ually brought home unto God under the constant preaching of the gospe between fifteen and thirty is the age wherein most of the elect become call Nevertheless, New-England hath afforded many examples of childre which have in their early infancy been marvellously filled with the spir of Christ; and some of these examples have been afterwards publishe unto the world. Moreover, that the grace of God may be display'd,. truly sovereign, some among us that have liv'd unto old age-poo graceless, godless, wretchless-have then passed under changing oper tions and renovations, from the "word of the grace of God" upon the souls. In the primitive times, there was one Victorious, a very old ma turned into Christianity; the church would not for some while receiv him: for, thought they, "old sinners do not use thus to turn and live but he evinced the reality of his turn at such a rate, that they sang hym about it in the Christian assemblies; and it was much proclaim'd, "Vict rious is become a Christian! Victorious is become a Christian!"

Among other instances of such a matter, in the churches of New-En land, one was a man of Lancaster, who arrived in age to so many yea above an hundred, that he had lived in wedlock with his wife sixty-tha years, and yet she was thirty-five years younger than himself; and he w able to follow his toils at husbandry very livelily about a month befo his death. This man had been all his days a poor, ignorant, ungod man, and after he had heard so many thousands of sermons, unacquaint with the very principles of his catechism. Nevertheless, when he w about an hundred years old, God blessed the ministry of his word unto th man's awakening; the man became a diligent enquirer after the things the life to come, and a serious attender on all that was religious. I arrived unto such measures of a well informed piety, that the chure which was very strict in the terms of their communion, yet received bi into their communion some years before he died, wherein he continu under a good character so long as he continu'd in the world.

f

III. When a great sinner cried out, "My sin is greater than can be f given," it was by Austin well replied, "Cain, thou lyest!" A malefact once going to his execution, in a transporting sense of great mercy to great sinner, kept crying out, "God is a great forgiver! God is a great giver!" So thought one who died at our Salem village in December, 16 This man (whose name was Wilkins) had signalized himself by a bad li until he had spent fifty years on the lewd and rude courses of notori ungodliness. Tho' he had enjoyed the benefits of a pious education,, he shook off all the yokes which that education had laid upon him. became a foul mouth'd scoffer at all good men and good things, and a b mocker of church-members in particular. The vices of drunkenness, a lying, and swearing, made the characters of his conversation. Sabba breaking made him infamous among sober, and promise-breaking amo honest people; and his disobedience to his parents was not unequal to t

st of his disorders. Original sin, in the furthest efforts of it, filled his sole walk for half an hundred years; at which age he left the world; d had sate under, and sinn'd against the "means of grace" all this while. But yet, reader, prepare thy admirations! This enormous liver was onderfully regenerated before he died. The great God so blessed and ned the "ministry of his word," that the efficacy thereof upon him did come conspicuous to astonishment. He became an heart-broken penint, and so devout, so pensive, so humble, that every one saw a new eature in him. He mourned for all his former faults, and his mournful mplaints reached unto the "plague of his heart," as the root of all. He formed what was amiss in him, and applied himself with an exceeding gour unto the Lord Jesus Christ our only Saviour, for his great salvation. hile the Lord was thus beginning his heavenly impressions upon him, fell mortally sick; and it was not long before he passed out of this orld with a wonderful assurance of his interest in a better.

It were endless to reckon up the extraordinary passages which occurred the sick and last weeks of his life; but some of them were such as these: "Oh! what a 'wonder of mercy' is it [said he] unto my soul that God ith not cast me immediately into hell, and given me no time to repent; to beg for an heart to repent! But great mercy hath spared a great sinner." "The stoutest man [said he] that ever lived, should he but seriously ink on eternity, and have no Christ to fly unto, it would so sink the art of him, that he could never bear it; but the Lord will shew mercy my distressed soul."

