§ 16. This also will be a most tormenting consideration, to remember what they sold their eternal welfare for. When they compare the value of the pleasures of sin, with the value of _the recompense of reward_, how will the vast disproportion astonish them? To think of the low delights of the flesh, or the applauding breath of mortals, or the possessing heaps of gold; and then to think of everlasting glory. "This is all I had for my soul, my God, my hopes of blessedness!" It cannot possibly be expressed, how these thoughts will tear his very heart. Then will he exclaim against his folly. "O miserable wretch! Did I set my soul to sale for so base a price? Did I part with my God for a little dirt and dross; and sell my Savior, as Judas, for a little silver? I had but a dream of delight, for my hopes of heaven; and now I am awaked, it is all vanished. My morsels are now turned to gall, and my cups to wormwood. When they were past my taste, the pleasure perished. And is this all that I have had for the inestimable treasure? What a mad exchange did I make? What if I had gained all the world, and lost my soul? But, alas! how small a part of the world was it, for which I gave up my part in glory?" O that sinners would think of this, when they are swimming in the delights of the flesh, and studying how to be rich and honorable in the world! When they are desperately venturing upon known transgression, and sinning against the checks of conscience! § 17. It will add yet more to their torment, when they consider that they most wilfully procured their own destruction. Had they been forced to sin, it would much abate the rage of their consciences; or if they were punished for another man's transgressions; or any other had been the chief author of their ruin. But to think, it was the choice of their own will, and that none in the world could have forced them to sin against their wills; this will be a cutting thought: "Had I not enemies enough in the world (thinks this miserable creature) but I must be an enemy to myself? God would never give the Devil, nor the world, so much power over me, as to force me to commit the least transgression. They could but entice, it was myself that yielded, and did the evil. And must I lay hands upon my own soul; and embrue my hands in my own blood? Never had I so great an enemy as myself. Never did God offer any good to my soul, but I resisted him. He hath heaped mercy upon me, and renewed one deliverance after another, to draw my heart to him: yea, he hath gently chastised me, and made me groan under the fruit of my disobedience; and though I promised largely in my affliction, yet never was I heartily willing to serve him." Thus will it gnaw the hearts of these sinners, to remember that they were the cause of their own undoing; and that they wilfully and obstinately persisted in their rebellion, and were mere volunteers in the service of the Devil.