Christ's certain and sudden appearance to judgment. By Thomas Vincent, sometime Minister of Maudlins…

that they had some kind of hope, but it was like a spiders web, broken quickly to pieces, or swept down by the besom of destruction with them into Hell; that they had some joys; but they were flashy and ungrounded; some tastes arising from misapprehensions of Gospel-privileges, and misapplication of Gospel-promises, all which did quickly vanish & come to nothing: They will find, if not before, be sure at that day that they were mistaken, and have lost all their pains and labour, for want of a thorough work of grace; for want of soundness at the root; for want of hearts sorrow, deep humiliation; good-ground, and deep-roote• faith: supreme love; well-bottomed hope: universal reformation and mortification of the deeds of the body; that none of their actions were accepted by the heart-searching God for want of a right principle and end; now when these Persons are sentenced to Hell, and are going away from Christ and the glory which once they had hopes of, and were so near unto, and had they gone but a step or two further, they might have attained. O with wh•• unconceivable grief and cuttings of heart will it be? they will remember then that they did seek to enter in at […] strait Gate, and they will wish with all their hearts th•• they had striven, that they had taken more pains, that they might not have missed and fallen short of Salvation; a possibly then with unutterable anguish they may say, There is a glorious Inheritance in Heaven, which we are now departing from, we often prayed for it when we were upon the Earth; and if we had been sincere and fervent, if we had resolved to take the place by storm and would not have been, denied, ⟨p. 104⟩we might have got it; we have read of it in the Word, and heard of it in Sermons, and it hath been proffered to us freely; and if we had renounced the world, and forsaken sit, and chosen it for our portion, we might have had it; we parted with some sins, if we had left all, it should have been •urs; once we had some hopes of it, when we had some taste of it, and had done some things to obtain it; and if we had gone a little further, we might have indeed obtained it; if we had taken pains with our hearts before God to get them raised to things above; if we had denied our selves, and mortified our members upon the Earth;