threatening annexed to the third command, "vifiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children." Rebel's children fuffer with their fathers in all nations; and fhall not rebellion against God be as feverely punished as that which is against an earthly fovereign? If an Achan fteal a Babylonish garment, and fin against the God of Ifrael, then he and his whole family fhall fall, man, wife, and child; nay, and the very houfehold-ftuff, his ox and his affes. God will purfue the quarrel to a dreadful length. You may fee this terrible tragedy defcribed by God, in Joshua vii. 24. God will spare nothing that finners have used. Becaufe finners have trode upon this earth, it must undergo the fire at the last day, before it can be freed from the bondage of corruption. O finners, ye tranfmit a fad legacy to your wretched pofterity! a legacy of which the diftreffed church, Lam. v. 7. heavily complains: "Our fathers have finned and are not, and we have borne their iniquities."

5thly, Once more: God pursues his quarrel yet further. He will have your names eternally ruined. "The memory of the wicked fhall rot,” Prov. x. 7. After he has killed your bodies, and fouls, and children, and ruined your eftates, then he will kill your names, that there shall no remembrance of you be upon the earth, unless it be the ftench of a rotten name. Thus will the Lord deal with you O finners! The whirl-wind of the Lord, that goes forth with fury, will blow away all your enjoyments, turn you out of all your poffeffions. The Lord will banif you his prefence. That almighty arm that stretched out the heavens, will tear your fouls from your bodies, and throw you head-long into perdition: the weight of infinite wrath will fink you down into the bottomless pit; and Omnipotence will dig a grave for your memory, wherein it will eternally rot. For the greatnefs of your iniquity ye may expect this: "This is thy lot, the portion of thy measure from me, faith the Lord, because thou haft forgotten me, and trusted in falfehood," Jer. xiii. 25. This is the fatisfaction God requires: and think on it; 'this way will he be glorified in your ruin, if ye continue in your fins.

I have at fome length proved you all to be offenders, that God demands a reparation; and what that reparation is, which he doth demand of his injured honour, I have at

fome

fome length made appear; I now proceed, according to the method propofed,

FIFTHLY, To demonstrate the reasonableness of this demand. I have fhewn your ways to be most unequal; now I come to fhew, that God's ways are most equal, and that he acts very reasonably in demanding fo high: and this will appear to the conviction of the most obflinate fianer, if the confiderations we offer for clearing this be duly weighed. And,

1st, Let it be confidered, That fin deferves fuch a punishment; and therefore it is very just to inflict it. Nay, I might perhaps run this a little higher, and affert, that therefore it would be unjust to require any lefs, any more eafy punishment. That fin deferves it, is very plain, if we confider,

1. Against whom it ftrikes. This is the way of meafuring offences agreed to all the world over, that the measure hould be taken from the confideration of those against whom they strike. This we may obferve in the laws of God, which enjoin that offences fhall be punished accord ing to the quality and condition of the offenders, and the offended. The daughter of the high-priest, if the committed uncleannefs, was to be burned without mercy, Lev. xxi. 9. fo was not every one who was guilty in that way. Again, he that curfeth his father and mother is adjudged to die, Lev. xx. 9.; fo was not he that curfeth his equal. The fame measure is kept in our laws: if one kills his equal, then he dies; but there doth not thereby redound any injury to his pofterity; but if a man kills the king, or makes any attempt against the government, then life, lands, name, and all goes. Now, if we confider in this cafe the quality of the offender, a poor mean worm, that dwells in a cottage of clay, that has his foundation in the duft, that is crushed before the moth, that holds all of God; and then, on the other hand, confider him who is offended by every fin, not a prince or foine great man, who is but flesh and blood at the beft, but "the high and lofty one that inhabits eternity, he who is the great God, and a great King, above all the earth: behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the fmall duft of the balance: behold, he taketh up the ifles as a very little thing; and Lebanon is not fufficient to burn,

nor the beafts thereof fufficient for a burnt-offering. All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity." To whom then will ye liken God? or what likenefs will ye compare unto him? There is no proportion here. Now, if it deserve fo fevere a puniflument that is committed against man, what muft it not deferve that is committed against this God? As it were injurious to compare God to man; fo it is injurious to compare the demerit of any offence committed against man, and the demerit of that which is committed against the great God.

