A sermon directing what we are to do, after strict enquiry whether or no…

Sixth place: Let a due fear and solicitude hereupon be set on work in thee: For consider thy self as one shortly to be arraigned before the Supreme Tribunal: And then here is the critical, vertical point upon which thy Judgment turns: Lovers of God; Or no Lovers of God: All are to be judged in reference to what they were and did in the Body, whether good or evil: As in 2 Cor. chap. 5. ver. 10. What wast thou as to this point, while thou wast in the Body? For the last Judgment regards that former state, what thou didst; and what was thy wont as to this whilst thou wast in the Body? Therefore by the way no hope, after thou art gone out of the Body: Go out of the Body, no lover of God, the departing Soul no lover of God, and this will be found your state at the Judgment-day: You are not to expect after Death a Gospel to be preached, that you may then be reconciled to God: No; but what did you do in the Body? According to that you are to be judged: Did you love God in this Body while here, yea or no? And this is a Trial upon the most Fundamental Point: For as all the Law is comprehended in Love, as was formerly hinted, if you be found guilty in this Point, that you were no lover of God, totally destitute of the love of God, you were a perpetual underminer of his whole Government, of the whole frame of his Law, a Disloyal Creature, Rebellious and False to the God that made you, to Jesus Christ that redeemed you by his Blood: All Disobedience and Rebellion is summed up in this one word: Having been no lover of God: And won't it make any man's heart to meditate Terror, to think of having such a charge as this likely to lye against him in the Judgment of that day; that day, when the secrets of all hearts ⟨p. 10⟩are to be laid open? Every work must be then brought into Judgment, and every secret thing, whether it be good or evil: Eccles. 12.14. And it will be to the confusion of many a one: It may be your no-love of God was heretofore a great Secret: You had a heart in which was no love of God, but it was a secret, you took not care to have it writ in your forehead; you conversed with Men so plausibly, no body took you to be no lover of God, to have a heart disaffected to God: But now out comes the Secret, that which you kept for a great Secret all your days, out comes the Secret: And to have such a Secret as this disclosed to that vast Assembly before Angels and Men!