nies of soul hurried him to hasten his own death, "that he might go to his own place:" And there is abundance of such kind of repenting, in every corner of hell; that is a deep and dreadful pit, whence there is no redemption, though there are millions of such sorts of penitents; it is a strong and dark prison, where no beam of comfort ever shines, where bitter anguish and mourning for sins past, is no evangelical repentance, but everlasting and hopeless sorrow.

II. Those that are found sleeping at the hour of death, are carried away at once, from all their sensual pursuits and enjoyments, which were their chosen portion, and their highest happiness.' At once they lose all their golden dreams, and their chief good is, as it were snatched away from them at once and for ever. 'They stand on slippery places, they are brought to destruction in a moment,' and all their former joys are like a dream when one awaketh,' and finds himself beset round with terrors.

Are there any of you that are pleasing yourselves here in the days of youth and vanity, and indulge your dreams of pleasure, in the sleep of spiritual death, think of the approaching moment, when the death of nature shall dissolve your sleep, and scatter all the delusive images of sinful joy. This separation from the body of flesh, is a fearful shock given to the soul, that makes it awake indeed. Sermons would not do it; the voice of the preacher was not loud enough; strokes of affliction, and smarting providences would not do it; perhaps the soul might be roused a little, but dropt into profound sleep again :

sudden or surprising deaths near them, and even the pains of nature in their own flesh, their own sicknesses and diseases, did not awaken them, nor the voice of the Lord in them all: But the parting-stroke that divides the soul and body, will terribly awaken the soul from the vain delusion, and all its fancied delights for ever vanish.

When they are visited by the Lord of hosts with this thunder and earthquake,' as the Prophet Isaiah speaks, when this storm and tempest' of death, shall shake the sinner out of his airy visions, he shall be as an hungry man that dreameth he was eating, but awakes and his soul is empty; or as a thirsty creature dreaming that he drinks, but he awaketh and behold he is faint,' and his soul is pained with raging appetite: The sinner finds to his own torment, how wretchedly he has deceived himself and fed upon vanity: There are no more earthly objects to please his senses, and to gratify his inclinations; but the soul for ever lives upon a rack of carnal desire, and no proper object to satisfy it. His taste is not suited to the pleasures of a world of spirits, he can fint! no God there to comfort him: God with his offers of grace are gone for ever, and the world with its joys are for ever vanished, while the wretched and malicious creatures, into whose company he is hurried, and who were the tempters or associates of his crimes, shall stand round him to become his tormentors.

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III. Though death will awaken sinful souls into a sharper and more lively sense of divine and heavenly things than ever they had in this world, yet they

shall never be awakened to spiritual life and holiness:' And I think I may add, that though they should be awakened to a sight of God, and his justice, and his grace, to a sight of heaven and hell, more immediate and perspicuous than what even the saints themselves usually enjoy in this life, yet they would remain still under the bondage of their lusts, still, dead in trespasses and sins. They shall for ever continue unbeloved of God, and incapable of all the happiness of the heavenly state, because they are for ever averse to the holiness of God, and themselves for ever unholy. It is only in the present state of trial, and under the present proposals of grace, that sleeping sinners can be awakened into the spiritual and divine life. The voice of the son of God, that breaks the monuments of brass, and makes tombs of hardest marble yield to his call, shall never break one heart of stone, which is gone down to death, in its native and sinful hardness: That almighty voice that must awaken the nations of the dead, and command their bodies up from the grave, shall never awaken one dead soul, when they are past the limits of this life. The compassionate calls of a Saviour, and the offers of mercy, are then come to their utmost period: And if we refuse to hear the call of mercy to the moment of death, we shall then be terribly constrained to feel the loss of it, but never able to obtain the blessing.

Obstinate sleepers shall be awakened to see God, but only as Balaam was: "I shall see him but not nigh," Numb. xxiv. 17. The saints in this life.

have God near them in all their trials, as a father and a friend, to uphold, to comfort, to sanctify, though they see him but darkly through a glass, and behold but little of his power or glory: The sinner awaking in hell shall, perhaps, have a clearer and more acute perception of what God is, than any saint on earth: But he shall behold him as an enemy, and not a friend: If he beholds him in the glory of his grace, it is at a dreadful and insuperable distance; there is no grace for him: He sees him in his holiness, but he cannot love him, he has no meltings of true peni. tence for his former rebellions against God, his heart is hardened into everlasting enmity, and shall never taste of his love. Hence arise all the foul and gnaw. ing passions of envy, malignity, and long despair, which are the very image of Satan, and change man. kind into devils.

These impenitent sons and daughters of men, shall grow into the more complete likeness of those wicked spirits, and, under the impressions of their guilt and damnation, they shall rival those apostate and cursed creatures, in the obstinate hatred of God, and all that is holy.

IV. Hence it will follow in the last place, that the sinner who is fast asleep in his sins at the hour of death, shall awake into such a life as is worse than dying.' He shall be surprised all at once into darkness and fire, which have no gleam of light, and sorrows without mitigation, and which can find no end. The punishment of hell is not called eternal death, to denote a state of senseless and stupid existence;

but death being the most opposite to life, and all the enjoyments of it, the misery of hell is described by death, as the most formidable thing to nature, as a word that puts a period to all the enjoyments of this mortal life, and stands directly opposite to a life of joy and glory in the immortal world. Happy would it be for such souls if they could sink into an everlasting sleep, and grow stupid and senseless for ever and ever; but this is a favour not to be granted to those who have been constant and unrepenting rebels, against the law and the grace of God.

The moment when the body falls asleep in death, the soul is more awake than ever, to behold its own guilt and wretchedness. It has then such a lively and piercing sense of its own iniquities, and the divine wrath that is due to them, as it never saw or felt before. The inward senses of the soul (if I may so express it) which have been darkened and stupified, and benumbed in this body, are all awake at once, when the veil of flesh is thrown off, and the curtains are drawn back which divided them from the world of spirits. Every thought of sin, and the anger of God, wounds the spirit deep in this awakened state, though it scarce felt any thing of it before; and "a wounded spirit who can bear?" Prov. xviii. 14. But sinners must bear it days without end, and ages without hope.

Then the crimes they have committed, and the sinful pleasures they have indulged, shall glare upon their remembrance, and stare them in the face with dreadful surprise; and each of them is enough to