The world to come; or discourses on the joys or sorrows of departed souls at death, and the glory or terror of the Resurrection

Preface

Among all the solemn and important things which relate to religion, there is nothing that strikes the soul of man with so much awe and solemnity as the scenes of death, and the dreadful or delightful consequences which attend it. Who can think of entering into that unknown region where spirits dwell, without the strongest impressions upon the mind, arising from so strange a manner of existence? Who can take a survey of the resurrection of the millions of the dead, and of the tribunal of Christ whence men and angels must receive their doom, without the most painful solicitude, “What will my sentence be?” Who can meditate on the intense and unmingled pleasure or pain in the world to come, without the most pathetic emotions of soul, since each of us must be determined to one of these states, and they are both of everlasting duration?

These are the things that touch the springs of every passion in the most sensible manner, and raise our hopes and our fears to their supreme exercise. These are the subjects with which our blessed Saviour and his apostles frequently entertained their hearers, in order to persuade them to hearken and attend to the divine lessons which they published among them. These were some of the sharpest weapons of their holy warfare, which entered into the inmost vitals of mankind and pierced their consciences with the highest solicitude. These have been the happy means to awaken thousands of sinners to flee from the wrath to come, and to allure and hasten them

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to enter into that glorious refuge that is set before them in the gospel.

My design, therefore, has been to set the great and most momentous things of a future world in the most convincing and affecting light, and to enforce them upon the conscience with all the fervour that such subjects demand and require. And may our blessed Redeemer, who reigns Lord of the invisible world, pronounce these words with a divine power to the heart of every man who shall either read or hear them.

The last discourses of this volume, especially the eternity of the punishments of hell, have been in latter and former years made a matter of dispute; and were I to pursue my inquiries into this doctrine, only by the aids of the light of nature and reason, I fear my natural tenderness might warp me aside from the rules and the demands of strict justice, and the wise and holy government of the great God.

But as I confine myself almost entirely to the revelation of scripture in all my searches into the things of revealed religion and Christianity, I arn constrained to forget or to lay aside that softness and tenderness of animal nature which might lead me astray, and to follow the unerring dictates of the word of God.

The scripture frequently and in the plainest and strongest manner, asserts the everlasting punishment of sinners in hell; and that by all the methods of expression which are used in scripture to signify an everlasting continuance.

God’s utter hatred and aversion to sin, in this perpetual punishment of it, are manifested many ways, (1.) By the just and severe threatenings of the wise and righteous Governor of the world, which are scattered up and down in his word. (2.) By the ve-

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racity of God in his intimations or narratives of past events, as Jude 7. Sodom and Gomorrha suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. (3.) By his express predictions. Matt. xxv. 46: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.’’ 2 Thess. i. 9: “Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction;” and I might add, (4.) By the veracity and truth of all his holy prophets and apostles, and his Son Jesus Christ at the head of them, whom he has sent to acquaint mankind with the rules of their duty, and the certain judgment of God in a holy correspondence therewith, and that in such words as seem to admit of no way of escape, or of hope for the condemned criminals.

I must confess here, if it were possible for the great and blessed God any other way to vindicate his own eternal and unchangeable hatred of sin, the inflexible justice of his government, the wisdom of his severe threatenings and the veracity of his predictions, if it were also possible for him, without this terrible execution, to vindicate the veracity, sincerity and wisdom of the prophets and apostles, and Jesus Christ his Son, the greatest and chiefest of his divine messengers; and then if the blessed God should at any time, in a consistence with his glorious and incomprehensible perfections, release those wretched creatures from their acute pains and long imprisonment in hell, either with a design of the utter destruction of their beings by annihilation, or to put them into some unknown world, upon a new foot of trial, I think I ought cheerfully and joyfully to accept this appointment of God, for the good of millions of my fellow-creatures, and add my joys and praises to all the songs and triumphs of the heavenly world in the day of such a divine and glorious release of these prisoners.

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But I feel myself under a necessity of confessing, that I am utterly unable to solve these difficulties according to the discoveries of the New Testament, which must be my constant rule of faith and hope, and expectation, with regard to myself and others. I have read the strongest and best writers on the other side, yet after all my studies I have not been able to find any way how these difficulties may be removed, and how the divine perfections and the conduct of God in his word, may be fairly vindicated without the establishment of this doctrine, as awful and formidable as it is.

The ways indeed of the great God and his thoughts are above our thoughts and our ways, as the heavens are above the earth; yet 1 must rest and acquiesce where our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father’s chief minister both of his wrath and his love, has left me in the divine revelations of scripture ; and I am constrained, therefore, to leave these unhappy creatures under the chains of everlasting darkness, into which they have cast themselves by their wilful iniquities, till the blessed God shall see fit to release them.

This would be indeed such a new, such an astonishing and universal jubilee, both for devils and wicked men as must fill heaven, earth, and hell, with hallelujahs and joy: in the mean time it is my ardent wish, that this awful sense of the terrors of the Almighty, and his everlasting anger, which the word of the great God denounces, may awaken some souls timely to bethink themselves of the dreadful danger into which they are running, before these terrors seize them at death and begin to be executed upon them without release and without hope.