are of eternal moment, and absolutely necessary for the happiness of man. And as when the natural faculty of seeing is perished, it is irreparable by human skill, and without a miracle can never be restored so the intellectual faculty, when darkened by sinful lusts, without the renewing power of the Spirit, "can never know spiritual things as they ought to be known." Therefore as the blind men in the gospel who despaired of help from the physicians, hearing of the miraculous power of Christ, importunately begged his healing mercy; so let us pray to the light and Saviour of the world, but in a more noble and higher sense, "Lord, that we may receive our sight." Let us with the most zealous affections call upon "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that he would give unto us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of our understanding being enlightened, that we may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints." 2. The efficacious influence of the Holy Spirit is requisite to change the will, that with a free and full consent it may desire and prosecute the spiritual eternal good. Without this, the conviction of the mind is not powerful enough to convert the soul from the love of the world, to choose heaven. There may be an enlightened conscience without a renewed heart. Though the judgment assents that God is the Supreme Good, yet till the heart be circumcised, the sensuality of the affections taken away, divine love that directs the life to God as our blessed end, can never possess it. Suppose that men had a sensible and strong assurance of the eternal state hereafter, if all those who live godly in a visible manner ascended with Elias to heaven, and if all who continued in their sins visibly descended into hell, as Corah and his company were swallowed up alive by the earth before the Israelites ; if men could hear the joyful exultations of the saints above, their high praises of God, and hear the desperate cries and deep complaints of the damned: if one, according to the desire of the rich man, were sent from hell, and with his fiery tongue should relate what he had seen and suffered, and exhibit a sensible demonstration in himself of those torments; yet this alone were not sufficient to draw off their hearts from the deceitful happiness of this world, and fasten them on the perfect and eternal happiness in the next. Indeed they could not indulge their lusts so securely, but they would be “ strangers to the life of God," such an inveterate 66 alienation of the heart is in man from real holiness. Till the sanctifying spirit by a directive persuasive light, that represents the truth and goodness of spiritual things, transforms the soul, and makes it spiritual in its valuations and affections, it is inwardly "The Lord direct our hearts into averse from grace and glory. the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe." Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. CHAPTER I. The opening of the text. The punishment of unreformed sinners shall be extreme and eternal. The torments in hell exceed the heaviest judgments inflicted here. They are represented in scripture, so as to instruct and terrify sinners. The soul shall be the chief mourner in hell. The apprehension shall be enlarged to all afflicting objects. The thoughts shall be fixed upon what is tormenting. All the tormenting passions will be let loose upon the guilty soul. Shame, sorrow, rage, despair, at once seize on the damned. The words are the repetition of a powerful motive, by our blessed Saviour, to deter men from indulging temptations to sin, how grateful or useful soever to them: "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy foot offend thee, cut it off; if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out." All the occasions whereby sin insinuates itself, and inflames our inclinations, whether it bribes us with profit, or allures by pleasure, must be immediately cut off, and forever separated from us. This counsel seems very severe to the natural man, who freely converses with temptations: to do violence to himself, and tear his beloved lusts from his bosom, the carnal nature will not consent to. Our Saviour therefore urges such arguments as may move the understanding and affections, may strike sense and conscience: "For it is better to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, where the fire never shall be quenched." Hope and fear are the most active passions: the hope of heaven is motive enough to induce a true believer to despise and reject all the advantages and pleasures of sin that are but for a season: and the fear of an everlasting hell, is strong enough to control the vicious appe OF HELL. Reason determines that when a * tites. gangrene that is deadly and spreading, has seized upon a member, presently to cut off an affected arm or leg, to save the rest: how much more reasonable and necessary is it to part with the most charming and favorite sin, to preserve the soul from eternal death? It is observable, our, Saviour inculcates three times, that men may take notice of it with terror, where the worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched:" a worm gnawing upon the bowels, that are of the most tender and quick sense, fire that causes the most vehement pain, are fearful representations to typify the torments of the damned and that the worm is undying, and the fire unquenchable, infinitely aggravates their punishment. 66 : The proposition is this: that the punishment of those who will retain their pleasant or profitable sins, shall be extreme and eternal. In the handling of this point, I will, 1. Discourse of the extremity of the punishment. 2. Of the eternity of it. I. Of the extremity of it. Before the particular description of the pains of the damned, I shall observe in general, that the full representation of hell is beyond all human expression; nay, our most fearful thoughts cannot equal the horror of it. Who knows the power of thine anger? Psal. 90. 