Unto the Saints with sad complaints should they themselves apply? They're not dejected nor aught affected with all their misery. Friends stand aloof and make no proof what Prayers or Tears can do; Your Godly friends are now more friends to Christ than unto you. CXCVI. [Sidenote: 1 Cor. 6:2.] Where tender love men's hearts did move unto a sympathy, And bearing part of others' smart in their anxiety, Now such compassion is out of fashion, and wholly laid aside; No friends so near, but Saints to hear their Sentence can abide. CXCVII. [Sidenote: Compare Prov. 1:28 with 1 John 3: 2, and 2 Cor. 5:16.] One natural Brother beholds another in his astonied fit, Yet sorrows not thereat a jot, nor pities him a whit. The godly Wife conceives no grief, nor can she shed a tear For the sad state of her dear Mate, when she his doom doth hear. CXCVIII. He that was erst a Husband pierc'd with sense of Wife's distress, Whose tender heart did bear a part of all her grievances, Shall mourn no more as heretofore, because of her ill plight, Although he see her now to be a damn'd forsaken wight. CXCIX. [Sidenote: Luke 16:25.] The tender Mother will own no other of all her num'rous brood, But such as stand at Christ's right hand, acquitted through his Blood. The pious Father had now much rather his graceless Son should lie In Hell with Devils, for all his evils, burning eternally, CC. [Sidenote: Psal. 58:10.] Than God most High should injury by sparing him sustain; And doth rejoice to hear Christ's voice, adjudging him to pain. Thus having all, both great and small, convinc'd and silencéd, Christ did proceed their Doom to read, and thus it utteréd: CCI. [Sidenote: The Judge pronounceth the sentence of condemnation. Mat. 25:41.] "_Ye sinful wights and curséd sprights, that work iniquity, Depart together from me for ever to endless Misery; Your portion take in yonder Lake, where Fire and Brimstone flameth; Suffer the smart which your desert, as its due wages claimeth._" CCII. [Sidenote: The terror of it.] Oh piercing words, more sharp than swords! What! to depart from Thee, Whose face before for evermore the best of Pleasures be! What! to depart (unto our smart), from thee _Eternally_! To be for aye banish'd away with Devils' company! CCIII. What! to be sent to Punishment, and flames of burning Fire! To be surrounded, and eke confounded with God's revengeful Ire! What! to abide, not for a tide, these Torments, but for Ever! To be releas'd, or to be eas'd, not after years, but Never! CCIV.