been so freely, and so fully preached, fall under the penalty of this text, if we believe. not, for we have made God a liar in not believing the record he gives of his Son.

That then there is damnation, and why it is, and when it is, is clear enough; but what this damnation is, neither the tongue of good angels that know damnation by the contrary, by fruition of salvation, nor the tongue of bad angels who know damnation by a lamentable experience, is able to express it; a man may sail so at sea, as that he shall have laid the north pole flat, that shall be fallen out of sight, and yet he shall not have raised the south pole, he shall not see that; so there are things, in which a man may go beyond his reason, and yet not meet with faith neither of such a kind are those things which concern the locality of hell, and the materiality of the torments thereof; for that hell is a certain and limited place, beginning here and ending there, and extending no farther, or that the torments of hell be material, or elementary torments, which in natural consideration can have no proportion, no affection, nor appliableness to the tormenting of a spirit, these things neither settle my reason, nor bind my faith; neither opinion, that it is, or is not so, doth command our reason so, but that probable reasons may be brought on the other side; neither opinion doth so command our faith, but that a man may be saved, though he think the contrary; for in such points, it is always lawful to think so, as we find does most advance and exalt our own devotion, and God's glory in our estimation; but when we shall have given to those words, by which hell is expressed in the Scriptures, the heaviest significations, that either the nature of those words can admit, or as they are types and representations of hell, as fire, and brimstone, and weeping, and gnashing, and darkness, and the worm, and as they are laid together in the prophet, Tophet, (that is hell) is deep and large, (there is the capacity and content, room enough) It is a pile of fire and much wood, (there is the durableness of it) and the breath of the Lord to kindle it, like a stream of brimstone, (there is the vehemence of it:) when all is done, the hell of hells, the torment of torments is the everlasting absence of God, and the everlasting impossibility of returning to

VOL. III.

6 Isaiah xxx. 33.

2 c

37

his presence; Horrendum est, says the apostle, It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Yet there was a case, in which David found an ease, to fall into the hands of God, to escape the hands of men: Horrendum est, when God's hand is bent to strike, It is a fearful thing, to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God, is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.

That God should let my soul fall out of his hand, into a bottomless pit, and roll an unremovable stone upon it, and leave it to that which it finds there, (and it shall find that there, which it never imagined, till it came thither) and never think more of that soul, never have more to do with it. That of that providence of God, that studies the life of every weed, and worm, and ant, and spider, and toad, and viper, there should never, never any beam flow out upon me; that that God, who looked upon me, when I was nothing, and called me when I was not, as though I had been, out of the womb and depth of darkness, will not look upon me now, when, though a miserable, and a banished, and a damned creature, yet I am his creature still, and contribute something to his glory, even in my damnation; that that God, who hath often looked upon me in my foulest uncleanness, and when I had shut out the eye of the day, the sun, and the eye of the night, the taper, and the eyes of all the world, with curtains and windows, and doors, did yet see me, and see me in mercy, by making me see that he saw me, and sometimes brought me to a present remorse, and (for that time) to a forbearing of that sin, should so turn himself from me, to his glorious saints and angels, as that no saint nor angel, nor Christ Jesus himself, should ever pray him to look towards me, never remember him, that such a soul there is; that that God, who hath so often said to my soul, Quare morieris? Why wilt thou die? and so often sworn to my soul, Vivit Dominus, As the Lord liveth, I would not have thee die, but live, will neither let me die, nor let me live, but die an everlasting life, and live an everlasting death; that that God, who, when he could not get into me, by standing, and knocking, by his ordinary means of entering, by his word, his mercies, hath applied his judgments, and hath shaked the house, this body, with agues and

