Twenty sermons preached at Oxford before His Majesty, and elsewhere

The last day I entered on the Declaration of the cursed effects and consequents of sin, and in general showed that it is the wrath of God; that where sin is there wrath must follow. As the Apostle in the Epistle to the Galatians, As many as are under the works of the Law, are under the curse. Now all that may be expected from a God highly offended, is comprehended in Scripture by this term, Death. Wheresoever sin enters, death must follow, Rom. 5.12. Death passed over all men, forasmuch as all had sinned: If we are children of sin, we must be children of wrath, Eph. 1.3. We are then children of wrath even as others. Now concerning death in general, I showed you the last time that the state of an unconverted man, is a dead and desperate estate: He is a slave, it would affright him, if he did but know his own slavery, and what it is that hangs over his head; that there's but a Span betwixt him and death, he could never breath any free air, he could never be at any rest, he could never be free from fear. Heb. 2.15. the Apostle saith, that Christ came to deliver them that through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage. This bondage is a deadly bondage, that when we have done all that we can do, what's the payment of the service? Death: And the fear of this deadly bondage, if we were once sensible, if God did open our eyes, and show us as he did Belshazzar, our doom written, did we but see it, it would make our joints loose, and our knees knock one against another. Every day thou livest thou approachest nearer to this death, to the accomplishment and consummation of it: Death without and Death within; Death in this World and in the World to come.