The Method of Grace

Secondly, God teacheth the soul whom he is bringing to Christ, what that wrath and misery is which hangs over it in the threatenings because of sin. Scripture threatenings were formerly slighted, now the soul trembles at them: they once apprehended themselves safe enough, Isa. 28. 15. Psal. 50. 21. they thought because they heard no more of their sins after the Commission of them, that therefore they should never hear more, that the effect had been as transient ⟨p. 380⟩a thing as the act of sin was, or if trouble must follow sin, they should speed no worse than others; the generality of the world being in the same case: and beside, they hoped to find God more merciful, than sour and precise preachers represented him; but when a light from God enters into the soul to discover the nature of God and of sin; then it sees that whatever wrath is treasured up for sinners in the dreadful threatenings of the Law, is but the just demerit of sin, the recompense that is meet: the wages of sin is death, Rom. 6. ult. the penal evil of damnation is but equal to the moral evil of sin: So that in the whole Ocean of Gods eternal wrath there is not one drop of injustice: yea, the soul doth not only see the Justice of God in its eternal damnation, but the wonderful mercy of God in the suspension thereof so long. O what is it that hath withheld God from damning me all this while! how is it that I am not in hell! Now do the fears and awful apprehensions of eternity seize the soul, and the worst of sensitive creatures is supposed to be in a better condition than such a soul: never do men tremble at the threatenings of God, nor rightly apprehend the danger of their condition, until sin and wrath and the wages of sin be discovered to them by a light from heaven.