The use may be of _awakening_ to unconverted persons in this congregation.
This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of
Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended
abroad under you. _There_ is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of
the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have
nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of. There is nothing
between you and hell but the air; 'tis only the power and mere pleasure of
God that holds you up.
You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell,
but don't see the hand of God in it, but look at other things, as the good
state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the
means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are
nothing; if God should withdraw his hand, they would avail no more to keep
you from falling than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended
in it.
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards
with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go,
you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the
bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and
prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no
more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell than a spider's web
would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not that so is the sovereign
pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a
burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject
to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun don't willingly
shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth don't
willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a
stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air don't willingly serve
you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you
spend your life in the service of God's enemies. God's creatures are good,
and were made for men to serve God with, and don't willingly subserve to
any other purpose, and groan when they are abused to purposes so directly
contrary to their nature and end. And the world would spew you out, were
it not for the sovereign hand of him who hath subjected it in hope. There
are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads,
full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the
restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you. The
sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind;
otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a
whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor.
The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present;
they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is
given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is
its course, when once it is let loose. 'Tis true, that judgment against
your evil work has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God's
vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is
constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the
waters are continually rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there
is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds the waters back, that
are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should
only withdraw his hand from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open,
and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth
with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power;
and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten
thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil
in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string,
and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is
nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without
any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from
being made drunk with your blood.
Thus are all you that never passed under a great change of heart by the
mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all that were never
born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin to a
state of new and before altogether unexperienced light and life, (however
you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious
affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and
closets, and in the house of God, and may be strict in it), you are thus
in the hands of an angry God; 'tis nothing but his mere pleasure that
keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction.
However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and
by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in
the like circumstances with you see that it was so with them; for
destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of
it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those
things that they depended on for peace and safety were nothing but thin
air and empty shadows.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or
some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully
provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as
worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes
than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so
abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in
ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did
his prince: and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling
into the fire every moment. 'Tis ascribed to nothing else, that you did
not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in
this world after you closed your eyes to sleep; and there is no other
reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in
the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other
reason to be given why you han't gone to hell since you have sat here in
the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of
attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be
given as a reason why you don't this very moment drop down into hell. deg.
O sinner! consider the fearful danger you are in. 'Tis a great furnace of
wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are
held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as
much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a
slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and
ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder; and you have no
interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself,
nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that
you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you
one moment.
And consider here more particularly several things concerning that wrath
that you are in such danger of.
1. _Whose_ wrath it is. It is the wrath of the infinite God. If it were
only the wrath of man, though it were of the most potent prince, it would
be comparatively little to be regarded. The wrath of kings is very much
dreaded, especially of absolute monarchs, that have the possessions and
lives of their subjects wholly in their power, to be disposed of at their
mere will. Prov. xx. 2, "The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion:
whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul." The subject
that very much enrages an arbitrary prince is liable to suffer the most
extreme torments that human art can invent, or human power can inflict.
But the greatest earthly potentates, in their greatest majesty and
strength, and when clothed in their greatest terrors, are but feeble,
despicable worms of the dust, in comparison of the great and almighty
Creator and King of heaven and earth: it is but little that they can do
when most enraged, and when they have exerted the utmost of their fury.
All the kings of the earth before God are as grasshoppers; they are
nothing, and less than nothing: both their love and their hatred is to be
despised. The wrath of the great King of kings is as much more terrible
than theirs, as his majesty is greater. Luke xii. 4, 5, "And I say unto
you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that
have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall
fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell;
yea, I say unto you, Fear him."
2. 'Tis the _fierceness_ of his wrath that you are exposed to. We often
read of the _fury_ of God; as in Isaiah lix. 18: "According to their
deeds, accordingly he will repay fury to his adversaries." So Isaiah lxvi.
15, "For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like
a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of
fire." And so in many other places. So we read of God's _fierceness_, Rev.
xix. 15. There we read of "the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of
Almighty God." The words are exceeding terrible: if it had only been said,
"the wrath of God," the words would have implied that which is infinitely
dreadful: but 'tis not only said so, but "the fierceness and wrath of
God." The fury of God! The fierceness of Jehovah! Oh, how dreadful must
that be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them!
