Now, since this is so, what can the condemned at the judgment say for themselves, why sentence of death should not be passed upon them? I say, what excuse can they make for themselves, when they shall be asked why they did not in the day of salvation come to Christ to be saved? Will they have ground to say to the Lord, Thou wast only for saving of little sinners; and therefore because they were great ones, they durst not come unto him? or that thou hadst not compassion for the biggest sinners, therefore I died in despair? Will these be excuses for them, as the case now standeth with them? Is there not every where in God’s book a flat contradiction to this, in multitudes of promises, of invitations, of examples, and the like? Alas, alas! there will then be there millions of souls to confute this plea; ready, I say, to stand up, and say, O! deceived world, heaven swarms with such, as were, when they were in the world, to the full as bad as you.
Now, this will kill all plea or excuse, why they should perish in their sins; yea, the text says, they shall see them there. “There shall be weeping, when you shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of heaven, and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God;” Luke xiii. 28, 29. Out of which company it is easy to pick such as sometimes were as bad people as any that now breathe on the face of the earth. What think you of the first man, by whose sins there are millions now in hell? And so I may say, What think you of ten thousand more besides?
But if the world will not stifle and gag them up (I speak now for amplification’s sake), the view of those who are saved shall.
There comes an incestuous person to the bar, and pleads, That the bigness of his sins was a bar to his receiving the promise. But will not his mouth be stopped as to that, when Lot and the incestuous Corinthian shall be set before him; Gen. xix. 33–37; 1 Cor. v. 1, 2.
There comes a thief, and says, Lord, my sin of theft, I thought, was such as could not be pardoned by thee! But when he shall see the thief that was saved on the cross stand by, as clothed with beauteous glory, what further can he be able to object? Yea, the Lord will produce ten thousand of his saints at his coming, who shall after this manner execute judgment upon all, and so convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. And these are hard speeches against him, to say that he was not able or willing to save men, because of the greatness of their sins, or to say that they were discouraged by his word from repentance, because of the heinousness of their offences.