The fight of faith crowned, or, A sermon preached at the funeral of that…

2. Branch. See what contrary ways the godly and the wicked go at death; the godly are advanced to Crowns of Glory, the wicked are bound with chains of darkness, Jude 6. But what are these chains? Surely such as no aqua-fortis can eat a-sunder. By these chains I understand God's Sovereign Omnipotency, fastening sinners under wrath (as the chain doth the Prisoners) that they cannot stir: Sinners may break the chain of Gods Precepts, but they cannot break the chain of his Power: This is the unparalleled misery of impenitent souls, they do not go to a Crown when they dye, but to a Prison; O think what horror and despair will possess the wicked when they see themselves engulfed in tremendous flames, and their condition hopeless, helpless, endless^*. A servant under the old Law, who had an hard master; yet every seventh year being a year of Jubilee, or release he might go free; but in Hell there is no year of release when the damned shall go free, Mark 9. 44. What is become of mens intellectuals? Have they lost their reason as well as their conscience? Why do they not bethink themselves in time what sin will bring them to, though now it shows its colour in the glass, yet in the end it will bite as a serpent, Prov. 23. 32. If a man had but a sight of Hell (saith Bellarmine) it were enough to make him sober, yea turn Hermite and Anchorite, and live a most mortified life.

2. Branch. See what contrary ways the godly and the wicked go at death; the godly are advanced to Crowns of Glory, the wicked are bound with chains of darkness, Jude 6. But what are these chains? Surely such as no aqua-fortis can eat a-sunder. By these chains I understand God's Soveraign Omnipotency, fastening sinners under wrath (as the chain doth the Prisoners) that they cannot stir: Sinners may break the chain of Gods Precepts, but they cannot break the chain of his Power: This is the unparallel'd misery of impenitent souls, they do not go to a Crown when they dye, but to a Prison; O think what horror and despair will possess the wicked when they see themselves ingulphed in tremendous flames, and their condition hopeless, helpless, endless