the elect, he will not yield them up; but the prison doors must be broke open, and they forcibly taken out of his hand by a stronger than he.

(3.) The natural man being under the curse is continually in hazard of utter destruction, of having the copestone put on his misery, and being set beyond all possibility of help. If his eyes were opened he would see himself every moment in danger of dropping down into the pit of hell; Psalm vii. 12, "If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready." The man is constantly standing before God's bent bow, and has nothing to secure him one moment from the drawing of it. The sentence of death is passed against him, John iii. 18, but there is no day intimated for the execution, but every day the dead warrant may be signed against him, and he led forth to death. His name may be "Magor-missabib," a terror round about, Jer. xx. 3. Whither can he look where he will not see his enemies ready to ruin him, on a word of command from that God under whose curse he lies? And what can he do for himself amidst his armed enemies? He is quite naked, Rev. iii. 17, and cannot fight them; he is without strength, Rom. v. 6, and cannot wield armour, though he had it; he is bound hand and foot, Isa. lxi. 1, and cannot flee; and if he could, whither could he flee for safety? Heaven's gates are shut upon him; in the utmost parts of the earth, or the most remote rock in the sea, God's hand would find him out. Justice is pursuing the criminals under the curse, crying for vengeance on the traitors, and their foot shall certainly slide in due time; the law is continually throwing the fire-balls of its curses on them, and will at length set them on fire round about; death is on the pursuit after them, and has gained much ground of them already, and the cloud of wrath hangs over their heads continually in the curse, and the small rain of God's wrath is still falling on them; how soon death may overtake them, they know not; and then the cloud breaks, and the great rain of his strength falls down upon them, and sweeps them away without hope for ever and ever.

The Condition of the Natural Man under the curse, after this life.

SECONDLY, The natural man's condition under the broken covenant of works, is very terrible in that part of it which takes place after this life. Then comes the full execution of the curse, and it is fixed on the sinner without possibility of deliverance. Then will be seen and felt by those who perish under it, what is in the womb of the cnrse of the broken covenant, whereof all that befals them in this life is but an earnest. The truth is, it cannot be fully represented in words from the tongues of men; but we shall briefly point at it in the following particulars.

Death under the Curse.

First, The natural man under the curse must not only die, but die by virtue of the curse. Death in any shape has a terrible aspect, it is the king of terrors, and can hardly miss to make the creature shrink, being a destruction of nature, and carrying him into another world where he never was before, and putting him into a quite new state, which he has had no prior experience of. But death to the natural man is in a singular manner terrible; it is death of the worst kind. The believer in Christ must die too; but Christ having died for them by virtue of the curse, and that death of his being applied to them by faith, they die not in virtue of the curse; Gal. iii. 13,"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a carse for us." It is a fatherly chastisement, a medicine to them, yea the most effectual medicine, that cures them of all their maladies, 1 Cor. xi. 30, 32.

But the natural man dies by virtue of the curse of the broken covenant, agreeable to the threatening annexed thereto, Gen. ii. 17. Accordingly, upon man's sinning, the curse seized him; and continuing under that covenant, it is still working in him, till it works his body and soul asunder. Soul and body joined in sin against God, and by sin the man was separated from God; and, as a meet reward of the error, the companions in sin are separated by the curse at length; which would have remained eternally in a happy union, had not sin entered.

Now, that we may have a view of death to a sinner by virtue of the curse, consider,

1. It is the ruining stroke from the hand of an absolute God, proceeding according to the covenant of works against the sinner in full measure; “He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world," Job xviii. 18. It is the fatal wound, the wound of an enemy, for the sinner's utter destruction. To a saint, death is a friend's wound, a stroke from the hand of a father, proceeding against his children in the way of the covenant of grace, for their complete happiness. But the ungodly in death fall into the hands. of the living God, who then is and ever will be, to them a consuming fire. Having led their life under that covenant, they are then crushed in pieces by the curse for the breaking of it.

2. It is the breaking up of the peace betwixt God and them for ever it is God setting his seal to the proclamation of an everlasting war with them; after which no message of peace is to go betwixt them any more for ever. It fixeth an impassable gulf, cutting

of all comfortable communication with heaven, for the ages of eternity, Luke xvi. 26. Now the sinner under the curse, living within the visible church, has the privilege of offers of life and salvation; but then there is no more gospel, nor are there any more good tidings of peace, when once death has done its work. The curse which in life might have been got removed by the sinner's embracing Christ, is then fastened for ever on him without remedy. The door is shut, and that for ever.

3. It puts an end to all their comfort of whatsoever nature, Luke xvi. 25. Lazarus is then comforted, but the wicked tormented. It utterly quenches their coal, and puts out all their light, Job xviii. 18, forecited. To the godly, death puts an end to their worldly comforts, but then it lets them into the full enjoyment of their Lord in heaven; but as for the ungodly, at death they leave all their worldly comforts behind them, and they have no comfort before them in the place whither they go. The curse then draws a bar betwixt them and every thing that is pleasant and easy.