37 Heb. x. 31.

palsies, and set this house on fire, with fevers and calentures, and frightened the master of the house, my soul, with horrors, and heavy apprehensions, and so made an entrance into me; that that God should frustrate all his own purposes and practices upon me, and leave me, and cast me away, as though I had cost him nothing, that this God at last, should let this soul go away, as a smoke, as a vapour, as a bubble, and that then this soul cannot be a smoke, a vapour, nor a bubble, but must lie in darkness, as long as the Lord of light is light itself, and never spark of that light reach to my soul; what Tophet is not paradise, what brimstone is not amber, what gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage-bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God? especially to us, for as the perpetual loss of that is most heavy, with which we have been best acquainted, and to which we have been most accustomed; so shall this damnation, which consists in the loss of the sight and presence of God, be heavier to us than others, because God hath so graciously, and so evidently, and so diversely appeared to us, in his pillar of fire, in the light of prosperity, and in the pillar of the cloud, in hiding himself for a while from us: we that have seen him in all the parts of this commission, in his word, in his sacraments, and in good example, and not believed, shall be further removed from his sight, in the next world, than they to whom he never appeared in this. But vincenti et credenti, to him that believes aright, and overcomes all temptations to a wrong belief, God shall give the accomplishment of fulness, and fulness of joy, and joy rooted in glory, and glory established in eternity, and this eternity is God; to him that believes and overcomes, God shall give himself in an everlasting presence and fruition, Amen.

Else, what shall they do which are baptized for the dead? if the dead rise not at all, why are they then baptized for the dead?

I ENTERED into the handling of these words, upon Easter day'; for, though the words have received divers expositions, good and perverse, yet all agreed, that the words were an argument for the resurrection, and that invited me to apply them to that day. At that day I entered into them, with Origen's protestation, Odit Dominus, qui festum ejus unum putat diem, God hates that man, that thinks any holyday of his lasts but one day, that never thinks of the resurrection, but upon Easter day: and therefore I engaged myself willingly, according to the invitation, and almost the necessity of the words, which could not conveniently, (scarce possibly) be determined in one day, to return again and again to the handling thereof. For they are words of great extent, a great compass the whole circle of a Christian is designed and accomplished in them; for, here is first the first point in that circle, our birth, our spiritual birth, that is, baptism, Why are these men thus baptized? says the text; and then here is the point, directly and diametrally opposed to that first point, our birth, that is, death, Why are these men thus baptized for the dead? says the text; and then the circle is carried up to the first point again, to our birth, in another birth, in the resurrection, Why are these men thus baptized for the dead, if there be no resurrection? so that if we consider the militant and the triumphant church, to be (as they are) all one house, and under one roof, here is first Limen Ecclesiæ, (as St. Augustine calls baptism) the Threshold of the Church, we are put over the threshold, into the body of the church, by baptism, and here we are remembered of baptism, Why are these men thus baptized? and then here is chorus ecclesia, the choir, the chancel of the church, in which all the service of God, is officiated and

1See Sermon xix. vol. 1.

executed; for we are made not only hearers, and spectators, but actors in the service of God, when we come to bear a part in the hymns and anthems of the saints, by our death, and here we are remembered of death, Why are these men thus baptized for the dead? and then, here is sanctum sanctorum, the innermost part of the church, the holy of holies, that is, the manifestation of all the mysterious salvation, belonging to soul and body, in the resurrection, Why are these men thus baptized for the dead, if there be no resurrection?

Our first day's work in handling these words, was to accept, and then to apply that, in which all agreed, that these words were an argument for the resurrection; and we did both these offices; we did accept it, and so show you, how the assurance of the resurrection accrues to us, and what is the office of reason, and what is the office of faith in that affair; and then we did apply it, and so show you divers resemblances, and conformities between natural death, and spiritual death, and between the resurrection of the body to glory at last, and the resurrection of the soul by grace, in the way; and wherein they induced, and assisted, and illustrated one another: and those two miles made up that Sabbath day's journey. When we shall return to the handling of them, the next day (which will be the last) we shall consider how these words have been misapplied by our adversaries of the Roman church, and then the several expositions which they have received from sound and orthodoxal men, that thence we may draw a conclusion, and determination for ourselves; and in those two miles, we shall also make up that Sabbath day's journey, when God shall be pleased to bring us to it. This day's exercise shall be, to consider that very point, for the establishment whereof, they have so detorted, and misapplied these words, which is their purgatory, that this baptism for the dead must necessarily prove purgatory, and their purgatory.

So then this day's exercise will be merely polemical, the handling of a controversy; which though it be not always pertinent, yet neither is it always unseasonable. There was a time but lately, when he who was in his desire and intention, the peacemaker of all the Christian world, as he had a desire to have slumbered all field-drums, so had he also to have slumbered all