same frail flesh as other men, and were mocked, destitute, afflicted, and tormented, yet, in the judgment of the Holy Ghost, they were such, of whom the world was not worthy. (Heb. xi. 36-38.) Much more unworthy are they of their fellowship in their glory.

CHAP. II.

The Aggravation of the Loss of Heaven to the Ungodly.

SECT. I. I know many of the wicked will be ready to think, if this be all, they do not much care, they can bear it well enough what care they for losing the perfections above? What care they for losing God, his favour, or his presence? They lived merrily without him on earth, and why should it be so grievous to be without him hereafter? And what care they for being deprived of that love, and joy, and praising of God?

Or

They never tasted sweetness in the things of that nature. what care they for being deprived of the fellowship of angels and saints? They could spare their company in this world well enough, and why may they not be without it in the world to come? To make these men, therefore, to understand the truth of their future condition, I will here annex these two things:

1. I will show you why this fore-mentioned loss will be intolerable, and will be most tormenting then, though it seem as nothing now.

2. I will show you what other losses will accompany these; which, though they are less in themselves, yet will now be more sensibly apprehended by these sensual men and all this from reason, and the truth of Scripture :

1. Then, That this loss of Heaven will be then most tormenting, may appear by these considerations following:

First: The understandings of the ungodly will be then cleared, to know the worth of that which they have lost. Now, they lament not their loss of God, because they never knew his excellency, nor the loss of that holy employment and society, for they were never sensible what they were worth. A man that hath lost a jewel, and took it but for a common stone, is never troubled at his loss; but when he comes to know what he lost, then he lamenteth it. Though the understandings of the damned will not then be sanctified (as I said before), yet will they be cleared from a multitude of errors which now possess them, and mislead them to their ruin. They think now that their honour with men, their estates, their pleasures, their health and life, are better worth their studies and labour than the things of another world which they never saw; but when these things, which had their hearts, have left them in misery, and given them the slip in their greatest need; when they come to know by experience the things which before they did but read and hear of, they will then be quite in another mind. They would not believe that water would drown, till they were in the sea; nor that the fire would burn, till they were cast into it; but when they feel it, they will easily believe. All that error of their mind, which made them set light by God, and abhor his worship, and vilify his people, will then be confuted and removed by experience; (Eccles. i. 18;) their knowledge shall be

* Ignis gehennæ lucebit miseris ut videant unde doleant, ad tormentum, et non ad consolationem, ne videant unde gaudeant.-Isidor, de Sum. Bon, lib. i.

increased, that their sorrows may be increased; as Adam by his fall did come to the knowledge of good and evil, so shall all the damned have this increase of knowledge. As the knowledge of the excellency of that good which they do enjoy, and of that evil which they have escaped, is necessary to the glorified saints, that they may rationally and truly enjoy their glory; so the knowledge of the greatness of that good which they have lost, and of that evil which they have procured to themselves, is necessary to the tormenting of these wretched sinners: for as the joys of heaven are not so much enjoyed by the bodily senses, as by the intellect and affections; so it is by understanding their misery, and by affections answerable, that the wicked shall endure the most of their torments: for as it was the soul that was the chiefest in the guilt (whether it be positively, by leading to sin, or only privatively, in not keeping the authority of reason over sense, that the understanding is most usually guilty, I will not now dispute), so shall the soul be chiefest in the punishment; doubtless, those poor souls would be comparatively happy, if their understandings were wholly taken from them, if they had no more knowledge than idiots or brute beasts; or if they knew no more in hell than they did upon earth, their loss and misery would then less trouble them. Though all knowledge be physically good, yet some may be neither morally good, nor good to the owner. Therefore, when the Scripture saith of the wicked, “ that they shall not see life,” (John iii. 36,) nor "see God," (Heb. xii. 14,) the meaning is, they shall not possess life, or see God, as the saints do, to enjoy him by that sight; they shall not see him with any comfort, nor as their own; but yet they shall see him, to their terror, as their enemy; and, I think, they shall have some kind of eternal knowledge or beholding of God and heaven, and the saints that are there happy, as a necessary ingredient to their unutterable calamity. The rich man shall see Abraham and Lazarus, but afar off: (Luke xvi. 23 :) as God beholdeth them afar off, (Psal. cxxxviii. 6,) so shall they behold God afar off. O, how happy men would they think themselves, if they did not know that there is such a place as heaven; or if they could but shut their eyes, and cease to behold it! Now, when their knowledge

g

g Charron' of Wisdom,' lib. i. c. 16. p. 69, tells of a man who, having his eyes covered to receive death, and uncovered again to receive his pardon, was found dead on the scaffold. If the imagination can kill, how will the apprehension of real helpless misery torment!

