is sin; and "the wages of sin is death," even death eternal. This is the clear and positive declaration of Scripture, to be received and believed with undoubting persuasion on the testimony and word of God. And one great end of Scripture is to reveal him to us as just and holy, the hater and avenger of sin, that we may not so presume upon his mercy, as to be fearless of his judgments, and that we may be prepared for that mercy of God in Jesus Christ which we all want, by a penitent acknowledgment of our vileness and condemnation in sin, and a hearty purpose to renounce and forsake it. For then we shall see another meaning in the text. It says, that "thereafter as a man feareth, so is thy displeasure,” that is, according as we do or do not fear, consider, and lay to heart, the power of God's wrath, we shall be liable to, or avoid it; by not fearing we shall feel the whole weight of it, and our godly fear will as certainly prevent it. I shall, therefore, speak of the words in both these senses:

I. As the express declaration of a wrath in God, equal to, if not far exceeding, any thing we can think or conceive of it; and,

II. As pointing out to us the way to escape it.

I. The text tells us of a wrath in God, the power of his wrath, a mighty wrath, terrible as all our fears of it can be, or rather far beyond any thing we can think or conceive. Not that there is any such passion of wrath, anger, or fury in God, as we mean by these words, and too often feel in ourselves. You are not so to understand the word wrath, when it is spoken of God. So far as it is attended with trouble, vexation, and torment, it can have no place in the blessed, holy nature of God, and would be contrary to the everlasting, full enjoyment of himself. But his wrath means the effect of his justice, or righteous,

dealing with us, and its falling so heavy upon us as if it proceeded from the most furious anger; and the word is used to strike an awe upon our spirits, and that we may so fear as never to feel it. Alas! we do not. For "who regardeth the power of thy wrath?" Who can form a just conception of it if he would, and how many never consider it at all, or utterly disbelieve it! Whatever they do, however they live, though plain commands are broken, and plain duties neglected, they flatter themselves that God regardeth it not, and has no will to punish them. Mercy we all know there is in God, and are but too apt to think there is nothing else; insomuch, that without the light of Scripture, we should never have come to the right knowledge of this great important point of his justice, from the effects of it called his wrath. To the Scripture then let us go. For one great end of its being written and put into our hands, I told you, was, that we might know the nature of the God with whom we have to do; and ground our belief of him, not on any blind reasonings, or vain fancies of our own, as we generally do, but on the infallible revelation he has made of himself. The great points which it brings to our knowledge, are the entrance of sin into the world, God's righteous vengeance against it, and the one, sole method of deliverance from the curse of it by Jesus Christ; but the last of these, or the way and means of our deliverance, though it is the comfort, glad tidings, and great glory of the Bible, can neither be believed nor understood, if we are not first well grounded in what it declares to us of the great evil and heinous nature of sin, and God's displeasure, the text says, "the power of his wrath," against us for it. And for our full assurance in this matter, and to cause it to make the stronger impression upon our minds, the accursed nature of sin, and God's hatred of it, are not only declared in words, but delivered to mankind in the

form of a history, copied, as it were, from the records of heaven, or a publication of God's secret counsels, and differing, in this respect, materially and most remarkably from all other histories; to the end that, reading his judgments against sin, in various instances, in every age of the world, we might see the seal put to his justice, know from what he has done what he will do, believe and dread his threatenings from the actual execution of them, and never presume upon his mercy in opposition to his word. The point, therefore, is God's wrath, or punishment of sin; for I suppose I need not tell you that he judges and punishes for nothing else. Let us see what information the Scripture gives us concerning it.

The first account of this kind, and almost the first thing we meet with in Scripture, is the sin and punishment of Adam. God had said to him, " in the day thou eatest thereof," transgressest the command which has been given thee, "thou shalt surely die," that is, forfeit the covenant of life which has been granted to thee, all right and title to a blessed immortality. And, accordingly, by doing this one forbidden act, he came under the law of death, and with him all his posterity. Now, if it was possible for God to alter his purpose, or act contrary to his threatenings in any case, this was the time; if ever there was a sin in the world which called for mercy, and required an abatement in the rigour of justice, it was that one first sin of the first parents of mankind, because all their unborn children were to be involved in the consequence of it. But, behold! it could not be. Stop here, O man! consider this awful transaction with deep attention, and know that eternal justice must have its course. The sentence, so far as it related to the death of the body, we know took place against them,

and that it will continue in force against every son and daughter of theirs to the end of the world. We may, know too, if we please, from the wretched state of corruption and weakness we are in, that the death of the body was not the whole, nor the worst part of their sentence; but the soul, by departing from God, and God's departure from it, lost its true life, and must have been separated from him for ever in the horrors of the second death, without satisfaction made to justice, and recovery to his favour by the grace and power of a Redeemer. And it is farther worthy of observation, that there is little else recorded in Scripture of the history of our first parents, than that they sinned, were turned out of Paradise, and died; to the end we might be sure to take notice of it, and have nothing else to draw off our attention from the truth of God in his threatenings, the accursed nature of sin, and his strict and terrible justice in the punishment of it. If there was not another instance besides this in all Scripture of God's judgmentsupon sin and sinners, this alone is enough to make us tremble, and sufficient warning to the world of the deadly nature of sin, and the curse it brings us under; since we all feel it in the burdens, calamities, and sorrows of life, in our subjection to death, with all the pains and sicknesses which lead to it; and not least in the sickness and corruption of the soul, its perpetual, stubborn opposition to the will of God, in self-seeking, and self-pleasing, impotence to good, and strong propensity to evil. But the Bible has line upon line for us on this head, and warning upon warning of the wrath or justice of God, as exemplified in the punishment of sin. This instruction runs particularly through the whole of the Old Testament; is, as it were, the " flaming sword to keep the way of the tree of life," and will be an eternal bar to it, if

some mighty hand does not again open an entrance into Paradise for mankind, dead in trespasses and sins, and fallen under a sentence of condemnation.

Consider next the universal deluge; when " God saw that all flesh had corrupted his way before him, and the earth was filled with violence," Gen. vi. 11—13. Noah preached to them for an hundred and twenty years, both in the very action of his building the ark, and also by warnings and exhortations from his mouth, to put them in fear, and persuade them to avert the judgment hanging over their heads; but when they would not be instructed, "the flood came and swept them all away." Here, you see, was wrath indeed, and the power of wrath. We scarce live a year without hearing of great calamities in some part of the world or other, plague, famine, earthquakes, the miseries of war, and distress of various kinds; but what are all these put together to that great destruction which was then brought upon the earth?

And though God has promised, for reasons well known to himself, never to destroy the earth again in like manner, that is, universally by the waters of a flood, yet there is no change in his nature and will; he is the same sin-hating, sin-avenging God, for ever and ever. Of which we have another remarkable instance in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, upon which "the Lord rained brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground." The reason of which great and terrible destruction we are not left to guess at, but plainly told it was "because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah was great, and because their sin was very grievous," Gen. xviii. 20.

So we read of God's giving up the seven nations of Canaan to be destroyed, when "their iniquities were