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

USE III. and LAST, Be warned and stirred up to flee from the wrath to come. Mind eternity, and closely ply the work of your salvation. What are you doing▪ while you are not so doing? Is heaven a fable, or hell a mere scarecrow? Must we live eternally, and will we be at no more pains to escape everlasting misery? Will faint wishes take the kingdom of heaven by force? And will such drowsy endeavours, as most men satisfy themselves with, be accounted flying from the wrath to come? Ye who have already fled to Christ, up, and be doing: ye have begun the work; go on, loiter not, but work out your salvation with fear and trembling, Philip. ii 12. Fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell, Matth. x. 28. Remember, ye are not yet ascended into heaven: ye are but in your middle state: The everlasting arms have drawn you out of the gulf of wrath ye were plunged into, in your natural state; they are still underneath you, that ye can never fall down into it again: nevertheless, ye have not yet got up to the top of the rock; the deep below you is frightful; look at it, and hasten your ascent. Ye who are yet in your natural state, lift up your eyes, and take a view of the eternal state. Arise, ye profane persons, ye ignorant ones, ye formal hypocrites, strangers to the power of godliness, flee from the wrath to come. Let not the young adventure to delay a moment longer, nor the old put off this work any more. To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts; lest he swear in his wrath, that ye shall never enter into his rest. It is no time to linger in a state of sin, as in Sodom, when fire and brimstone are coming down on it from the Lord. Take warning in time: they who are in hell, are not troubled with such warnings; but are enraged against themselves for that they slighted the warning, when they had it.

USE III. and LAST, Be warned and stirred up to flee from the wrath to come. Mind eternity, and closely ply the work of your salvation. What are you doing▪ while you are not so doing? Is heaven a fable, or hell a mere scarecrow? Must we live eternally, and will we be at no more pains to escape everlasting misery? Will faint wishes take the kingdom of heaven by force? And will such drowsy endeavours, as most men satisfy themselves with, be accounted flying from the wrath to come? Ye who have already fled to Christ, up, and be doing: ye have begun the work; go on, loiter not, but work out your salvation with fear and trembling, Philip. ii 12. Fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell,