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thousands in hell, what madness brought them thither? they would most of<br />
them answer, "We thought we were sure of being saved till we found<br />
ourselves damned. We would have been more earnest seekers of<br />
regeneration and the power of godliness, but we verily thought we were<br />
Christians already. We have flattered ourselves into these torments, and now<br />
there is no remedy." Reader, I must in faithfulness tell thee that the confident<br />
belief of their good state, which the careless, unholy, unhumbled multitude<br />
so commonly boast of; will prove in the end but a soul-damning delusion.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is none of this believing in hell. It was Satan's stratagem, that being<br />
blindfold, they might follow him the more boldly; but then he will uncover<br />
their eyes, and they shall see where they are.<br />
2. <strong>The</strong>y shall lose also all their hopes. In this life, though they were<br />
threatened with the wrath of God, yet their hope of escaping it bore up their<br />
hearts. We can now scarce speak with the vilest drunkard, or swearer, or<br />
scoffer, but he hopes to be saved, for all this. O happy world, if salvation<br />
were as common as this hope! Nay, so strong are men's hopes, that they will<br />
dispute the cause with Christ himself at the judgment, and plead their<br />
"having ate and drank in his presence, and prophesied in his name, and in his<br />
name cast out devils;" they will stiffly deny that ever they neglected Christ,<br />
in hunger, nakedness, or in prison, till he confutes them with the sentence of<br />
their condemnation. O the sad state of those men when they must bid<br />
farewell to all their hopes! "When a wicked man dieth his expectation shall<br />
perish; and the hope of unjust men perisheth. <strong>The</strong> eyes of the wicked shall<br />
fail, and they shall not escape, and their hope shall be as the giving up of the<br />
ghost." <strong>The</strong> giving up the ghost is a fit but terrible resemblance of a wicked<br />
man giving up his hopes. As the soul departeth not from the body without the<br />
greatest pain, so doth the hope of the wicked depart. <strong>The</strong> soul departs from<br />
the body suddenly, in a moment, which hath there delightfully continued so<br />
many years; just so doth the hope of the wicked depart. <strong>The</strong> soul will never<br />
more return to live with the body in this world; and the hope of the wicked<br />
takes an everlasting farewell of his soul. A miracle of resurrection shall again<br />
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