2. Confider the damage that fin doth; and then we will fee what fin deferves: we will fee that the terrible punish ment we have been difcourfing of, is nothing too fevere. If we confider man with respect to the creatures that are under him, the inanimate part of the creation, and the brutes; he was appointed to be their mouth, by which they should pay homage to their Creator; he was to be their treasurer, to pay in a revenue of glory for them to their Creator and Governor: but man by fin puts himfelf out of all capacity for this; he lays an ill example before his fellow-creatures. But all this is nothing, when com. pared with the injury he doth to God by every fin. This, if thoroughly and well understood, would for ever clear the justice of God in punishing fin with eternal punishment. True it is, indeed, what Elihu fays, "If thou finñeft, what deft thou against him ? or if thy tranfgreffion be multiplied, what dost thou unto him?" Job xxxv. 6.; that is to fay, God lies beyond our reach; we cannot by our fins detract from, as neither can we by our holine's add to his happiness: but this is no proof that we do him no injury. A rebel clapt up in prifon, or in the hand of the king's guards, is not able to reach the prince's perfon, nor render him diffatisfied; yet he may then injure him, and doth it, when he unjustly reflects upon his government. Juft fo it is with finners: indeed they cannot fcale the walls of heaven, they are not able to climb over the eternal ramparts, which raife the fence of the Almighty's facred throne, and there slab his person ; but yet they injure him in his name and honour, and even in his life, by every fin: it is intended murder; and this is death by the laws of God and man. That among men it is not always punished

punished fo, is only because it is not always difcoverd; for when it is difcovered by words, or overt though ineffectual actions, it is punished. Every fin fpits upon God's holinefs, tramples upon his authority, brands his wisdom with folly, denies his goodness, and braves and gives a defiance to his power: what punishment then can be too great for this? Now sure,

3. Sin deferves it, if we confider the obligations that are by every fin trampled upon. Every one will own, that the fins of children against their parents, of fervants against their mafters, of fubjects against their lord, and the wives against their husbands, are fins of a black hue, a crimson dye, and deferve therefore a very fevere punishment; and accordingly are fo punished in all nations: but all those obligations are none to what we all lie under to God; fo that there is more perfidy, falfehood, and treachery, in all our fins against God, than in any of thofe : therefore it is but just that there should be a proportion kept betwixt the offences and the punishment.

4. That fin deferves fuch a punishment, is the judgment of God; and we know that his judgment is always according to truth. It is not the mistaken notion of a man, who in the most momentous truths may trip; but it is the judgment of the only wife God, who is a God of knowledge, by whom actions are weighed. I think we need not go so far back at present for a proof of this, as the penal fanction of the law, fo long as we have the death of Chrift as an evidence of it, nearer hand. If an infinite perfon, standing in the finner's room, muft, for his fius, have fuch a load of wrath laid upon him, what lefs muft the punishment of the finner himself be than eternal wrath? None can pretend to believe the truth of the gospel, and question the juftice of God in punishing finners eternally; for is it not ridiculous to admire divine feverity in the eternal punishment of wicked men, and not to attend to Infinite Juftice punishing feverely his own beloved Son? What wonder is it that wicked men fhould be for ever tormented for their own fins, if the moft righteous Son of God fuffered for the fins of others? He that, without a reproach to his goodness, could endure his most dear Son to fuffer fo long as one hour, will much better endure unjuft finners to be tormented with eternal punishment.

5. That

5. That fin deferves such a punishment, is not only the judgment of God, but of men too. The common reafon of. mankind fpeaks its juftice. This appears by the fentiments the heathens had of this matter. They had not a revelation to guide them, and therefore had wild fancies about the manner of these punishments, which they judg ed to be eternal; but that there were fuch punishments, and that they were juft, they had no doubt. Hence it was that their poets did condemin Tantalus to fuch a place, where he should have rivers just washing up to his lip, and yet fhould not be able to drink of them; and fo re. main eternally under the violence of thirst, with this gnawing aggravation, that he had waters juft at his very lip. But we may yet have more clear proof of the judgments of men in all nations, in their fanations of human laws. Do not all of them for crimes, condemn to perpetual imprisonment, or to death? The one is an eternal punishment of lots of life, and all its concomitant advantages; and this punishment is inflicted without respect to a future life; as appears in this, that fuch laws are executed upon them, of whom none has reafon to think that they fhall have any fhare in the advantages of a future life. And that perpetual imprisonment is not eternal imprisonment, is not because that it is thought unjust, but becaufe neither the law-makers, who put it into execution, nor they who break it, live to eternity.

6. That fin deferves eternal punishment, appears from the acknowledgement of the punished. This is a very strong argument; for although they who are yet wallowing in their fins, and are lulled faft afleep in the lap of carnal fecurity, will not acknowledge fo much; yet if we inquire at those whom God has awakened, and to whom he has given a difcovery of the exceeding finfulness of their fin, whether with a profpect of mercy or not, they will all with one mouth acknowledge that fin deferves eternal wrath. Those whom the Lord deals with, in order to their converfion, will all fubfcribe to the justice of God, fhould he damn them eternally. I do not fay that they will be content to be damned; but they will own that God were moft just should he deal fo by them. And not only is it fo with them, but even with thofe who are funk to the utmost in black defpair. If we liften to a Spira,

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