Page:Christ the only refuge from the wrath to come.pdf/7

 a secret thought escapes his scrutiny. How shall the criminals, the impenitent criminals, either conceal their guilt or elude the sentence? They have to do with a sagacity too keen to be deceived; with a power, too strong to be resisted! and (oh! terrible, terrible consideration,) with a severity of most just displeasure, that will never relent, never be entreated mere—What ghastly despair appear in their faces! What racking agonies rend their distracted hearts! The bloody axe and torturing wheel are ease, are down, compared with their prodigious woe. And (O holy God! wonderful is thy doings! fearful in thy judgments 1) even this prodigious woe is the gentlest of visitations, compared with that indignation and wrath which are hanging over their guilty heads—which are even now falling on all the sons of rebellion —which will plunge them deep in aggravated and endless destruction.

And is there a Last day? And must there come A sure, a fired, irrecoverable doom?

Surely, then, “the main care of our lives should be to obtain peace and acceptation before the dreadful tribunal of God.” And what is sufficient for this purpose but righteousness? What righteousness, or whose? Our’s, or Christ’s? Our’s, in the inherent graces wrought in us, in the holy works wrought by us? Or Christ's, in his most perfect obedience and meritorious satisfaction, wrought for us, and applied to us? God Is as direct on this subject, as his word can make him, severe blazoning the defects of our own righteousness, every where extolling the perfect obedience of our Redeemer.

Behold! says the everlasting King, “I lay in