To-day, you are here quiet, because you think your souls are safe and some are troubled that think they are in a state of misery and it is likely that some on both sides are mistaken: and the quiet of one, and the disquiet of another, may arise for want of the knowledge of yourselves: but death will rectify both these errors: and then if you are unsanctified, no false opinions, no unbelief, no confident conceits of your integrity, will abate your desperation, or give any ease to your tormented minds: nor will there be any doubts, or fears, or despairing, self-afflicting thoughts, to disquiet those that Christ hath justified, or abate their joys. O how many thousands will then think much otherwise of themselves than they now do! Death turns you out of the company of flatterers, and calls you out of the world of error, where men laugh and cry in their sleep; and bringeth you among awakened souls, where all things are called by their proper names; and all men are taken by themselves to be as they are indeed. Serious religion is not there a derision; nor loving, and seeking, and serving God with all the heart, and soul, and might, is not there taken for unnecessary preciseness. Holiness is not there called humour or hypocrisy nor is the pharisaical ceremonious hypocrite taken for a man of the most prudent, safe and moderate religion. God judgeth not as man, by outward appearances, but with righteous judgment: "That which is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in the sight of God." (Luke xvi. 15.) And he will make you then to judge of yourselves as he hath judged you. Though wisdom now be justified but of her children, it shall then be justified by all: not by a sanctifying, but a constrained, involuntary, tormenting light and though now men can believe as well of themselves, as self-love and the quieting of their consciences doth require, yet then they will have lost this mastery over their own conceits. O therefore, beloved hearers, seeing you are all going into an irresistibly convincing light, and are almost in that world where all must fully know themselves: seeing "nothing is covered that shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall not be made known," (Matt. x. 26,) and no unsanctified hypocrite doth flatter himself into such high presumption, but a dying hour will take him down, and turn it all : into endless desperation, if true conversion prevent it not; I beseech you be more conversant with conscience than you have been be ashamed that a wanton sot, that knoweth nothing better than flesh to adorn and to be careful of, should bestow more hours in looking into the glass, than you bestow to look into God's word and your own hearts: yea, more in a year, than you have thus bestowed in all your lives! O that you knew what a profitable companion conscience is for you to converse with! You would not then think yourselves so solitary as to be destitute of company and employment, while you have so much to do at home, and one in your bosom that you have so much business with. And it is a necessary and inseparable companion. If the wife of your bosom should be a shrew, you must not therefore be a stranger to her, because of nearness, necessity and business. If conscience should give you some foul words, and chide you when you had rather be flattered; yet there is no running from it for more pleasant company : Home is homely: It is there that you must dwell: conscience is married to you: please it on safe terms as well as you can; but do not think to overrun it: for it will follow you; or you must return to it home again, when you have gone your furthest, and done your worst. You have taken conscience for better and for worse. There is no expectation of a divorce: no, not by death: it will follow you to eternity. And therefore be not strange to conscience, that will be your comforter or tormenter at the hour of death; that can do so much to make sickness, and all suffering light or grievous; and to make death welcome or terrible to you: Fly not from conscience that must dwell with you for ever. O foolish sinners! Do you want company and business to pass away your time? Are you fain to go to cards or dice to waste this treasure, which is more precious than your money? Do you go to an alehouse, a playhouse, or other such pest-house, to seek for company or pastime? (I say not, to Bedlam; for that is as much more honourable than your sinful society, as the place that cureth or restraineth the mad, is better than that which makes them mad.) Do you forget what company and business you have at home? As you love your peace and happiness, instead of conversing with vain, lascivious, or ungodly persons, O spend that time in converse with your consciences! You may there have a thousand times more profitable discourse. Be not offended to give conscience a sober, faithful answer, if it ask you, What have you done with all your time? and how you have lived in the world? and how you have obeyed the calls of grace? and how you have entertained Christ into your hearts? and whether you have obeyed him or his enemy? and whether you have been led by the Spirit or the flesh? and what forwardness the work of your salvation is in, for which you came into the world? and what assurance you have of your justification and salvation? and what readiness to die? Think it not presumption in conscience thus to examine you: though you have perhaps unthankfully disdained to be thus examined by your pastors, your external guides, whose office is to help you, and watch for souls; yet do not disdain to be accountable to yourselves. Accountable you must be ere long to God: and that friend that would help you to make ready such accounts, on which so great a weight dependeth, methinks should be welcomed with a thousand thanks. Ministers and conscience should be acceptable to