1. From the nature of God. There is a God, and this God is just : it is agreeable to his general justice that it should be well with them that do well, and ill with them that do evil ; these principles are out of dispute, and supposed as the foundations of all religion. Now, supposing these principles, there must be a day of reckoning, for in the world the best go to the wall many times, and are exercised with poverty, disgrace, and scorn, when the wicked are full of plenty, and live at ease, Luke xvi. 25 ; 1 Cor. xv. 19. Sure it is that there is a God, and sure it is that he taketh care of human affairs, and will judge accordingly ; what is the reason then of this disproportion ? The wicked are reserved to future punishment, and the godly to future reward. Now the distinction that is put between men at death doth not suffice, for that is private, and doth not vindicate the justice of God in the eyes of the world, and that is but upon a part. We read of the spirits of just men made perfect, and the spirits that are now in prison ; but nothing of a reward for the body, or punishment fur the body. The bodies of men, being servants of righteousness, or instru- ments of sin, surely ought to partake of weal or woe, of the curse or blessing that is due to the person ; for the body is, as Tertullian saith, the soul's sister and co-heir, and is to share with it in its estate. But at death the body is senseless, and mouldereth into dust, and till it be raised up again and joined to the soul, it can neither partake of weal or woe ; therefore there is a day when God will deal with the whole man ; otherwise, how shall the goodness of God, who is a liberal re- warder of virtue, appear, unless he render to the body a full recom- pense of the service it hath done the soul, in yielding up all its natural appetites, pleasures, interests, and satisfactions to the conduct of reason and grace, for the practice of that which is good; or the justice of God, which is the avenger of sin, which would be too narrow and de- fective, unless it punish the body with the soul ? Usually the affections of the body debauch the soul, and the pleasures of the senses blind and misguide our reason. Certainly, the love of sin being rooted in bodily pleasures, it is fit it should be punished with pain, and such pain as is proportionable to the dignity of him against whom the offence is com- mitted. Now God being of an infinite and unlimited dignity and authority, how could the punishment of the body by death be propor- tionable to the offence committed against an infinite God ? An out- rage done to the supreme majesty of princes is punished more than an offence against an inferior person ; therefore there must be a time when the body shall be raised, to be capable of such a punishment. Besides, how could the soul be completely happy, since it was made for a body, if it should always remain a widow, and never meet with its old mate ajrain ?
362 SERMONS UPON MATTHEW XXV. [SeR. V.
2. It argue th from the providence of God. There are many judg- ments that are pledges that God will at length judge the world for sin ; as the drowning of the old world, the burning of Sodom, the destruction of Jerusalem ; these are a document and proof what God will do to the rest of ungodly ones, for they are set forth as an ensample, Jude 7. The force of the argument lieth in this, that God is the same, still in one mind, who can turn him ? He hateth the sin of one as well as the other. In all his dispensations he is always con- sonant and like himself, Gal. iii. 20. If he would not put up with the sins of the old world, he will not put off the iniquities of the new ; if he punished Sodom, he will punish others that sin in like manner ; for he is not grown more indulgent to sin than he was before. There- fore, if it be not now, there will be a time when he will call them to an account and reckoning. When man first sinned, God did not im- mediately execute the sentence against him, but gave him time of repentance till he died ; and since he giveth every man time and space, he would not have all the world be born at once, and die at once, but to live in several successions of ages, from father to son in divers generations, till he cometh to the period which providence hath fixed. Now, as he reckoneth with every man particularly at death, so with all the world at the end of time. Particular judgments show that God is not asleep, nor unmindful of human affairs, but the general judgment is deferred till then.
3. From the feelings of conscience. After sin committed men tremble, though there be none to call them to an account, as when the sin is secret, and the person powerful. Conscience is under a dread of divine justice, and the solemn process and triumph which one day it must have ; hence conscience is sensible : Rom. ii. 8, Felix trembled when Paul reasoned of judgment to come, Acts xxiv. 25. There are hidden fears in the conscience, which is soon revived and awakened by the thought of this day. Every guilty person is a prisoner to divine justice, and being held in the invisible chains of conscience, standeth in dread of a great and general assize.