the
beginning of the belief of sin and misery shall, in a manner, be the end
of misery, and seeing, whether men know it or not, they must shortly be
made sensible of it, when there is no remedy to be found, then, certainly,
it is the height of man's misery that he knows and considers it not. If we
would apply our hearts at length to hear what God the Lord speaks--for he
only can give account of man to himself,--we might have a survey of both in
these words and the preceding--of our desperate wickedness, and of our
intolerable misery. For the present, by nature we are enemies to God, and
shortly we must be dealt with as enemies, as rebels to the most potent and
glorious King,--be punished with death, an endless living death. Experience
shows how hard a thing it is to persuade you that you are really under the
sentence of death, you will not suffer your hearts to believe your danger,
lest it interrupt your present pleasures of sin. Nay, you will flatter
yourselves with the fancied hope of immunity from this curse, and account
it a cruel and rigorous doctrine,--that so many creatures made by God
should be eternally miserable, or a sentence of it should be passed on all
flesh. Now, that which makes us hardly to believe this is the unbelief and
deep inconsideration of your sinfulness, therefore, the apostle, to make
way for the former, adds, "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God."
Do not wonder then that your ways and courses, your affections and
inclinations bring forth that ghostly and dreadful end of death, seeing
all these are enmity to the greatest King, who alone hath the power of
life and death. They have a perfect contrariety to his holy nature and
righteous will. Not only is the carnal mind an enemy, but enmity itself,
and therefore it is most suitable that the sovereign power of that "King
of kings," is stretched out to the vindication of his holiness and
righteousness, by taking vengeance on all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men. If rebellion in a state or monarchy against these petty mortal
gods, who shall die as men, be so heinous as to deserve death, by the
consent of all nations, how much more shall enmity and rebellion against
the immortal eternal King, who hath absolute right and dominion over his
creatures as over the clay, have such a suitable recompense of eternal
death? Now, my beloved, if you once believed this, the enmity and
opposition of your whole natures to God, you could not but fearfu