But it is not only said so, but "the fierceness and wrath of Almighty
God." As though there would be a very great manifestation of his almighty
power in what the fierceness of his wrath should inflict, as though
omnipotence should be as it were enraged, and exerted, as men are wont to
exert their strength in the fierceness of their wrath. Oh! then, what will
be the consequence! What will become of the poor worm that shall suffer
it! Whose hands can be strong! And whose heart endure! To what a dreadful,
inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the poor creature be
sunk who shall be the subject of this!
Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an
unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger
implies that he will inflict wrath without any pity. When God beholds the
ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment so vastly
disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed,
and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom; he will have no
compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or
in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor
will God then at all stay his rough wind; he will have no regard to your
welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should suffer too much in any
other sense, than only that you should not suffer beyond what strict
justice requires: nothing shall be withheld because it is so hard for you
to bear. Ezek. viii. 18, "Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye
shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine
ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them." Now God stands ready to
pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement
of obtaining mercy: but when once the day of mercy is past, your most
lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be
wholly lost and thrown away of God, as to any regard to your welfare; God
will have no other use to put you to, but only to suffer misery; you shall
be continued in being to no other end; for you will be a vessel of wrath
fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel, but
only to be filled full of wrath: God will be so far from pitying you when
you cry to him, that 'tis said he will only "laugh and mock," Prov. i. 25,
26, &c.
How awful are those words, Isaiah lxiii. 3, which are the words of the
great God: "I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury;
and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all
my raiment." 'Tis perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in
them greater manifestations of these three things, viz., contempt and
hatred and fierceness of indignation. If you cry to God to pity you, he
will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the
least regard or favor, that instead of that he'll only tread you under
foot: and though he will know that you can't bear the weight of
omnipotence treading upon you, yet he won't regard that, but he will crush
you under his feet without mercy; he'll crush out your blood, and make it
fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments, so as to stain all his
raiment. He will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost
contempt; no place shall be thought fit for you but under his feet, to be
trodden down as the mire of the streets.
3. The misery you are exposed to is that which God will inflict to that
end, that he might _show_ what that _wrath_ of _Jehovah_ is. God hath had
it on his heart to show to angels and men, both how excellent his love is,
and also how terrible his wrath is. Sometimes earthly kings have a mind to
show how terrible their wrath is, by the extreme punishments they would
execute on those that provoke 'em. Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and haughty
monarch of the Chaldean empire, was willing to show his wrath when enraged
with Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego; and accordingly gave order that the
burning fiery furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was
before; doubtless, it was raised to the utmost degree of fierceness that
human art could raise it; but the great God is also willing to show his
wrath, and magnify his awful Majesty and mighty power in the extreme
sufferings of his enemies. Rom. ix. 22, "What if God, willing to show his
wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the
vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?" And seeing this is his design,
and what he has determined, to show how terrible the unmixed, unrestrained
wrath, the fury and fierceness of Jehovah is, he will do it to effect.
There will be something accomplished and brought to pass that will be
dreadful with a witness. When the great and angry God hath risen up and
executed his awful vengeance on the poor sinner, and the wretch is
actually suffering the infinite weight and power of his indignation, then
will God call upon the whole universe to behold that awful majesty and
mighty power that is to be seen in it. Isa. xxxiii. 12, 13, 14, "And the
people shall be as the burnings of lime, as thorns cut up shall they be
burnt in the fire. Hear, ye that are far off, what I have done; and ye
that are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid;
fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites," &c.
Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if you continue
in it; the infinite might, and majesty, and terribleness, of the
Omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you in the ineffable strength of
your torments. You shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels,
and in the presence of the Lamb; and when you shall be in this state of
suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on
the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of
the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore
that great power and majesty. Isa. lxvi. 23, 24, "And it shall come to
pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another,
shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall
go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed
against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be
quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh."
4. It is _everlasting_ wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this
fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to
all eternity: there will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery.