you, that come on so necessary a work. your The chidings of conscience are more friendly language than the flattery of your ignorant or proud associates: and should be more grateful to you than "the laughter of fools, which is like the crackling of thorns in the fire." (Eccles. vii. 6.) Thy own home, though it be a house of mourning, is better for thee than such a sinful house of mirth. Hear but what conscience hath to say to you. No one will speak with you, that hath words to speak, which more nearly concern you. I beseech you, sirs, be more frequent and familiar with conscience than most men are. Think not the time lost, when you walk and talk with it alone. Confer with it about your endless state, and where you are likely to be for ever; and what way you are in; and what thoughts you will have of your sins and duties, of the world and God, of yielding or overcoming at the last. Is there no sense in this discourse? Thou art dead and senseless if thou think so. Is idle talk and prating better? I hope you are not so distracted as to say so. If you have not blinded, deceived or bribed it, I tell you, conscience hath other kind of discourse for you; more excellent and necessary things to talk of, than wantons, or worldlings, or pot-companions have. It is better to be giving conscience an account, what business thou hast had so often in such company; and how thou wouldst have looked, if death had found thee there, than without leave from God or conscience, to go thither again. The thriving way is neither to be still at home, nor still abroad; but to be at home when home-work is to be done; and to be abroad only for doing and for getting good, in a way of diligent, Christian trading; and to bring that home that is got abroad: But never to go abroad upon loitering, vain, expensive occasions. When you have done with conscience, converse with others that your business lieth with, and go abroad when it is for your Master's work: but go not upon idle errands: Converse not with prodigal wasters of your time, and enemies to your souls. One time or other conscience will speak, and have a hearing: the sooner the better: put it not off to a time so unseasonable as death; I say not unseasonable for conscience to speak in; but unseasonable for it to begin to speak in; and unseasonable for those terrible words that need a calmer time for answer; and unseasonable for so many things and so great, as self-betrayers use to put off until then, which need a longer time for due consideration and despatch. 3. And I beseech you consider, with what amazing horror it must needs surprise you, to find on a sudden and unexpectedly when you die, that all is worse with you than you imagined or would believe! After a whole life of confident presumption, to be suddenly convinced by so dreadful an experience of your so long and wilful a mistake! To find in a moment, that you have flattered your souls, into so desperate a state of woe! To see and feel all the selfish cavils and reasonings confuted, in one hour, which the wisest and holiest men on earth could never beat you from before! O, sirs, you know not what a day, what a conviction, that will be! You know not what it is for a guilty soul to pass out of the body, and find itself in the plague of an unsanctified state, and hated of the holy God, that never would know it till it was too late. You know not what it is to be turned, by death, into the world of spirits, where all self-deceit is detected by experience; and all must undergo a righteous judgment; where blindness and self love can no more persuade the miserable that they are happy; the unholy, that they are sanctified; the fleshly-minded men, that they are spiritual; the lovers of the world, that they are the lovers of God. Men cannot there believe what they list; nor take that for a truth which makes for their security, be it never so false: men cannot there believe that they are accepted of God, while they are in the bonds of their iniquity; or that their hearts are as good as the best, while their tongues and lives are opposite to goodness, or that they shall be saved as soon as the godly, though they be ungodly. It is easy for a man to hear of waves, and gulfs, and shipwreck, that never saw the sea; and without any fear to hear of battles, that never saw the face of an enemy; and without any trouble to hear of sickness and tormenting pains, and burning, and cutting off of limbs, that never felt or saw such things. It is easy for you here in these seats, in the midst of health, and peace, and quietness, to hear of a departing soul, and where it shall appear, and what it shall there see, and how great a discovery death will make. But, O sirs, when this must be your case, (as you know it must be, alas, how speedily!) these matters will then seem considerable they will be new and strange to those that have heard of them a hundred times, because they never heard of them sensibly till now. One of those souls that have been here before you, and have passed that way into eternity, have other thoughts of these things than you have! O how do they think now, of the fearless slumber and stupidity of those that they have left behind! What think they now of those that wilfully fly the light, and flatter themselves in guilt and misery, and make light of all the joys and torments of the other world? Even as the damned rich man in Luke xvi, thought of his poor brethren, that remained in prosperity and presumption upon earth, and little thought what company he was in, what a sight he saw, and what he did endure ! Poor careless souls, you know not now what it is, for the ungodly to see that they are ungodly, by the irresistible light of another world; and for the unholy to feel in hell that they are unholy, and to be taught by flames and the wrath of the Almighty, what is the difference between the |
