365 PERSUASIVES TO THE BEING RELIGIOUS, FROM THE TERROR OF THE LORD. [BISHOP STILLINGFLEET.] 2 CORINTH. v. 11. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. IF ever any religion was in all respects accomplished for so noble a design as the reformation of mankind, it was the Christian, whether we consider the authority of those who first delivered it, or the weight of the arguments contained in it, and their agreeableness to the most prevailing passions of human nature. Although the world was strangely degenerated before the coming of Christ, yet not to so great a degree but that there were some who not only saw the necessity of a cure, but offered their assistance in order to it; whose attempts proved the more vain and fruitless, because they laboured under the same distempers themselves which they offered to cure in others; or the method they prescribed was mean and trivial, doubtful and uncertain, or else too nice and subtle to do any great good upon the world. But Christianity had not only a mighty advantage by the great holiness of those who preached it, but by the clearness and evidence, the strength and efficacy of those arguments which they used to persuade men. The nature of them is such, that none who understand them can deny them to be great; their clearness such, that none that hear them can choose but understand them; the manner of recommending them such, as all who understood themselves could not but desire to hear them. No arguments can be more proper to mankind than those which work upon their reason and consideration; no motives can stir up more to the exercise of this than their own happiness and misery; no happiness and misery can deserve to be so much considered as that which is eternal. And this eternal state is that which above all other things the Christian religion delivers with the greatest plainness, confirms with the strongest evidence, and enforces upon the consciences of men with the most powerful and persuasive rhetoric. I need not go beyond my text for the proof of this, wherein we see that the Apostles' design was "to persuade men,” i. e. to convince their judgments, to gain their affections, to reform their lives; that the argument they used for this end was no less than "the terror of the Lord;" not the frowns of the world, nor the fear of men, nor the malice of devils; but the terror of the Almighty, whose majesty makes even the devils tremble, whose power is irresistible, and whose wrath is unsupportable. But it is not "the terror of the Lord” in this world which he here speaks of, although that be great enough to make us as miserable as we can be in this state; but "the |