no more respect and obedience, than it gets from this world! God either has no law to which he will exact the obedience of men, or there is to be a day after the sun has ceased to shine upon this world, when he will render unto every man according to his works.

The fact that there are Atheists in the world, is of itself a proof of a judgment in the future world. For I take it to be self-evident, that retribution does not answer its proper ends, unless the person knows whence and why the infliction comes. According to the Hebrew law-giver, the offender is punished that all men may hear and fear; and retribution is in amount the practical declaration of God, of his purpose to enforce obedience, and if effectual, it is received as such by all on whom the example operates. If the government of any commonwealth should send out the strokes of justice through secret agents, employed for the punishment of crime, instead of distributing them through open courts of justice, so that the community should see that one was made to suffer in his estate, another in his reputation, another in the loss of life, while none knew why and whence the disaster came-that would answer no ends of government, and give no force to law. So a punish⚫ment sent from the King of kings, if it come not in ways so marked and manifest, as to compel conviction whence and why it comes, fails of its end. Is it to be credited then, that this world is the scene where God makes the highest manifestations of his justice, and gives the fullest enforcements to his law by penalties, while a great part of the world have no practical impression that there is a God-while few of those most deserving of punishment have any idea that they are receiving punishment for their sins? Is God pouring his completest retributions through this world, while the world knows it not? If so his whole design is frustrated, he is mocked by the work of his hands-he is mocked in his very attempt to make his power and justice known. And then it is a remarkable fact that the most wicked, those who deserve most deeply to feel the rod are usually most insensible of God's presence and power in the evils which they endure. Does this imper

fection attend the government of God, that he cannot give energy and effect to his retributions, that he punishes and the offender knows not by whom he is punished or whether he is punished or not? I think we have reason to expect that when God puts on the character of a judge in order to render to every man according to his works, he will make his justice run out in such lines, that every eye can see it—he will throw upon the distinction between the righteous and the wicked such a light that all will be forced to recognize it—he will let forth the hand that inflicts the stroke so impressively that none can doubt whence it comes or for what intent. There will be no atheists in that day which God has appointed to judge the world.

Again, the success which the worst of men often find in the worst of schemes, proves that God has judgments in reserve for the future world. I will not say to how great an extent it is true, as Job expresses, that The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure, into whose hands God bringeth abundantly. I own that there are instances of retribution signal and exemplary, so often that the robber has reason to fear that wealth gotten by his means, will afford him little comfort. But it is sufficient for our argument that there are many glaring facts of a contrary nature, that there is many a proud oppressor who gathers wealth from the sighs and tears of his fellow-men, and yet who lives to enjoy his wealth as long as the most upright-that there are those into whose hands God bringeth abundantly, who by the worst of means have accumulated hundreds of thousands, and yet who live and die free from disastrous reverses, whose stately mansions seem to look defiance to the God of justice, and impress on every beholder the conviction that justice is forever The dethroned, if she have not reserved for herself a vindication in the world to come. What say you of those who by acts of piracy and butchery of their fellow-men, enrich themselves with the wealth of the seas, and yet escape detection? What of those, who against light and conviction make merchandise of men's bodies, and roll in affluence brought to them in ships that have served as the prison-house, yea, the slaughter-house of hundreds of hu

man beings, snatched from home and the sweet embrace of freedom, and doomed to the wretched alternative of a life of bitter slavery, or an untimely death? What say you of those names, that blacken the page of history by their glaring and innumerable perversions of justice-who, elevated in the providence of God to seats of sacred trust, to be ministers of God for good, bearing the sword of justice in God's stead, have enriched themselves with bribes, and turned aside the needy from his right, or who, like Jeffries of execrated memory, have converted the sword of justice to that of religious persecution, and sold themselves and the power delegated to them, as instruments of crushing a nation's rights, and the rising hopes of the church of God? Is there no justice in the future world for those, who have spent their lives in driving so successfully their schemes of expelling justice from this world? What say you also of the spiritual tyrants who have perverted a power if possible more sacred, to purposes if possible more wicked, and who have had full success in their enterprises? To save the labor of description, take the name of a Laud. Is there no justice for such a man, whose tyrannies so long prevailed to ends so disastrous-to the ejecting of God's ministers by thousands, to the silencing of the voice of the gospel through a kingdom, and suspending the glorious progress of the work of reformation? If there be any such thing as wrong and responsibility for it, surely the man who has dealt out such wholesale mischiefs, and caused his oppressions to be felt through every village and hamlet of an empire, and even on the other side of the globe, must have a fearful account against him. But where on this side of the grave is the execution of adequate justice?

