A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

¹First, The commission of presumptuous Sins oftentimes makes a Sinner resolute and secure under the blackest guilt the Soul can contract, and the fearfullest threatenings God can denounce: Security under guilt arises from impunity; Sinners have read and heard terrible things against themselves, that God will wound the hairy scalp of such as go on still in their iniquities, that he will destroy the incorrigible suddenly, and that without remedy; but yet none of all this is executed, their Heads, instead of being wounded, are crowned with Blessings; and this speedy destruction still loiters; they neither feel terrors within, nor meet with troubles without; and therefore as Solomon observes, because they go unpunished they grow secure, in Ecclesiast.² 8.15. Because sentence against an evil work is not speedily executed, therefore the hearts of the Sons of Men are fully set in them to do evil. Carnal reason measures God's way of taking ⟨p. 193⟩vengeance by its own; it is the custom of Men if they can to revenge while an injury is warm; delay and forbearance usually cools them into forgiveness; and hence presumptuous Sinners argue, That certainly were there any truth in God's threatenings, were there any thing to be feared besides the huge noise that they make, they should then have been exemplarily plagued, when they committed such and such a daring sin while the provocation was fresh; and from this it is, that the worst of Sinners, after the commission of some vile and crying sins, are for a while troubled with a trembling and tormenting Conscience, that the threatenings that are denounced should fall upon them by some visible appearance, and some signal hand of God against them; but when they see no such thing come of it, but their condition is prosperous, and all their ways Sun-shine; how doth this work with them? why truly, instead of admiring God's patience and long suffering, they despise his wrath, and scoff at those threatenings that before they dreaded, and think none of them true, because none ⟨p. 194⟩of them felt. We read of such bold Sinners, as these are in 2. S. Peter the 3. and 4. Where is the promise of his coming, do not all things continue as they were. So these presumptuous Sinners say in their hearts, where is the threatening of his coming against us; do not all things continue with us as they were;