The saints everlasting rest

7. Quest. What if you had lain in hell but one year, or one day, or hour, and there felt those torments that now you do but hear of? and GOD should turn you into the world again, and try you with another lifetime, and say, I will see whether thou wilt be yet any better; what manner of persons would you be? If you were to live a thousand years, would you not gladly live as strictly as the precisest saints, and spend all those years in prayer and duty, so you might but escape the torment which you suffered? How seriously then would you speak of hell! and pray against it! And hear, and read, and watch, and obey! How earnestly would you admonish the careless to take heed, and look about them to prevent their ruin! And will not you take GOD'S word for the truth of this, except you feel it? Is it not your wisdom to do as much now to prevent it, as you would do to remove it when it is too late? Is it not more wisdom to spend this life in labouring for heaven, while ye have it, than to lie in torment, wishing for more time in vain?

And thus I have said enough, if not to stir up the lazy sinner to a serious working out his salvation, yet at least to silence him, and leave him inexcusable at the judgment of GOD. If thou canst, after reading all this, go on in the same neglect of GOD, and thy soul, and draw out the rest of thy life in the same dull and careless course, as thou hast hitherto done; and if thou h••t so far stupefied thy conscience, that it will quietly ⟨p. 158⟩suffer thee to forget all this, and to trifle out the rest of thy time in the business of the world, when in the mean-while thy salvation is in danger, and the judge is at the door; I have then no more to say to thee: it is as good speak to a rock. Only as we do by our friends when they are dead; and our words and actions can do them no good, yet to testify our affections we weep and mourn for them: so will I also do for these souls. It makes my heart even tremble to think, how they will stand trembling before the LORD! And how confounded and speechless they will be, when Christ shall reason with them concerning their negligence and sloth! When he shall say, as the Lord doth in