Suppositions
Say not, If I should be careless and neglective, yet God is good and gracious; if this season be neglected, there are more to come: Alas! that is more than you know. It is possible your eternal happiness may depend upon the improvement of this present opportunity; there is much of time in a short opportunity.
Consideration 4. Do you think your hearts would be in such a dead, careless, and unconcerned frame, about this great and awful matter of your conversion and salvation; if those things were now before your eyes, which certainly and shortly must be before them!
How rational and necessary is it, for you now to suppose those very things as present before you, which you know to be near you, and a few days or hours will make present? Here let me make a few suppositions, so rational, because certainly future and near, that no wise man will, or dare to slight them as fictions or chimeras.
Suppositions Supposition 1. Suppose yourselves now upon your death-beds, your hearts and breaths failing, your eyes and heart-strings breaking, all earthly comforts failing, and shrinking from you; these things you know, are unavoidable, and must shortly befal you, Eccl. 8:8. suppose also, in these your last extremities, your consciences should awake (as probably they will, there being now no more charms of pleasure, and sinful companions, to divert or stupify them) what a case will you find yourselves in! what a cold sweat will then lie upon your panting bosoms! what a pale horror will appear in your countenances? Will you not then wish, O that the time I have spent
in vanity had been spent in the duties of serious piety! O that I had been as careful of my soul, as I was of my body! What are the pains of mortification, which I was so afraid of, to the pains of damnation, which I begin to scent, and apprehend! I thought it hard to pray, mourn, and deny myself; but I shall find it harder to grapple with the wrath of an incensed God to all eternity.
Supposition 2. Suppose yourselves now to be at the judgment seat of God, where you know you must be immediately after death; or, that you did behold the process, and awful solemnity of the general judgment of the great day! both which appearances are indisputably sure, and certain, Heb. 9:27. 2 Cor. 5:10. Suppose you saw all Adam's posterity there assembled, and convened, even multitudes, multitudes which no man can number; all these separated into two grand divisions; Christ, the supreme and final Judge, upon the judgment-seat; the Christless and unregenerate world, quivering at the bar; the last sentence pronouncing on them; the executioners standing ready to take them away: Will you not then (think you) be ready to tear yourselves with indignation, for this your supine and sottish carelessness? A voice from the throne, like the voice of a trumpet, sounds a loud alarm to all careless, negligent, and trifling sinners: And this is the voice, if you will not be in the same case with the miserable, condemned world. Put to it heartily, then, in the use of all means with God and men, for converting and regenerating grace now, which is the only thing that differences your state from those miserable wretches then.
Supposition 3. Suppose God did but give you a foresight, or foretaste in the terrors of your consciences, of that damnation you have jested at, and so often imprecated upon yourselves: Did you but lie one night in that plight poor Spira, and many others besides him have done, with the terrors of the Lord upon your spirits, under horror
and remorse of conscience, which are the first nibblings and bitings of that worm which shall never die:
——Tum pallida mens est Criminibus, tacita sudant præcordia culpa.* Paleness and horror, fear and trembling, upon the outward and inward man, whilst God is making the immediate impressions of his wrath upon the conscience; seeming to want some one to let out that miserable, wretched soul, that is weary to stay any longer in the body, and yet afraid to be dislodged, lest its condition be made worse by the exchange: do you think you would ever imprecate damnation any more? And yet all these terrors and horrors upon the conscience, are but as the sweating of marble-stone before the great rains fall.
But what if God should give you a vision of hell itself, and of the inconceivable and inexpressible misery of those desperate and forlorn wretches, that lie there sweltering, and groaning under the heavy pressures of the wrath of a great and terrible God, immediately and everlastingly transacted upon their souls? Would you ever jest with damnation any more, as with an harmless thing? Nay, would you not strive to the uttermost, to flee from this wrath to come? Do you not seem to hear, in this rational and just opposition, and doleful cry coming from hell, and the state of the damned, with this very sound and sense? 'Good souls, if ever you expect to be delivered from this state, and place of torments, strive, to the utmost, strive while you have opportunity, strive whilst breath and strength do last, to flee from, and escape, by a sound conversion, this doleful state of eternal damnation.'
Supposition 4. Lastly, and in a word, suppose you had a vision of heaven, as Stephen and Paul had in the body; suppose you saw the
glory of God, and Jesus standing at his right hand, surrounded with the triumphant myriads of palm-bearing saints, singing Hosanna's and Hallelujahs to God, and the Lamb for ever; and blessing, praising, and admiring him that gave them another spirit, vastly different from that which governs such as you: Blessing the Lord, that enabled them to be praying and praising, whilst others were cursing and swearing; to be sighing and groaning for sin in secret, whilst others were shouting and singing in taverns and ale-houses: to beat down their bodies, and keep them under, whilst others were pleasing and gratifying their lusts; would you still drive that course you do? Well, sirs, if ever you expect to come where these blessed ones are, you must take the course they did. Let this be your endeavour, arid it shall be my fervent and hearty prayer.
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