(3.) Let us consider the purity and holiness of God, which inclinetli him to hate evil and love that which is good. The first we are most concerned to prove : Ps. v. 5, ' The foolish shall not stand in thy sight, thou hatest all the workers of iniquity.' But the other is true also, ' The upright are his delight : ' Prov. xi. 20. Well, then, if God loveth good and hateth evil, he will one way or other express his love and hatred. This he doth by promising life to the good, and threatening death to the evil. Out of all this discourse about the wisdom, justice and holiness of God, we conclude the suitableness of death to sin ; that the difference between good and evil is not more naturally known, than it is also evidently known that the one is rewarded and the other punished. Other cannot be looked for if we consider the wisdom of God, which suiteth all things according to their natural order ; there- fore sin, which is a moral evil, is punished with suffering somewhat that is a natural evil, that is the feeling something that is painful and afflictive to nature ; or if we consider the justice of God, which dealeth differently with men that differ in themselves ; and the holiness of God, who will express his love to the good in making them happy, and his detestation of the wicked in the misery of their punishment.
[2.] The certainty of this connection of sin and death was the second thing proposed.
(1.) Pteason showeth in part, that there is a state of torment and bliss after this life, or eternal life and death. All men are persuaded there is a God, and very few have doubted whether he be a punisher of the u'icked and a rewarder of them that diligently seek after him. Now neither the one or the other is fully accomplished in this world, even in the judgment of those who have no great knowledge of the nature and njulignity of sin, or what punishment is competent there- unto. Therefore there must be some time after that of sojourning in the body, when men shall receive their full punishment and reward,
416 SERMONS UPON ROMANS VIII. [SeR. HI.
since here we see so little of what might be expected at the hand of God. Surely if man be God's subject, when his work is ended he must look to receive his wages accordingly as he performed his duty, or failed in it. Now our work is not over till this life be ended, then God dealeth with us by way of recompense, giving us eternal life, or the wages of sin, which is death.
(2.) Conscience hath a sense of it. Conscience is nothing else but serious and applicative reason. Now the consciences of sinners stand in dread of eternal death : Eom. i. 32, ' Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death.' This thought haunts men living and dying : living : Heb. ii. 15, 'And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime siibject to bondage;' but chiefly dying: 1 Cor. xv. 56, 'The sting of death is sin.' For then men are most serious, and apprehend themselves nearest to danger. Stings of conscience are most quick and sensible then, and a terrible tempest ariseth in sinners' souls when they are to die.
(3.) Scripture, if we take God's word for it, is express. The first threatening : Gen. ii. 17, ' In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die :' and Kora. vi. 23, ' The wages of sin is death ;' and ver. 21, ' What fruit have you in those things whereof ye are now ashamed ? for the end of those things is death.' Will you believe this, or venture and put it upon the trial ? Oh ! take heed of sin. ' The dead are there, and her guests are in the depths of hell:' Prov. ix. 18. Men are destroyed by their heedlessness and incredulity. In what a woful case are you, if it prove true ? and prove true it will, as sure as God is true.
[3.] Consider the terribleness of this death. The life to come, and the wrath to come are both eternal. Punishment in one scale holdetli conformity with the reward in the other : as those that escape have an eternal and far more exceeding weight of glory ; so they that still re- main under the sentence of death for sin, are condemned to an eternal abode both in body and soul under torments : Mat. xxv. 46, ' These shall go away into everlasting punishment ; but the righteous into life eternal. ' Oh how woful is their condition whose bodies and souls meet again at the resurrection, after a long separation ; but a sad meeting it will be when both must presently be cast into everlasting fire. If we did only deal with you upon slight and cheap motives, you might refuse to hearken ; they are but slight matters that can be hoped or feared from man, whose power of doing good or evil is limited to this life ; but, ' It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God : ' Heb. x. 31. The afflictions and sorrows of this life are a part of this death ; our miseries here are the fruit of sin, and after them followeth that death which consists in the separation of the soul from the body, called, in the book of Job, the king of terrors ; but after that, there is a second death, which is far more tei-rible, which consists in an eternal separation from the blessed ;md glorious presence of the Lord. In all creatures that have sense, death is accompanied with some pain ; but this is a perpetual living to deadly pain and torment, from which there is no release ; there is no change of estate in the other world after our trial is over, and things of faith become mere matter of sense ; the gulf is then fixed, there is no passage from torments to joys ; Luke xvi. 26. Things to come would not considerably counterbalance things present,