POINT V.
1. Fifthly, I am to consider the final sentence which in that very instant of death Christ our Lord pronounces against the sinner, intimating it to him with an interior and terrible voice, saying to him alone the same words that He will afterwards say to all the wicked in the general judgment: " Depart from me, thou cursed of my Father, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels!" [1] that is to say, " Get thee hence, abominable sinner, that meritest not to stand in my presence, nor to enter into my glory! Go into eternal fire, which thy sins deserve, in company of Satan, to whose infernal power I commit thee, that he may carry thee with him."
2. This sentence being given, in the very same instant Almighty God forsakes the soul, and the angel-guardian abandons it, saying to it, as to Babylon, " I did enough to cure [2] thee, labouring thy salvation, and thou wouldst not; therefore I leave thee to the power of him who shall take that vengeance of thee which thy rebellion deserves." And in the very same moment the devil shall attack the wretched soul, without either admitting or hearing supplications or prayers, and carry it into hell. So that the sinner, in the twinkling of an eye, from his bed, where he lay very delicately, environed with many friends and kinsmen, dies, as Job saith, in a moment, with a death to appearance "happy" [3] and peaceable; but in the very same moment he descends to hell, passing from one extreme of temporal good to another extreme of eternal evil. Oh, what will the unhappy soul feel in that first entrance into hell, when it sees what it left and what it finds! when it sees and feels a bed of fire, the " covering" of " ser-
