Consider the day of Judgment: God will then search and sentence you, discover and reward you according to your works. You that examine and try others shall then be examined and tried yourselves, and you that acquit or condemn others, shall then be acquitted or condemned yourselves.

How should this thought move you to walk exactly, since your hearts shall be anatomized, and your lives manifested before God, Angels and men! Could you but as Jerome, hear the sound of the last trump always in your ears––“Arise ye dead, and come to judgment!”–– surely you would be holy judges and justices indeed. Peter makes this argument a strong enforcement to holiness (2 Pet. 3.10, 11). The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works therein shall be burnt up. Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness? 1) Observe the certainty of it. The day of the Lord will come. If it were doubtful, it would not be so dreadful. But it will come surely, though it come slowly. Therefore men had need to be holy. Tertullian observed of all those that professed Christianity in his time, none lived so loosely as those that did not believe the certainty of the day of judgment. 2) But observe the suddenness of it. The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. When men at midnight are securely sleeping, they dream not of, nor prepare for a thief. It is sometimes called a day (Matth. 25.13). … Things that are now dark and secret, shall be then as clear and apparent as at noon day. The fire of that day will make things legible which are written with the juice of lemons [words written in lemon juice become visible when the paper is held to the fire]. In that springtime both wholesome roots and poisonous will be discovered, which all the winter of this life were hid. The books of God’s omniscience and man’s conscience, says one, shall be then opened and secret sins shall be then as legible as if it were written with the brightest star, or the most glittering sunbeams upon a wall of crystal (Eccles. 12. Ult). And it is said to be at night … because of most men’s unpreparedness for it. The destruction of this new world by fire will find men generally in the same careless, carnal, secure, sensual condition, as did the destruction of the old world by water (Luke 21.35). As the snare on a sudden catches the bird, so will that day of the Lord seize on such beasts. 3) Observe the dreadfulness of it! The Heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and the works thereof shall be burnt up. Well may it be called the great and terrible day of the Lord, when the Judge will be a consuming fire (Heb. 12.29) and shall come in flaming fire (1 Thes. 1.6, 7), try them by a fiery law (Deut. 33.2) before a tribunal of fire (Ezek. 1.27), plead with them in flames of fire (Isa. 60.15) and condemn ungodly ones to eternal fire. O how dreadful is the voice and noise of fire! Fire in the night! How fearful and frightful then will such fires at the day of Judgment be! As often as I think of that day, my whole body trembles, says St. Jerome. 4) Observe the Apostle’s inference from it: What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness! As if he had said, We had need to have grace in truth, that must undergo such a trial. We that must meet with so strict and dreadful an examination had need to be holy to admiration. What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness?

Surely if any argument imaginable can persuade to purity, this terrible day can do it. The sound of the last trump may well cause a retreat, and call us off from an eager pursuit of the flesh and world (Eccles. 11.9) and it may also stir you up to purity, if you would meet Christ at that day in peace. The Throne of Christ is a white throne (Rev. 20.11) and O with what trembling heart will thou O black sinner stand before this white throne (1 Pet. 4.18). If the righteous be scarcely saved (not in regard of the uncertainty, but difficulty) where shall the sinner and ungodly appear? Surely the drunkard’s cup then will be wormwood, not wine. The sentence on the swearer then will be of cursing, not blessing; as he loved cursing now, so then will it come to him. The adulterer’s pleasure now will then prove poison. And the prayerless man now, will then pray hard, work in prayer for some ease, some end, if not a pardon, yet a reprieve, for one hour, at least one drop of water to cool his tongue. But he shall work at the labor in vain, and be eternally denied.