3. The third thing I take notice of from hence is, that a sinful life and a quiet death annexed to it is the ready, the open, the beaten, the common highway to hell: there is no surer sign of damnation than for a man to die quietly after a sinful life. I do not say that all wicked men that are molested at their death with a sense of sin and fears of hell do therefore go to heaven, for some are also made to see, and are left to despair, not converted by seeing, that they might go roaring out of this world to their place. But I say there is no surer sign of a man's damnation than to die quietly after a sinful life; than to sin and die with his eyes shut; than to sin and die with an heart that cannot repent. 'He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart' (John 12:40). No not so long as they are in this world, 'Lest they should see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them' (Acts 28:26,27; Rom 2:1-5).
God has a judgment for wicked men; God will be even with wicked men. God knows how to reserve the ungodly to the day of judgment to be punished (2 Peter 2). And this is one of his ways by which he doth it. Thus it was with Mr. Badman.
4. Fourthly, it is said in the book of Psalms, concerning the wicked, 'There are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm' (Psa 73:4-6). By no bands he means no troubles, no gracious chastisements, no such corrections for sin as fall to be the lot of God's people for theirs; yea, that many times falls to be theirs at the time of their death. Therefore he adds concerning the wicked, 'They are not in trouble [then] as other men, neither are they plagued like other men'; but go as securely out of the world as if they had never sinned against God, and put their own souls into danger of damnation. 'There is no bands in their death.' They seem to go unbound, and set at liberty out of this world, though they have lived notoriously wicked all their days in it. The prisoner that is to die at the gallows for his wickedness, must first have his irons knocked off his legs; so he seems to go most at liberty, when indeed he is going to be executed for his transgressions. Wicked men also have no bands in their death, they seem to be more at liberty when they are even at the wind-up of their sinful life, than at any time besides.
Hence you shall have them boast of their faith and hope in God's mercy when they lie upon their death-bed; yea, you shall have them speak as confidently of their salvation as if they had served God all their days; when the truth is, the bottom of this their boasting is because they have no bands in their death. Their sin and base life comes not into their mind to correct them, and bring them to repentance; but presumptuous thoughts, and a hope and faith of the spider's, the devil's, making, possesseth their soul, to their own eternal undoing (Job 8:13,14).
CHAPTER XX.
[WITHOUT GODLY REPENTANCE, THE WICKED MAN'S HOPE AND LIFE DIE TOGETHER.]
Hence wicked men's hope is said to die, not before, but with them; they give up the ghost together. And thus did Mr. Badman. His sins and his hope went with him to the gate, but there his hope left him, because he died there; but his sins went in with him, to be a worm to gnaw him in conscience for ever and ever.
The opinion, therefore of the common people concerning this kind of dying is frivolous and vain; for Mr. Badman died like a lamb, or, as they call it, like a chrisom-child,[80] quietly and without fear. I speak not this with reference to the struggling of nature with death, but as to the struggling of the conscience with the judgment of God. I know that nature will struggle with death. I have seen a dog and sheep die hardly. And thus may a wicked man do, because there is an antipathy betwixt nature and death. But even while, even then, when death and nature are struggling for mastery, the soul, the conscience, may be as besotted, as benumbed, as senseless and ignorant of its miserable state, as the block or bed on which the sick lies. And thus they may die like a chrisom-child in show, but indeed like one who by the judgment of God is bound over to eternal damnation; and that also by the same judgment is kept from seeing what they are, and whither they are going, till they plunge down among the flames.
And as it is a very great judgment of God on wicked men that so die, for it cuts them off from all possibility of repentance, and so of salvation, so it is as great a judgment upon those that are their companions that survive them, for by the manner of their death, they dying so quietly, so like unto chrisom-children, as they call it, they are hardened, and take courage to go on in their course.
For comparing their life with their death, their sinful, cursed lives, with their childlike, lamblike death, they think that all is well, that no damnation is happened to them; though they lived like devils incarnate, yet they died like harmless ones. there was no whirlwind, no tempest, no band or plague in their death. They died as quietly as the most godly of them all, and had as great faith and hope of salvation, and would talk as boldly of salvation as if they had assurance of it. But as was their hope in life, so was their death; their hope was without trial, because it was none of God's working, and their death was without molestation, because so was the judgment of God concerning them.