. . . So that,
whatever some have imagined and pretended about promises made to natural men's
earnest seeking and knocking, it is plain and manifest, that whatever pains a natural
man takes in religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ,
God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal
destruction.
So that, thus it is
that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have
deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully
provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually
suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have
done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the
least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for
them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and
would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own
hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator,
there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short,
they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every
moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of
an incensed God.
The use of this
awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation.
This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of
Christ. -- That world of misery, that take of burning brimstone, is extended
abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath
of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand
upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but
the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.
You probably are
not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but do not see the hand
of God in it; but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily
constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own
preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his
hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to
hold up a person that is suspended in it.
Your wickedness
makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and
pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink
and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy
constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all
your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out
of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for
the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you
are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject
to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly
shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not
willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage
for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for
breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life
in the service of God's enemies. . . . And the world would spew you out, were
it not for the sovereign hand of him who hath subjected it in hope. There are
the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of
the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining
hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure
of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with
fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like
the chaff of the summer threshing floor.
The wrath of God is
like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more,
and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream
is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose.
It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed
hitherto; the floods of God's vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in
the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up
more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty;
and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back,
that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should
only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and
the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with
inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your
strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times
greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be
nothing to withstand or endure it.
The bow of God's
wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the
arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere
pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at
all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.
Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty
power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never bom again,
and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new,
and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an
angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have
had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families
and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that
keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction.
However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you
will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like
circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came
suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they
were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they
depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.
The God that holds
you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect
over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you
burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast
into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you
are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful
venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a
stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds
you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing
else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to
awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no
other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in
the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to
be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of
God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn
worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do
not this very moment drop down into hell.
O sinner! Consider
the fearful danger you are in: it is a great fumace of wrath, a wide and
bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand
of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as
against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the
flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it,
and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to
lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing
of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to
induce God to spare you one moment.