Three treatises tending to awaken secure sinners

3. And as the Text tells us, that it is a fire prepared for the Devil and his Angles: So it telleth us, that it is An everlasting fire. It had a beginning▪ but it shall have no end. If these wretches would have chosen the service of God, they would have met with no difficulty or trouble, but what would have had a speedy end. Poverty and Injuries would have had an end: scorns and abuses would have had an end: fasting, humiliation sorrow for sin, watching, and fighting against our spiritual enemies, would all have had an end. But to avoid these, they chose that ease, that pleasure, which hath brought them to that torment which never will have end. I have said so much of these thing already in my Book called the Saints Rest, that I will now say but this much. It is one of the wonders of the world, how men that do believe, or think they do believe this word of Christ to be true, that the wicked shall go into Everlasting fire, can yet venture on sin so boldly, and live in it so fearlessly, or sleep quietly till they are out of this unspeakable Danger! Only the Commonness of it, and the known wickedness of mans heart, doth make this less wonderful. ⟨p. 276⟩And were there nothing else to convince us that sinners are Mad and Dead as to spiritual things, this were enough; That ever the greatest pleasures or profits of the World, or the most enticing baits that the Devil can offer them, should once prevail with them to forget these endless things, and draw them to reject an Everlasting Glory, and cast themselves desperately into Everlasting fire; Yea and all this under daily warnings and instructions; and when its told them before hand by the God of Truth himself! For the Lords sake, Sirs, and for your souls sakes if you care not what Ministers say or what such as I say, yet will you soberly read now and then this 25. Chapter of Matthew, and Regard what is told you by him that must be your Judge! and now and then bethink your selves soberly, whether these are matters for wise men to make light of? and what it is to be Everlastingly in Heaven or in Hell fire.

3. And as the Text tells us, that it is a fire prepared for the Devil and his Angles: So it telleth us, that it is An everlasting fire. It had a beginning▪ but it shall have no end. If these wretches would have chosen the service of God, they would have met with no difficulty or trouble, but what would have had a speedy end. Poverty and Injuries would have had an end: scorns and abuses would have had an end: fasting, humiliation sorrow for sin, watching, and fighting against our spiritual enemies, would all have had an end. But to avoid these, they chose that ease, that pleasure, which hath brought them to that torment which never will have end. I have said so much of these thing already in my Book called the Saints Rest, that I will now say but this much. It is one of the wonders of the world, how men that do believe, or think they do believe this word of Christ to be true, that the wicked shall go into Everlastin fire, can yet venture on sin so boldly, and live in it so fearlesly, or sleep quietly till they are out of this unspeakable Danger! Only the Commonness of it, and the known wickedness of mans heart, doth make this less wonderful.