the blessed Jesus and his church, the first interview that ever was between the heavenly Bridegroom and his holy bride; O the dear welcomes, the infinite mutual congratulations that will pass between them! How will they now melt in love and dissolve in mutual flames! now when, like long absent lovers, they are safe arrived into each other's arms, never, never to be parted more.

And now this joyful meeting being consummated, they begin to prepare for a most dreadful solemnity, and that is the judgment of the wicked. In order to which the Judge will reassume his throne, and place his saints all round about in shining circles, ten thousand thousand together, that so, as his assessors, they may bear a part in the ensuing judgment for this the apostle asserts as a notorious principle of our Christian faith; Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world? 1 Cor. vi. 2. that is, that they shall not only accuse and condemn the wicked world by the holy example of their lives, but also that they shall give their votes and suffrages to that dreadful sentence which Christ shall pass upon them. And now the Judge and his assessors being set, proceed we to the

II. Second judgment, which is that of the wicked; in which there are also five particulars included: first, their citation; secondly, their personal appearance; thirdly, their trial; fourthly, their sentence; fifthly, their execution.

1. Their citation: for the first judgment being finished, it is probable a new summons will be given by the voice or trump of the archangel to assemble the wicked world to their judgment. Upon hearing of which, all those wicked souls that have left their

bodies, and been hitherto confined in some dark prison of the creation, shall be forced to leave their dismal habitations, in which they would a thousand times rather choose to continue for ever, if they might have their own option, than to undergo that fearful judgment whereunto they are cited; but being dragged into the open light again by those devils who have been hitherto their jailors, they shall every one be forced to put on those old accursed bodies of theirs in which they contracted those crimson guilts, which now they must expiate in eternal flames. And now the souls of the dead being shut up in their bodies again, like prisoners in a sure hold, and there secured by an immortal tie from ever making another escape, the bodies of the living shall by a miraculous change be rendered at once so tender and sensible, that the least touch of misery shall pain them, and yet so strong and durable, that the greatest loads of misery shall never be able to sink them: and thus being all of them put into an immortal capacity of suffering, and thereby prepared to undergo the fearful doom which awaits them, they shall from all parts of the world be driven before the judgment seat of Christ. For,

2. This judgment of the wicked implies also their personal appearance at our Saviour's tribunal: for so St. John, in his prophetic vision of the day of judgment, saw the dead, both small and great, standing before God, Rev. xx. 12. and in Matt. xxv. 31, 32. we are told, that when the Son of man sits down upon the throne of his glory, all nations shall be gathered before him; that is, the impure goats as well as the innocent sheep, as he afterwards explains himself. And now, good Lord, what a tra

gical spectacle will here be! An innumerable number of self-condemned wretches assembled together before the tribunal of an almighty and implacable Judge, quaking and trembling under the dire expectations of a fearful and irrevocable doom, and with weeping eyes, pale looks, and ghastly countenances, aboding the miserable fate that attends them. For thus it is represented, Rev. i. 7. Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him; they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him: and well they may, considering how they treated him, and what little reason they have upon that account to expect any favour at his hands; for to be sure the sight of him must give a dreadful alarm to their consciences, and suggest to them the sad remembrance of the innumerable provocations they have given him. Look up, O ye miserable creatures! see yonder is that glorious Person whose authority you have so insolently affronted, whose name you have so impiously blasphemed, whose mercies you have so obstinately rejected; behold with what a stern and terrible majesty he sits upon yonder flaming throne, from whence he is now just ready to exact of ye a dreadful account for all your past rebellions against him. But, O unhappy and forlorn! see how they droop and hang their heads, as being both ashamed and afraid to look their terrible Judge in the face, whose incensed eye sparkles upon them with such an insufferable terror and indignation as they are no longer able to endure, but are forced, in the bitterest anguish and despair that ever human souls were seized with, to cry out to the rocks and mountains to fall upon them, and to hide them from the face

of him that sits upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, Rev. vi. 16.

3. Another particular implied in this judgment of the wicked is their trial; for so, 1 Cor. iv. 5. we are told, that in this fearful day of reckoning God will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the very counsels of the heart. And this will be no hard matter to effect, considering that he who is to be the Judge of these guilty criminals hath been a constant witness to all their actions, that his all-seeing eye hath traced them all along through all their secret mysteries and dark intrigues of iniquity, and hath kept an exact record of them in the book of his remembrance; so that to convict them of their guilts he will need do no more but only produce his own registers, and expose what he hath there recorded to the view of the world and there the wretches will see themselves transcribed, and all their abominable actions exactly copied from their first originals; there they will find all their secret machinations, their dark cheats, their lewd imaginations and hypocritical intentions, recorded in the most legible characters; and perceiving themselves thus shamefully unstripped and uncased before the world, their very inwards dissected, and the smallest threads and fibres of their hearts laid open and exposed to the view of men and angels, their own shame and intolerable rack of their consciences will force them to confess their charge, and proclaim themselves guilty before all that vast congregation of spirits. But O the inexpressible horror and confusion these wretched souls will then be seized with, when they shall see themselves thus publicly unmasked, and turned inside outwards, and

be forced to stand forth like so many loathsome spectacles before God and his angels, without any excuse or retreat for their shame, without any veil to hide their infamy and blushes! when their filthy practices shall be no longer confined to the talk of a town or a village, but be proclaimed in the hearing of all the rational world. O now it would be happy for them, if, as formerly, they could drown the retorts of their conscience in noise and laughter, and forget its cutting repartees, which were always uneasy to bear, but impossible to answer. But, alas! those jolly days are gone, and now, in despite of themselves, they must listen with horror and confusion of face to what those two great judges, Jesus and their own consciences, unanimously give in charge against them. Thus he, whose piercing eye doth now penetrate their hearts, and ransack every corner of their souls, will in that great day of discoveries bring forth all that secret filth that is there reposited, and expose it for an infamous spectacle to the public view of men and angels.

4. Another particular implied in this judgment of wicked men is their sentence. Their trial being now over, in which their guilt hath been sufficiently evinced and detected, to their everlasting infamy and reproach, they will by this time have received the sentence of death within themselves, and stand condemned in the judgment of all the world. The righteous Judge, who is too great to be overawed, too just to be bribed, and too much provoked to be entreated, whose ears are now for ever stopped, and whose bowels are impenetrably hardened against all further overtures of mercy, will with a stern look and terrible voice pronounce that dreadful doom