The four last things viz. death, judgment, heaven, hell, practically considered and applied in…

2. This shows the woeful depravation of the Minds and Wills of Men, that choose Sin, when thinly painted over with Pleasure, notwithstanding the most dreadful and durable Torments, the certain Consequences of it. Desperate folly! either they believe, or do not, the eternal Torment of Hell. If they do not, how prodigious is their impiety? If they do, 'tis more prodigious they dare indulge their vicious Affections. A wicked Believer is more monstrous and guilty than a wicked Infidel.

2. This shews the woful depravation of the Minds and Wills of Men, that chuse Sin, when thinly painted over with Pleasure, notwithstanding the most dreadful and durable Torments, the certain Consequences of it. Desperate folly! either they believe, or do not, the eternal Torment of Hell. If they do not, how prodigious is their impiety? If they do, 'tis more prodigious they dare indulge their vicious Affections. A wicked Believer is more monstrous and guilty than a wicked Infidel.

In some there is Atheism full of Folly, or Folly full of Atheism, that they will not believe the prepared Plagues for the wicked in the next State, because they have no sensible proof of them. Reason, assisted by Divine Revelation, affords so clear an evidence of the future State, and the Rewards and Punishments in it, that if any sincerely apply themselves to consider ⟨p. 537⟩things, he will receive the most affective conviction of them. 'Tis true, there is not sensible evidence; for God will try our Faith before he satisfies our Sight: partly, that we may honour his Veracity, by yielding a firm assent to his Word before the actual accomplishment of what is promised or threatened; and partly that our Obedience may be voluntary and unconstrained, that his Goodness may take its rise to reward us. But these presumptuous Infidels live as if they had no Spirit, nothing of understanding in them: they are wholly under the Dominion of sense, as if they were free and lawless, independent and unaccountable: as if the most high Governor of the World were an inferior Being, without Power and Justice to vindicate the Honour of his despised Deity. They do not fear Hell, but are afraid they should be fearful of it. This is such a piece of folly, (but infinitely more woeful) as that of the West-Indians, who at their first invasion by the Spaniards, were so terrified by their glittering Swords, that they presently fled, and very considerately resolved to hide