He gave himself wholly to prayer, and would excuse watchers from sitng with him, that he might be at leisure for communion with God above. metimes he would give a start as he lay, and being asked the reason of he said, "Oh! I have a great work to do, and but a little time to do it." The conflicts which he endured in his mind, were intolerable; under hich, he day and night kept "wrestling with God" for his mercy. One morning, his brother enquiring of him how he did, he replied, Oh! I have had as doleful a night as ever man had. I have had three eat enemies this night encountering with me, the flesh, the world, and e devil. I have been this night both in hell and in heaven; and I can aly say, with David, all this night long 'I have watered my couch with y tears.' But, as the day broke, my Saviour came and vanquished the evil, and told him 'that he had no right in me, for he had redeem'd me ith his own blood.""

Unto his aged father he said, "Sir, I have felt a great work on my disessed soul: 'This, your son, was lost, and is found; was dead, and is ive.' Doleful nights have I seen: The thoughts of my sins did sorely press me: When I would be crying to my dear Saviour for his mercy, e would seem not to pity me, but say: 'Thou hast been a servant of the evil, and of thy lust, and dost thou now come to me? I have been calling

to thee, and thou hast been hardening thy heart at my calls, and dost tho expect mercy after all?' And then the Devil would put in, saying, "Thou hast been my vassal so long, thy cries for mercy are now all too late.' have also seen the face of an angry God, and that was the terriblest thing that was ever seen. I then found no stay for my distressed soul; but fre mercy! free mercy! The Lord now put under me his everlasting arins and gave me an heart still to pray, and say, 'Lord Jesus, mercy for thy name's sake, mercy for thy name's sake!' My Redeemer would say, 'Thou art a great sinner, and an old sinner!' The answer of my soul was, 'Truth Lord; but even such sinners have already found mercy at thy hands. come to thee, for with thee the fatherless find mercy."

He would speak forth into very high expressions. His great comfor he fetched from Matt. xi. 28: "Come to me, and I will give you rest.' He would now cry out, "O the riches of free grace! There are thousands of thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand in the third heaven rejoicing over a great and an old sinner, coming to glory! O glorifie free grace for ever!"

He would say, "O blessed sickness, blessed sickness! What a friend hast thou been to me; and now, welcome death, or welcome life; wha my Redeemer please. O, that I could declare unto my relations and neigh bours-yea, that I could declare unto kings and worlds-what the Lord hath done for my soul!"

He would reflect on the humiliation of the Lord Jesus Christ, with an amazed and transported soul: he would break forth into a great adoration of it, and say, "Oh! this wonderful mercy to undone sinners!" He would also make that one of his admirations, "O the glorious work of faith, which rolls itself on Christ alone!"

He talked in strains that were surprisingly prophetical, concerning the changes which quickly after came on our government; and of the success which God would give unto the (then) prince of Orange, in the descent which we then had newly heard that he was intending upon England.

His counsel to every one was, to make their calling and election sure And he would often say, "Oh! I am an old sinner, and but a young con vert! I am fifty years old, and have lived but seven weeks all this while."

To his brethren he said, "You are careful about a garment for me under my weakness this winter: but, brothers, I have a better garmen than you can provide for me; the long white robe of the righteousness of Jesus Christ will cover me all over."

He kept praying, and praising, and singing of psalms till his end came and then being taken speechless and senseless, his friends apprehended him just in a manner to his last gasp. Thus he lay for divers hour drawing on; but at length he strangely revived so far, that he sprang up in his bed, spreading his arms abroad, as tho' going to leap into the arms of a Redeemer, and shouting, "O, my friends, Heaven rings all over at this!

a great and an old sinner coming to Heaven! Behold, in my Father's house are many mansions: if it had not been so, my Saviour would not have said it. But he is gone to prepare a place for me. O, the riches of grace! O glorifie free-grace for evermore." And so he lay down, he expir'd, he went away, to the rest of God.

