men live here, it
is like fire pent up by God's restraints, whereas if it were let loose,
it would set on fire the course of nature; and as the heart is now a
sink of sin, so if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the
soul into fiery oven, or a furnace of fire and brimstone.
It is no security to wicked men for one moment, that there are no
visible means of death at hand. It is no security to a natural man, that
he is now in health, and that he does not see which way he should now
immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no
visible danger in any respect in his circumstances. The manifold and
continual experience of the world in all ages, shows this is no
evidence, that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the
next step will not be into another world. The unseen, unthought-of ways
and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and
inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten
covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that
they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. The
arrows of death fly unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight cannot
discern them. God has so many different unsearchable ways of taking
wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that there is
nothing to make it appear, that God had need to be at the expense of a
miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of his providence, to destroy
any wicked man, at any moment. All the means that there are of sinners
going out of the world, are so in God's hands, and so universally and
absolutely subject to his power and determination, that it
.
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