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them. God has so many different unsearchable ways of taking
wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that there is
nothing to make it appear, that God had need to be at the expense of a
miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of his providence, to destroy
any wicked man, at any moment. All the means that there are of sinners
going out of the world, are so in God's hands, and so universally and
absolutely subject to his power and determination, that it does not
depend at all the less on the mere will of God, whether sinners shall at
any moment go to hell, than if means were never made use of, or at all
concerned in the case.
Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or the care
of others to preserve them, do not secure them a moment. To this, divine
providence and universal experience do also bear testimony. There is
this clear evidence that men's own wisdom is no security to them from
death; that if it were otherwise we should see some difference between
the wise and politic men of the world, and others, with regard to their
liableness to early and unexpected death: but how is it in fact? Eccles.
2:16. "How dieth the wise man? even as the fool."
All wicked men's pains and contrivance which they use to escape hell,
while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, do not
secure them from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of
hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself
for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what
he is now doing, or what he intends to do. Every one lays out matters in
his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he
contrives w
Olivier Miakinen
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