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

Secondly, When death comes, they have no solid grounds to hope for eternal happiness. For what is the hope of the hypocrite, tho' he hath gamed, when God taketh away his soul? Job xxvii. 8. Whatever hopes they fondly entertain, they are not founded on God's word, which is the only sure ground of hope: if they knew their own case, they would see themselves only happy in a dream. And indeed ⟨p. 232⟩what hope can they have? The law is plain against them, and condemns them. The curses of it (these cords of death) are about them already. The Saviour, whom they slighted, is now their Judge; and their Judge is their enemy. How then can they hope? They have bolted the door of mercy against themselves by their unbelief. They have despised the remedy, and therefore must die without mercy. They have no saving interest in Jesus Christ, the only channel of conveyance, in which mercy flows; and therefore they can never taste of it. The sword of justice guards the door of mercy, so as none can enter in, but the members of the mystical body of Christ over whose heads is a covert of atoning blood the Mediator's blood. These indeed may pass without harm, for justice has nothing to require of them. But others cannot pass, since they are not in Christ: death comes to them with the sting in it▪ the sting of unpardoned guilt. It is armed against them with all the force the sanction of a holy law can give it, 1 Cor. xv. 56. The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. When that law was given on Sinai, the whole mount quaked greatly, Exod. xix. 18. When the Redeemer was making satisfaction for the elect's breaking of it, the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, Matth. xxvii. 51. What possible ground of hope then is there to the wicked man, when death comes upon him armed with the force of this law? How can he escape that fire, which "burnt unto the midst of heaven?" Deut. iv 11. How shall he be able to stand in that smoke, that "ascended as the smoke of a furnace?' Exod. xix. 18