nfinitely more shall by the Judge
be exhibited in sad remembrances, there needs no other sentence; we
shall condemn ourselves with a hasty shame and a fearful confusion,
to see how good God hath been to us, and how base we have been to
ourselves. Thus Moses is said to accuse the Jews; and thus also He
that does accuse, is said to condemn, as Verres was by Cicero, and
Claudia by Domitius her accuser, and the world of impenitent persons
by the men of Nineveh, and all by Christ, their Judge. I represent
the horror of this circumstance to consist in this, besides the
reasonableness of the judgment, and the certainty of the condemnation,
it can not but be an argument of an intolerable despair to perishing
souls, when He that was our advocate all our life, shall, in the day
of that appearing, be our Accuser and our Judge, a party against us,
an injured person in the day of His power and of His wrath, doing
execution upon all His own foolish and malicious enemies.

Our conscience shall be our accuser. But this signifies but these two
things: First, That we shall be condemned for the evils that we have
done and shall then remember, God by His power wiping away the dust
from the tables of our memory, and taking off the consideration and
the voluntary neglect and rude shufflings of our cases of conscience.
For then we shall see things as they are, the evil circumstances and
the crooked intentions, the adherent unhandsomeness and the direct
crimes; for all things are laid up safely, and tho we draw a curtain
of cobweb over them, and a few fig-leaves before our shame, yet God
shall draw away the curtain, and forgetfulness shall be no more,
because, with a taper in the hand of God, all the corners of our
nastiness shall be discovered. And, secondly, it signifies this also,
that not only the justice of God shall be confest by us in our own
shame and condemnation, but the evil of the sentence shall be received
into us, to melt our bowels and to break our heart in pieces within
us, because we are the authors of our own death, and our own inhuman
hands have torn our souls in pieces. Thus far the horrors are great,
and when evil men consider it, it is certain they must be afraid to
die. Even they that have lived well, have some sad considerations, and
the tremblings of humility, and suspicion of themselves. I remember
St. Cyprian tells of a good man who in his agony of death saw a
fantasm of a noble and angelical shape, who, frowning and