would help to prevent their misery, they will not know, or will not read and study that they may know; therefore, then when their knowledge will but feed their consuming fire, they shall know whether they will or not. As toads and serpents know not their own vile and venomous nature, nor the excellent nature of man, or other creatures, and therefore are neither troubled at their own, nor desirous of ours, so is it with the wicked here; but when their eyes at death shall be suddenly opened, then the case will be suddenly altered. They are now in a dead sleep, and they dream they are the happiest men in the world, and that the godly are but a company of precise fools, and that either heaven will be theirs, as sure as another's, or else they may make a shift without it as they have done here; but when death smites these men, and bids them awake, and arouses them out of their pleasant dreams, how will they stand up amazed and confounded; how will their judgments be changed in a moment; and they that would not see, shall then see, and be ashamed!

Sect. II. Another reason to prove that the loss of heaven will more torment them then, is this; because as the understanding will be cleared, so it will be more enlarged, and made more capacious to conceive of the worth of that glory which they have lost. The strength of their apprehensions, as well as the truth of them, will then be increased. What deep apprehensions of the wrath of God, or the madness of sinning, of the misery of sinners, have those souls that now endure this misery, in comparison of those on earth that do but hear of it! What sensible apprehensions of the worth of life hath the condemned man that is going to be executed, in comparison of what he was wont to have in the time of his prosperity; much more will the actual deprivation of eternal blessedness make the damned exceedingly apprehensive of the greatness of their loss; and as a large vessel will hold more water than a shell, so will their more enlarged understandings contain more matter to feed their torment, than now their shallow capacity can do.

Sect. III. And as the damned will have clearer and deeper apprehensions of the happiness which they have lost, so will they have a truer and closer application of this doctrine to themselves, which will exceedingly tend to increase their torment. It will then be no hard matter to them to say, 'This is my loss, and this is my everlasting remediless misery.' The want of this is the main cause why they are now so little trou

bled at their condition; they are hardly brought to believe that there is such a state of misery, but more hardly to believe that it is likely to be their own. This makes so many sermons to them to be lost and all threatenings and warnings to prove in vain. Let a minister of Christ show them their misery ever so plainly and faithfully, and they will not be persuaded that they are so miserable: let him tell them of the glory they must lose, and the sufferings they must feel, and they think it is not they whom he means; such a drunkard, or such a notorious sinner, they think may possibly come to such a doleful end, but they little think that they are so near it themselves. We find in all our preaching, by sad experience, that it is one of the hardest things in the world to bring a wicked man to know that he is wicked; and a man who is posting in the way to hell, to know that he is in that way indeed; or to make a man see himself in a state of wrath and condemnation : yea, though the preacher do mark him out by such undoubted signs, which he cannot deny, yet he will not apply them, nor be brought to say, 'It is my case;' though we show them the chapter and verse where it is written, "that without regeneration and holiness, none shall see God;" and though they know no such work that was ever wrought upon themselves; nay, though they might easily find by their strangeness to the new birth, and by their very enmity to holiness, that they were never partakers of them, yet do they as verily expect to see God, and to be saved, as if they were the most sanctified persons in the world. It is a most difficult work to make a proud person know that he is h Usitatum generis humani vitium est libendo peccatum committere, commissum negando abscondere, et convictum defendendo excusare.-Greg. Moral. lib. xxii. Superbus vult se credi constantem, prodigus liberalem, avarus diligentem, temerarius fortem, inhumanus parcum, ignavus quietum, timidus cautum.-Prosp. Hoc enim maximum est vitium, quo laborat humanitas, ut post peccatum suum, maxime ad excusationis refugium, quasi pœnitudinis se confessione prosternat; quod facinus inter summa peccata constat numeratum esse, quia inde nascitur, ut ad pœnitentiam reus tardius venire videatur. -Greg. Moral. John iii. 3; Heb. xii. 14. Cœpisti non defendere peccatum tuum? jam inchoasti justitiam.-Aug. de Carne Serm. 4.

i Fevers and gouts are felt and known when they are strong, though we doubt of them before; but in the diseases which hurt men's souls, it is contrary. The worse a man is, the less he feels it, and no wonder. For he that doth but slumber and dream, doth sometime think in his sleep that he is asleep; but a deep sleep expelleth dreams, and drowns the mind so deeply that it leaves no use of the understanding. Why doth no man confess his faults? Because he is yet in them. To rehearse a dream, is the work only of a man that is waking; and to confess one's faults, is a sign of recovery.-Epist. 54. ad Lucil. p. 616.