4. It is death armed with its sting, and all the strength it has from sin, and a holy just broken law. "The sting of death," whereby it pierces like a stinged serpent, "is sin," 1 Cor. xv. 56, and "the strength of sin is the law." Now, when death comes on the ungodly man, all his sins are unpardoned; the guilt of them all binding him, as with innumerable cords, over to eternal wrath, lies upon him. And these cords of guilt cannot be broken; for the law is their strength, which threatens sin with eternal wrath; and God's truth and faithfulness therein plighted, cannot fail. Thus is death armed against the unbeliever, and herein lies the truly killing nature of it. Where that sting is away, as it is to all in Christ, it can do them no real harm, whatever way they die, whether a lingering or sudden death, a violent or natural one, under a cloud or in the light of comfort, 1 Cor. xv. 55-57.

5. Lastly, It is the fearful passage out of this world into everlasting misery, Luke xvi. 22, 23. It is a dark valley at best; but the Lord is with his people while they go through it, Psalm xxiii. 4. It is a deep water at best; but where the curse is removed, the Lord Jesus will be the lifter up of the head, that the passenger shall not sink. But who can conceive the horror of the passage the sinner under the curse has, upon whom that frightful weight lies? It leads him as an ox to the slaughter; it opens like a trap-door underneath him, by which he falls into the pit, and like a whirlpool swallows him up in a moment, and he is staked down in an unalterable state of unspeakable misery.

Secondly, He is immediately after death haled before the tri

bunal of that God, under whose curse he lies; Eccl. xii. 7, "The spirit shall return unto God who gave it." Compare Heb. ix. 27, "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." There the soul is judged according to its state, and the deeds done in the body; and there it must receive its particular sentence. And what can it be, but "Depart, ye cursed ?" Where can such a soul expect to find its own place, but in the place of torment ? Luke xvi. 23 The cause is already judged, the sinner is under the curse, bound over to hell by the sentence of the holy law. And those whom the law has power to curse and does curse while they are in this world, God will never bless in the other world. Consider the sinner under the curse before this tribunal; and,

1. All his sins, of all kinds, in all the periods of his life, from the first to the last breathing on earth are upon him. The curse seals them up as in a bag, that not one of them can be missing; Hos. xiii. 12, "The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up." Where a pardon takes place, the curse is removed, and being once removed, it never returns; so where the curse is, there neither is nor has been a pardon; for these are inconsistent, the one being a binding over of the sinner to wrath, the other a dissolution of that band, so that God will remember their iniquities no more. But where no pardon is, God has sworn he will not forget any of that sinner's works, Amos viii. 7. How fearful, then, must the case be, while the sinner stands before this tribunal with all his sins whatsoever upon him?

2. As the man's sins were multiplied, so the curses of the law were multiplied upon him; for it is the constant voice of the law, upon every transgression of those under the covenant of works, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them," Gal. iii. 10. How then can such a one escape, while innumerable cords of death are upon him, before a just Judge, with their united force binding him over to destruction? His misery is hereby insured without all peradventure; and the more of these cords there are upon him, the greater must his punishment be.

3. There is no removing of the curse then, Luke xiii. 25. The time of trial is over, and judgment is to be passed according to what was done in the flesh. When a court is erected within a sinner's own breast in this world, and conscience convicts him as a transgressor of the law, a covenant-breaker, and therefore pronounces him cursed; there is a Surety for the sinner to fly to, an Advocate into whose hands he may commit his cause, a Mediator to trust in and roll his burden on by faith. But before that tribunal there is none for the sinner who comes thither under the curse. As the tree

fell, it must lie; that throne is a throne of pure justice to him, without any mixture of the grace he despised. By the law of works, which he chose to live under, despising the law of grace, he must be judged.

4. Lastly, Wherefore he must there inevitably sink under the weight of the curse for ever, Psalm i. 5. He must fall a sacrifice for his own sin, who now slights the only atoning sacrifice, even Christ our passover sacrificed for us. In the course of justice sin must be satisfied for, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. The satisfaction must be proportioned to the injury done to the honour of an infinite God by it. In the gospel, Christ is set before the sinner as the scape-goat before Aaron; he is called to lay his hand on the head thereof, by faith transferring the guilt on the Surety. Since the sinner did not so, but lived and died under the curse, his iniquity must fall and lie for ever on his own head.

Thirdly, The soul is shut up in hell, by virtue of the curse, Luke xvi. 22, 23, "And in hell he lift up his eyes." Thus, by the sentence of the broken covenant, the sinner is cut asunder by the sword of death, and his soul receives its portion, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, being haled from the tribunal into the pit. Then falls the great rain of God's wrath on the men of his curse, the sinner being, to his own conviction, entered in payment of the debt which he can never discharge, and which can never be forgiven. The state of the separate soul under the curse, after its particular judgment, who can sufficiently express the horror of? Consider these things following on that head.

1. Separate souls under the curse, after their particular judgment, are lodged in the place of the damned, called Hell in the scriptures. Then the godly and the wicked change places, who lived together in this world as a mixed company; the soul, which, through faith received the blessing, is carried to heaven; and the soul which parted with the body under the curse, is carried to hell. This is evident from the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Luke xvi. 22, 23. In hell the souls of the wicked are lodged as in a prison, reserved to a further judgment against the great day, 1 Pet. iii. 19. And who can imagine what thoughts of horror must, at its entrance thither, seize the soul, which a little before was in the body in this world, but then goes into an unalterable state of misery, and hath the bars of the pit shut upon it, without hope of relief? O the fearful sudden change it will be to them who lived in wealth and ease, and to them who lived in poverty and distress here! Who can say to which of them it shall be the most frightful change?

2. The dregs of the curse shall there be wrung out to them, and