his eternal Son! It may be said, that when a soul is so valued, we ought not to venture the loss of it, even to save the world : this explained.

III. But it may be, some natures, or some understandings, care not for all this. We proceed therefore to the third and most material consideration, namely, what it is to lose a soul; which Hierocles thus explains, "An immortal substance can die, not by ceasing to be, but by losing all well-being," or by becoming miserable; which agrees with the caution given us by our Saviour, not to fear them that can kill the body only, but him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell; which word signifies, not death, but tortures.

Some brief explication of the terms used in Scripture to represent to our understandings the greatness of this perishing: hell-fire, brimstone and fire; that which our Saviour calls the outer darkness; where, because God's justice rules alone, without the allays and sweet abatements of mercy, there shall be pure and unmingled misery, beyond all those expressions which the tortures of this world could furnish to the sacred writers.

This consideration represented in that expression of our blessed Saviour, which he took out of the prophet Isaiah, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. This quotation commented on, and illustrated from Isaiah xxxiv. 8, &c.; where the prophet prophesies of the great destruction of Jerusalem for all her iniquities. It is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Sion, &c.

Comment on the words for ever,—everlasting,—eternal,—the never-dying worm,—the fire unquenchable. Being words borrowed by our Saviour and his Apostles from the Old Testament, they must have a signification proportionable to the state in which they have their signification; so that as this worm, when it signifies a temporal infliction, means a worm that never

ceases giving torment till the body is consumed; when it is translated to an immortal state, it must signify as much in that proportion this subject carried on.

Even if Origen's opinion were true, and accursed souls were to have a period to their tortures after a thousand years, would it not be madness to choose the pleasures of a few years here, with trouble, danger, uncertainty, labor, and the intervals of sickness; and this to endure the flames of hell for a thousand years together? If a man were condemned to lie still, or to lie in bed in one posture for seven years together, would he not buy it off with his whole estate? But what is this to the minutes, years, and ages of eternity, where there is no hope? for hell could not be hell if there were hope.

And though the Scripture uses the word fire to express the torments of accursed souls, yet fire can no more equal the pangs of hell, than it can torment an immaterial substance: for they are to suffer the wrath of God, who is a consuming fire: and when God takes away all comfort from us, nothing to support our spirit is left; sorrow is our food, and tears our drink, &c. We may guess at this misery of losing our soul by the terrors of a guilty conscience, those terrible thorns of the soul: this topic dilated on.

torment.

Exhortation, that we take care, lest, for the purchase of a little trifling portion of this world, we come into this state of Let us not have such a hardiness against the threats and representations of divine vengeance. Way in which dif ferent men deceive themselves; some by taking up atheistical opinions, others, by supposing that God is all mercy, forgetting his justice, and putting off all repentance to the last hours of life, &c.

Our youth, and manhood, and old age, are all of them due to God; and justice and mercy are to him equally essential. We should remember the fatal and decretory sentence which God hath passed on all mankind: It is appointed to all men once

TAY.

VOL. III.

C

to die, and after death comes judgment. And if any of us were certain to die next morning, with what earnestness should we pray! with what hatred should we remember our sins! with what scorn should we look on the licentious pleasures of the world! This topic enlarged on. He therefore is a great fool that heaps up riches; that greedily

pursues the world; and at

the same time heaps up wrath to himself against the day of wrath. Conclusion.

SERMON IX.

THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.

MATTHEW, CHAP. XVI.-VERSE 26.

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

PART I.

WHEN the eternal mercy of God had decreed to rescue mankind from misery and infelicity, and so triumphed over his own justice; the excellent wisdom of God resolved to do it in ways contradictory to the appetites and designs of man, that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions. So God decreed to glorify his mercy by curing our sins, and to exalt his wisdom by the reproof of our ignorance, and the representing on what weak and false principles we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity; pleasure and profit, victory over our enemies, riches and pompous honors, power and revenge, desires according to sensual appetites, and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites, health and long life, free from trouble, without poverty or persecution.

Vitam quæ faciunt beatiorem,

Jucundissime Martialis, hæc sunt.-Mart. x. 47.

These are the measures of good and evil, the object of our hopes and fears, the securing our content, and the portion of this world; and for the other, let it be as it may. But the

blessed Jesus,-having made revelations of an immortal duration, of another world, and of a strange restitution to it, even by the resurrection of the body, and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment, clarified and made pure, so as no fuller on earth can whiten it;-hath also preached a new philosophy, hath cancelled all the old principles, reduced the appetites of sense to the discourses of reason, and heightened reason to the sublimities of the Spirit, teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions, giving us new eyes, and new objects, and new proportions: for now sensual pleasures are not delightful, riches are dross, honors are nothing but the appendages of virtue, and in relation to it are to receive their account. But now if you would enjoy life, you must die; if you would be at ease, you must take up Christ's cross, and conform to his sufferings; if you would 'save your life,' you must lose it;' and if you would be rich, you must abound in good works, you must be 'poor in spirit,' and despise the world, and be rich unto God: for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world, is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come. And, therefore, he having stated the question so, that either we must quit this world or the other; our affections, I mean, and adherences to this, or our interest and hopes of the other; the choice is rendered very easy by the words of my text, because the distance is not less than infinite, and the comparison hath terms of a vast difference; heaven and hell, eternity and a moment, vanity and real felicity, life and death eternal, all that can be hoped for and all that can be feared; these are the terms of our choice and if a man have his wits about him, and be not drunk with sensuality and senselessness, he need not much to dispute before he pass the sentence. For nothing can be given to us to recompense the loss of heaven; and if our souls be lost, there is nothing remaining to us whereby we can be happy.

'What shall it profit a man?' or, 'What shall a man give?' Is there any exchange for a man's soul? The question is an αὔξησις of the negative. Nothing can be given for an ἀντάλXayμa, or a price,' to satisfy for its loss.

The blood of the Son of God was given to recover it, or as an åvráλaypa to God; and when our souls were forfeit to