'These volumes shall one day be produced': Archbishop Tillotson on the Certainty of a Future Judgement

Continuing with this Advent series of extracts from sermons on the Last Things by divines of the 18th century Church of England, we return to Archbishop Tillotson's sermon 'Of the Certainty of a Future Judgment'. 

Having established "the truth and certainty" of the Last Judgement, Tillotson expounds how this should lead us - in the words of the Advent collect - to 'cast away the works of darkness', rather than pass days, years, and months "in the gross neglect of God and religion, and of [our] immortal souls":

Thus you see the truth and certainty of a future judgment confirmed, from the acknowledgments of men's natural hopes and fears, from the natural notions which men have concerning God and his providence, and from plain revelation of Scripture.

All that I shall do farther at present, shall be to make some reflections upon what hath been delivered, concerning the certainty of a future general judgment ... If there be such a day certainly a-coming, it may justly be matter of wonder and astonishment to us, to see the general impiety and stupidity of men, how wicked they are, and how careless of their lives and actions, and how insensible of that "great and terrible day of the Lord," which is coming upon all flesh, and, for any thing we know to the contrary, maybe very near us, and even at the door. How securely do the greatest part of men pass away their time, some in worldly business, others in worldly pleasures and vanity, and a great many in wickedness and vice! Surely such men have no apprehensions of a future judgment: surely they do not believe that there will be any memorial of their actions in strict and severe account for all the actions of this life: they do not think that there is a just and powerful Being above them, who now observes everything that they do, and will one day judge them for it; that there is a pen always writing, and making a faithful record of all the passages of their lives; and that these volumes shall one day be produced and opened, "and men shall be judged out of the things that are written in them;" and all our thoughts, words, and actions, shall pass under a most severe trial and examination!

Or, if men do believe these things, they stifle and suppress this belief, and "detain this great truth of God in unrighteousness;" they do not attend to it, and consider it, that it may have its due awe and influence upon their lives. For it is not imaginable, that if men were possessed with a firm belief and persuasion of this "great and terrible day of the Lord," they should be so careless and secure, as we see they are, and have so little regard to what they do; that they should pass whole days, and weeks, and years, in the gross neglect of God and religion, and of their immortal souls.

(The photograph is of Canterbury Cathedral. Tillotson was Dean of Canterbury 1672-91.)