But even a Laud is innocent compared with the artificers and wholesale distributors of the manifold mischiefs of popery. Here is a human being to be judged of God according to his works, according to the mischiefs which he does in the world, and he usurps the place of God over this world, claiming the obedience of kings, and causing them to kiss his feet, and through them exercising a tyranny over half the world, dark and malignant—taking away the key of knowledge, shutting up

the kingdom of heaven, suppressing the gospel which Christ has published, licensing and fostering sin in all its forms, palsying the heart and searing the conscience, and enslaving and making wretched millions of human minds. In short, the wearer of the triple crown, personates the man of sin, holds the fountain head of that influence which spreads intellectual and inoral debasement, a fearful growth of crime, manifold oppression, violence, confusion, and every evil work, over many nations, and yet where on this side of the grave, is he punished for all the injuries he inflicts? What say you also of the leaders in the persecutions of the church? What of Nero, who regaled himself in scenes of cruelty and human suffering, and who capped the climax of all his other cruelties, by firing the city of Rome to enjoy the spectacle of its conflagration? History records no judgments upon him equal to his crimes. Yet is God the patron of right, the mighty redeemer of the oppressed, and has he not appointed a day, when the world who have felt, and the world who have wondered at that man's cruelties, shall see an ample vindication of his justice upon him? What say you of the respective authors of the ten persecutions which came from heathen Rome, upon the church of God, and deluged the empire with christian blood? What of the authors of those persecutions inflicted on the church by Papal authority? What of the cruelties of the inquisition which is fitly burlesqued with the name of holy? For these scenes of slaughter of the saints some individuals stand responsible. Take, for instance, the butchery of the Waldenses which came near to a total extinction of that precious, unoffending race, They were hunted like wild beasts among the rocks and mountains of the Alps to which they fled for refuge; and persons of every age, sex and condition were massacred, dismembered and hung up; females violated, and other atrocities committed which want a name, under authority of one claiming to be the vicar of Christ on earth. Is there no justice in store for the authors of such cruelties.

You have read also the story of the massacre, by the orders of a Roman Catholic king of France, of 100,000 protestants at

once of the savage king standing at the windows of his palace and setting on the furious populace, with cries of "kill! kill!" of the streets filled with the shrieks of those about to be butchered, and the groans of the dying mingled with the tumult of their murderers—of blood running in such channels through the streets as to pour torrents into the neighboring river—yes, and you have read of the infernal rejoicings over this scene, which took place at Rome, when the tidings reached that place; yet where has history recorded any equal retributions upon the actors in these several tragedies? Do you say they are yet to come in the expected overthrow of the church of Rome? But are those individuals thus to shift all their personal guilt upon the church which is incapable of personal responsibility? Wherein will that overthrow bring appropriate and sufficient retributions, to the leading fabricators of this carnage, who have now gone beyond the reach of all earthly justice? Posthumous infamy, and disasters coming upon their church centuries after they are dead, are no personal punishment to them. Is this the world where God makes the completest displays of his retributive justice, and are such giants in wrong suffered to pass off the stage undistinguished by his judgments from common sinners?

Again, there is not time for some sinners to suffer all they deserve in the usual term of human life, even according to the most superficial calculation of guilt. To say nothing of the criminality of the rebellion of the heart, estimated by a law which takes cognizance of thoughts and purposes, all the sufferings that can be crowded into this life, cannot expiate the guilt of some men's open transgressions. Here is a man who has been the prime and responsible agent in the butchery of fifty thousand human beings to gratify his lust of power or revenge. So much human life has been wantonly poured out, so much collateral distress created in the train of war, so many families bereft, so much destruction of the means of human existence and happiness, so much moral corruption carried through the heart and remotest limbs of the nation, stand charged against that man in God's book of remembrance.