Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

It is eternal destruction in embryo; growing daily, tho' thou dost not discern it. Death is painted on many a fair face, in this life. Depraved nature makes men meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the damned, in utter darkness. (1.) The heart of stone within thee, is a sinking weight, as a stone naturally goes downward; so the hard stony heart tends downward to the bottomless pit. Ye are hardened against reproof: though ye are told your danger; yet you will not see it, ye will not believe it. But remember, that the conscience its being now feared with a hot iron, is a sad presage of everlasting burnings. (2.) Your unfruitfulness under the means of grace, fits you for the axe of God's judgments, Matth. iii. 10. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down, and cast into the fire. The withered branch is fuel for the fire, John xv. 6. Tremble at this ye despisers of the gospel: if ye be not thereby made meet for heaven, ye will be like the barren ground, bearing briers and thorns, nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned, Heb. vi. 8. (3.) The hellish disposition of mind, which discover themselves in profanity of life, fit the guilty for the regions of horror. A profane life will have a miserable end. They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God, Gal. v. 19, 20, 21. Think on this, ye prayerless persons, ye mockers of religion, ye cursers and swearers, ye unclean, and unjust persons, who have not so much as moral honesty to keep you from lying, cheating and stealing. What sort of a tree think ye it to be, upon which these fruits grow? Is it a tree of righteousness, which the Lord hath planted? Or is it such an one as cumbers the ground, which God will pluck up for fuel to the fire of his wrath? (4.) Your being dead in sin makes you meet to be wrapped in flames of brimstone, as a winding sheet; and to be buried in the bottomless pit, as in a grave. Great was the cry in Egypt, when the first-born in each family was dead; but are there not many families, where all are dead together? Nay, many there are, who are twice dead, plucked up by the roots. Sometime, in their life, they have been roused by apprehensions of death, and its consequences; but now they are so far on in their way to the land of darkness, that they hardly ever have the least glimmering of light from heaven. (5.)