The mischiefs of self-ignorance and the benefits of self-acquaintance opened in divers sermons at…

2. Consider, that All men must shortly know themselves. Presumption will be but of short continuance. Be never so confident of being saved without Holiness, you will speedily be undeceived. If the Spirits illumination do not convince and undeceive you, Death will undoubtedly do it at the furthest. Thousands and Millions know their sin and misery now when it is too late, that would not know it when the remedy was at hand; sinners, your souls are now in darkness: your Bodies are your dungeon: But when Death brings you out into the open Light, you will see what we could never make you see. O how glad would a faithful minister of Christ be, if by any information he could now give you half the Light that you shall then have, and now make you know at the Heart with the feeling of Repentance, that ⟨p. 189⟩which you must else quickly know, even at the Heart with the feeling of despair; sirs, I hope you think not that I speak mere fancies to you, or any think that is questionable and uncertain: you can not say so without denying your selves to be Christians; no nor without contradicting the light of Nature, and debasing your souls below the Heathen who believe an immortality of souls in a different state of Joy or misery in the Life to come: And if you are once below Heathens, what are you better then Brute beasts? Better in your natural faculties and powers, as being not made Brutes by your Creator: But worse as to the use of them, and the consequents to yourselves, because you are voluntary self-abusing Brutes. But to live here as a Brute, will not make you die and be hereafter as a Brute: To believe you shall die as a Beast, will not prevent the miserable life of an impenitent sinner. It will not make your souls to be Mortal, to believe they are mortal; no more then it will make a beast to be Immortal, if he could but think so. The coffin-maker and the grave-maker, if they never read a Book, can tell you that it is no controversy whether you must go hence. And Faith and Reason can both assure you, ⟨p. 190⟩that your souls lie not down with your Bodies in the dust, nor are annihilated by the falling of your earthly tabernacle; no more then the spirits when the glass is broken that held them, or then your Bodies are annihilated when you put off your clothes, or rise out of your beds: Or then the bird is annihilated that is got out of the shell: