preference to God's, did their unbelief avail them? was the threatening less certain ? Did God forbear to inflict it ? Did not their souls die that very day, being instantly separated from God, which constitutes spiritual death, and becoming- obnoxious to his wrath, the chief ingredient of eternal death ? Did not their bodies also, though, for the peopling of the earth, and for other gracious purposes, they were suffered to continue awhile, become impregnated with the seeds of death, whereby they were in due time reduced again to their native dust ?
When the unbelieving Jews rejected their Messiah, were the purposes of God at all frustrated? Yea, were they not rather furthered and accomplished by their unbelief? and were not the whole nation, except a little remnant, broken off from their stock, and the Gentiles, whom they regarded as accursed, engrafted on it ?
So we may now ask of unbelieving sinners, " What if ye do not believe ? shall your unbelief make the faith of God without effect?" Will God cease to be an holy, sin-hating, sin-avenging God, because ye presume to think him even such an one as yourselves ? Shall sin no longer be debasing, defiling, damning, because ye choose to esteem it light and venial ? Shall death wait your pleasure, because ye think ye have made a covenant with it, and put it far from you ? shall the judg- ment-day lose its solemnity, and the account you are to give be made less strict, because you take it for granted, that all shall then be well with you? Shall hell be divested of its horrors, because you will not believe that there is any such place, or because you are averse to hear of it ? Shall the nature and blessedness of heaven be altogether changed, in order that it may, according to your conceits, be the residence of the wicked as well as of the righteous ? In short, is it reasonable, is it probable, is it possible, that the truth of God should be made void, merely because you do not choose to believe it?]
2. It enhances and insures the evils, whose very existence it presumes to deny —
[The Apostle tells us what should be the fixed principle of our minds, " Let God be true ; but every man a liar." But unbelief reverses this ; and gives, not only to the testimony of man, but even to his most groundless conjectures, a greater weight than to the most solemn declarations of Jehovah. What an affront is this to the Majesty of heaven ! Is there a man on earth that would not take offence at such an indignity, especially if it were offered to him by those whom he had never deceived, and for whose sake alone he had spoken ? Let it not then be thought, that, to treat God as though he had no