When you look forward, you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration
before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and
you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any
mitigation, any rest at all; you will know certainly that you must wear
out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting
with this almighty, merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done,
when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will
know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will
indeed be infinite. Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such
circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it gives but a very
feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable:
for "who knows the power of God's anger?"
How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in danger of
this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every
soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and
strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh, that you would
consider it, whether you be young or old! There is reason to think that
there are many in this congregation now hearing this discourse, that will
actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not
who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what thoughts they now have.
It may be they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much
disturbance, and are now flattering themselves that they are not the
persons, promising themselves that they shall escape. If we knew that
there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was to
be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing it would be to think
of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a
person! How might all the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable
and bitter cry over him! But alas! instead of one, how many is it likely
will remember this discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder, if some
that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before
this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit
here in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure,
should be there before to-morrow morning. Those of you that finally
continue in a natural condition, that shall keep out of hell longest, will
be there in a little time! Your damnation don't slumber; it will come
swiftly and, in all probability, very suddenly upon many of you. You have
reason to wonder that you are not already in hell. 'Tis doubtless the case
of some that heretofore you have seen and known, that never deserved hell
more than you and that heretofore appeared as likely to have been now
alive as you. Their case is past all hope; they are crying in extreme
misery and perfect despair. But here you are in the land of the living and
in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation. What
would not those poor, damned, hopeless souls give for one day's such
opportunity as you now enjoy!
And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has
flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and
crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking
to him and pressing into the Kingdom of God. Many are daily coming from
the east, west, north and south; many that were very likely in the same
miserable condition that you are in are in now a happy state, with their
hearts filled with love to him that has loved them and washed them from
their sins in his own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.
How awful is it to be left behind at such a day! To see so many others
feasting, while you are pining and perishing! To see so many rejoicing and
singing for joy of heart, while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of
heart and howl for vexation of spirit! How can you rest for one moment in
such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of the
people at Suffield,[15] where they are flocking from day to day to Christ?
Are there not many here that have lived long in the world that are not to
this day born again, and so are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and
have done nothing ever since they have lived but treasure up wrath against
the day of wrath? Oh, sirs, your case in an especial manner is extremely
dangerous; your guilt and hardness of heart is extremely great. Don't you
see how generally persons of your years are passed over and left in the
present remarkable and wonderful dispensation of God's mercy? You had need
to consider yourselves and wake thoroughly out of sleep; you cannot bear
the fierceness and the wrath of the infinite God.
And you that are young men and young women, will you neglect this precious
season that you now enjoy, when so many others of your age are renouncing
all youthful vanities and flocking to Christ? You especially have now an
extraordinary opportunity; but if you neglect it, it will soon be with you
as it is with those persons that spent away all the precious days of youth
in sin and are now come to such a dreadful pass in blindness and hardness.
And you children that are unconverted, don't you know that you are going
down to hell to bear the dreadful wrath of that God that is now angry with
you every day and every night? Will you be content to be the children of
the devil, when so many other children in the land are converted and are
become the holy and happy children of the King of kings?
And let every one that is yet out of Christ and hanging over the pit of
hell, whether they be old men and women or middle-aged or young people or
little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God's word and
providence. This acceptable year of the Lord that is a day of such great
favor to some will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to
others. Men's hearts harden and their guilt increases apace at such a day
as this, if they neglect their souls. And never was there so great danger
of such persons being given up to hardness of heart and blindness of
mind. God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of
the land; and probably the bigger part of adult persons that ever shall be
saved will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it
was on that great outpouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the Apostles'
days, the election will obtain and the rest will be blinded. If this
should be the case with you, you will eternally curse this day, and will
curse the day that ever you was born to see such a season of the pouring
out of God's Spirit, and will wish that you had died and gone to hell
before you had seen it. Now undoubtedly it is as it was in the days of
John the Baptist, the axe is in an extraordinary manner laid at the root
of the trees, that every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit may be
hewn down and cast into the fire.
Therefore let every one that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the
wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over
great part of this congregation. Let every one fly out of Sodom. "_Haste
and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain,
lest ye be consumed._"