IV. Reader, pass thy judgments on a thing that is newly hapned. The story is published among us, and no body doth, or can doubt the truth of it. In Barwick, of our New-England, there dwelt one Ephraim Joy, as infamous a drunkard as perhaps any in the world. By his drunkenness he not only wasted his estate, but ruined his body too. At last, being both poor and sick, and therewithal hurried by sore temptations, a gentleman of Portsmouth, out of pure charity and compassion, took him into his house. While he lay ill there, the approaches of death and hell, under his convictions of his debauch'd life, exceedingly terrified him. Amidst these terrours, he dreamt that he made his appearance before the tribunal of the Lord Jesus Christ, the judge of the world, by whom he was condemned; whereupon he had a sight of the horrors in the state of damnation, which was now arresting of him. He cried with an anguish of importunity unto the judge for a pardon; but his eternal Judge answered him, that he would not yet give him an absolute pardon, but allow him fourteen days to repent; in which time, if he did repent, he should have a pardon. He dreamt that accordingly he repented and was pardon'd, and at the fourteen days' end received into heaven. The poor man declared his dream to the people of the house, and sent for the help of ministers and other Christians; and expressed the humiliations of a very deep repentance. As he drew near his end, he grew daily more lively in the exercises of his faith on the Lord. Jesus Christ, relying on him for salvation; until he confidently said that peace was made with God. But, behold, at the expiration of the fourteen days, precisely and exactly according to his dream, he died. Yea, and he died full of that great joy which gave no little to the spectators.

his

Nunquam est sera conversio: latro de cruce transit ad Paradisum.*—HIER.

CHAPTER V.

HISTORIA NEMESIOS; RELATING REMARKABLE JUDGMENTS OF GOD. THE reader is doubtless waiting for an history of REMARKABLE JUDGMENTS, inflicted by the evident and undoubted hand of Heaven, on several sorts of sinners in this land. Now, an history of those things having been interwoven into two brief Sermons lately preached among us, reader take

* Conversion is never too late; the thief passed from the cross to Paradise.-JEROME,
+ History of God's Judgments.

it under the advantage which was thereby given unto it. Read it with the salutation used by Maximillian when he passed by the place of execu tion, Salve justitia !*

TERRIBILIA DEI.+-REMARKABLE JUDGMENTS OF GOD,

ON SEVERAL SORTS OF OFFENDERS, IN SEVERAL SCORES OF INSTANCES,

AMONG THE PEOPLE OF NEW-ENGLAND.

OBSERVED, Collected, reLATED, AND IMPROVED; IN TWO SERMONS,

AT BOSTON-LECTURE IN THE MONTH OF JULY, 1697.—BY COTTON MATHER,

Raro antecedentem scelestum descruit pede pæna claudo.-Horat.
Supplicia imprudentium prudentibus conferunt sanitatem.§-CYPR. DE ZELO.

THE FIRST SERMON.

PSAL. cxix. 120: My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy JUDGMENTS. IT cannot be said of any man, as it is said of the Leviathan, "he is made without fear;" but fear is one of these natural passions which the Maker of man hath infused into him to move him in the matters of hi happiness. And, indeed, if the spirit of man were destitute of all fear, it would want a sinew, needful to manage him in many of his motions. Bu this affection of our fear, by which we have such apprehensions of evils as to fly from them, as 'tis useful to us in all our concerns, thus 'tis of most eminent use to us in the concerns of religion. Without the exercise of some fear, no real religion can be exercised; if we would serve the Lord, it must be with fear; if we would keep the commandments of God, it is ou fear of him that will be custos utriusque tabulæ.||

In the sacred oracle now before us, behold such a fear exemplified Solomon the Wise once wrote that maxim of wisdom, "Happy is the mar that feareth always." And he had the example of his blessed father, to inform him of, and confirm him in such a maxim. David was as great ar instance of undaunted valour and courage, as perhaps any that ever lived his fortitude was heroical. Yet we find him fearing always: and wel might he fear, when he had such a formidable object for his fear as tha which is proposed in the text now before us.

The Psalmist in our context is making his observations upon the dis pensations of the God of heaven towards ungodly men on earth. Ungodly men had been very high in their worldly advancements and advantages but, saith he, "Lord, I see thee treading of them down!" Ungodly mer had cleaved unto the people of God, as if they had been of one metal with them, and their fate and lot had been one; but, saith he, "Lord, I se

All hail, justice!

Avenging justice, though with limping pace,

O'ertakes the fleetest villain in the race.-HORACE, Odes, III. 2, v. 31.

†The terrors of the Lord.

The punishment of the imprudent affords security to the prudent. The keeper of both tables of the law.