Sermons preached

3. A Pardon is surely a great Blessing, if we consider first the Evils we are freed from; and secondly, the Good depending upon it.

(1.) The Evils we are freed from. Guilt is the Obligation to Punishment, and Pardon is the dissolving or loosing that Obligation. Now the Punishment is exceeding great, no less than Hell and Damnation; and Hell is no vain Scarecrow, nor is Heaven a May-game. Eternity makes every thing truly great. Look the Loss; An Eternal Separation from the comfortable Presence of God. Mat. 25. 41. Go ye Cursed, &c. And Luk. 13. 27. Depart ye Workers of Iniquity. When God turned Adam out of Paradise, his Case was very sad, but God took care of him, made him Coats of Skins to clothe him, gave him a day of Patience, afterwards promised the Seed of the Woman, who should recover the lapsed State of Mankind, and so intimated Hopes of a better Paradise. That Exile therefore is nothing comparable to this: for now Man is stripped of all his Comfort, sent into an endless State of Misery, where there shall be no Hope of ever changing his Condition. Now to be delivered from this that is so great an Evil, what a Blessedness is it? For the Paena Sensus, the Pain as well as the Loss, our Lord sets it forth by two Notions, Mark 9. 44. The Worm that never dies, and ⟨p. 26⟩the Fire that shall never be quenched. The Scripture speaks of the Soul with allusion to the state of the Body after Death. In the Body Worms breed usually, and many times they were burnt with Fire. Accordingly our State in the World to come is set forth by a Worm, and a Fire. The Worm implies the Worm of Conscience, a Reflection upon our past Folly and Disobedience to God, and the Remembrance of all the Affronts we have put upon Christ. Here Men may run from the Rebukes of Conscience by many Shifts, Sports, distracting their Minds with a Clatter of Business; but then there is not a thought free, but the damned are always thinking of slighted Means, abused Comforts, wasted Time, the Offences done to a merciful God, and the Curse wherein they have involved themselves by their own Folly. The Fire that shall never be quenched, notes the Wrath of God, or those unknown Pains that shall be inflicted upon the Body and Soul; which must needs be great, because God himself will take the sinful Creature into his own hands to punish him, and will show forth the Glory of his Wrath and Power upon him. When God punisheth us by a Creature, the Creature is not a Vessel capacious enough to convey the Power of his Wrath;