1. Is nothing to be believed and hoped for that is not seen? Eeason will show you the contrary. Country people obey a king whom they never saw, but only know his power by the effects in his laws and officers of justice; and doth not sense teach us the same concerning God ? If we transgress his laws by omitting a duty or committing a sin, we hear from him though we see him not : Kom. L 18, ' For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodli- ness and unrighteousness of men ; ' and Heb. ii. 2, ' For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward.' And for hope ; do not men venture their estates in foreign countries in the hands of persons whom they never saw nor knew ? And shall we venture nothing on the jn-omises of God ? It is true, God liveth in another world, and our hopes lie there also ; but doth he not manifest himself from thence, to be concerned in our actions, whether they be good or evil ? And if he be concerned in them, will he not punish the evil and reward the good ? Hath not natural conscience a sense of these things ? And therefore it is unreasonable to question these things.
2. They think good people are credulous and easy of belief ; their own experience of these good people evidenceth the contrary, that they are too slow of heart to believe what God hath revealed con- cerning the other world, and that by the use of all holy means it is with difficulty accomplished. But what if we prove that none so credulous as the atheist or infidel ?
[1.] You are not sure there is no such life ; it is impossible they should ever know or prove the contrary ; it may be, questionless, the Lord that made this world can make a world to come, and the same ])ersons to exist there in ignominy, contempt, and shame, that lived wicked here, and bestow honour on the godly and holy. The ques-
VeR. 25.] SERMONS UPON ROMANS VIll. 221
tion between the downright infidel and the christian is not so much whether there be a world to come, but whether we can prove there is none. The belief of the positive, — that there is a God, that there is everlasting life, is necessary to our hope ; but to their conviction let them infallibly prove there is none ; they can never do that ; you cannot disprove the reality of the christian hope, or by any sound argument evince that there is no heaven or hell. For aught you can say or know, there are both ; and if we should go on no further, it were best to take the surer side ; especially when you part with no more than a few base pleasures and carnal satisfactions that are not worth the keeping. In a lottery, where there is but a loose possibility of gaining, men will venture a shilling, or a small matter, for a prize of a hundred pounds ; so, be there no heaven or hell, or be there one, you part with no more than the vain pleasures of a fading life ; but if it should prove true, in what a woeful case are you then, when, to gratify a brutish mind, you run so great an hazard ? The heathens granted it an hypothesis conducing to virtue and goodness.
[2.] To the atheist and infidel, bating all scripture, it may be proved that it is a thousand to one but it is so. Natural reason will persuade us of the immortality of the soul, and the fears of guilty conscience are shrewd presages of eternal punishment ; the tradition and consent of barbarous nations, as well as the civilised, doth attest it, desires of happiness are so natural. So that these bravadoes, that would outface the religion they are bred in, showeth; none so credulous as they that will hearken to every fond suggestion of their own carnal hearts or atheistical companions, and prefer the brutish conceits of their own frothy wit before the common reason of mankind, or that rational evidence wherewith the doctrine of eternal life is accompanied.
Use 2. Is to reprove the sensual part of mankind, who are altogether for the present world : 2 Tim. iv. 10, ' Demas hath forsaken us, and embraced the present world.' They must have present delights, present fruition ; a little thing in hand is more than the promises of those great things which are to come. The woiklling's comfort wholly lieth in those things that are seen ; they live by sense, as the christian liveth by faith; they must have something in the view of sense, or have nothing to live upon — lands, honours, pleasures ; when these are out of sight, they are in darkness; but a christian looketh to things future and unseen, secured to him by the promise of God.
Use 2. is to exhort us to seek after the happiness we never saw. We shall see it in time, but now we hope for it ; and it is no vain and uncertain hope ; the things we hope for are sure and near. [1.] They are sure. God's truth is as certain as truth itself can be, and believers so account it in the holy word : Job xix. 25, 26, ' I know that my Kedeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth ; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins be consumed witliin me ; ' 2 Cor. V. 1, 'For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' To a believer it should not be a con- jecture, but a point of faith and certainty. [2.] It is near. Things at