11. What are the prepared plagues, by infinite justice, and Almighty wrath, for obstinate sinners? It is impossible for the most guilty and trembling conscience to enlarge its sad apprehensions according to the degrees of that misery. "The Lord will shew forth his wrath, and make his power known in the vessels fitted for destruction." None can tell what God can do, and what man shall suffer, when made capable to endure such torments forever, as now would presently consume him. As the glory of heaven cannot be fully understood till enjoyed, so the torments of hell cannot be comprehended till felt. But we may have some discovery of those unknown terrors, by the following considerations. The most heavy judgments of God upon sinners here, are light and tolerable, in comparison of the punishment of sinners in the next state. For, (1.) Temporal evils, of all kinds and degrees, (as pestilence, famine, war,) are designed for the bringing of men to a sight and sense of their sins, and are common to good and bad here. And if his anger be so terrible when he chastises as a compassionate father, what is his fury when he punishes as a severe judge? If the correcting remedies, ordered by his wisdom and love for the conversion of sinners, be so sharp, what is the deadly revenge of his irreconcilable hatred ? * Ut corpus redimas, ferrum patieris et ignes; ut valeas animo, quicquam tolerare negabis? At pretium pars hæc corpore majus habet. Ovid. (2.) The miseries of the present state are allayed with some enjoyments. None are so universally afflicted, so desolate, but something remains to sweeten the sense of their sufferings. Judgments are tempered with mercies: no man is tortured with all diseases, nor forsaken of all friends, nor utterly without comfort. And when the affliction is irremediable, yet if our grief produces sympathy in others, it is some ease to the troubled mind, and by that assistance the burden is made lighter: but in hell, the damned are surrounded with terrors, encompassed with flames, without any thing to refresh their sorrows; not a drop of water to a lake of fire. All that was esteemed felicity here, is totally withdrawn: death puts a period to their lives, and pleasures of sin, forever. For it is most just, that those objects which were abused by their lusts, and alienated their hearts from their duty and felicity, should be taken away and which is extreme misery, in their most pitiful state, they are absolutely unpitied. Pity is the cheap and universal lenitive, not denied to the most guilty in their sufferings here; for the law of nature instructs us to pity the man, when the malefactor suffers. But even this is not afforded to the damned: all their agonies and cries cannot incline the compassion of God, and the blessed spirits in heaven, towards them; for they are not compassionable objects, their misery being the just effect of their perverse obstinate choice: and in hell, all human tender affections are extinguished forever. Now it is the perfection of misery, the excess of desolation, to be deprived of all good things pleasing to our desires, and to suffer all evils, from which we have the deepest aversation and abhorrence. As in heaven, all good is eminently comprised, and nothing but good; so in hell, all evil is in excessive degrees, and nothing but evil. (3.) Temporal evils are inflicted by the mediation of second causes, that are of a limited power to hurt; but in the next world, he more immediately torments the damned by his absolute power. The Apostle tells us, that the wicked "are punished with everlasting destruction, from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his power." What is the lashing with a few rushes, to a blow given by the hand of a giant, that strikes dead at once? This comparison is below the truth. More particularly, the state of misery is set forth in Scripture by such representations as may powerfully instruct and terrify even the most carnal men. Nothing is more intolerably painful, than suffering the violence of fire enraged with brimstone; and hell is described by a lake of fire and brimstone, wherein the wicked are tormented. Whether the fire be material or metaphorical, the reality and intenseness of the torment is signified by it but the ordinary fire, though mingled with the most torturing ingredients, is not an adequate representation of it: for that is prepared by men; but the fire of hell is prepared by the : OF HELL. wrath of God, for the devil and his angels. The divine power is illustriously manifested in that terrible preparation: so that, as some of the fathers express it, if one of the damned might pass from those flames into the fiercest fires here, it were to exchange a torment for a refreshment. The scripture speaks of the vehement heat, and fiery thirst, and outer darkness, in which the damned suffer, to satisfy the rights of justice in the torment of those senses, for the pleasure of which men wilfully broke the laws of God. But the soul being the chief sinner, shall be the chief mourner in those regions of sorrow. An image of this we have in the agonies of spirit, which sometimes the saints themselves are in here, and which the most stubborn sinners can neither resist nor endure. Job was afflicted in that manner, that he complains, "The arrows of the Almighty are with me, the poison whereof drinks up my spirit; the terrors of God set themselves in array against me." If a spark of his displeasure falls on the guilty conscience, it tears and blows up all, as a fire-ball cast into a magazine, Solomon, who understood the frame of human nature, tells us, "The spirit of a man can bear his infirmity ;" that is, the mind fortified by principles of moral counsel and constancy, can endure the assault of external evils; tr but a wounded spirit who can bear ?" This is most insupportable, when the sting and remorse of the mind is from the sense of guilt; for then God appears an enemy, righteous and severe; and who can encounter with offended Omnipotence? Such is the sharpness of his sword, and the weight of his hand, that every stroke is deadly inward. Satan, the cruel enemy of souls, exasperates the wounds: he discovers and charges sin upon the conscience, with all its killing aggravations, and conceals the divine mercy, the only lenitive and balm to the wounded spirits. What visions of horror, what spectacles of fear, what scenes of sorrow are presented to the distracted mind by the prince of darkness? And, which heightens the misery, man is a worse enemy to himself than Satan; he falls upon his own sword, and destroys himself. The guilty conscience turns "the sun into darkness, and the moon into blood:" the precious promises of the gospel, that assures favor and pardon to returning and relenting sinners, are turned into arguments of despair, by reflecting upon the abuse and provocation of mercy, that the advocate in God's bosom is become the accuser. Whatever the soul-wounded sinner sees or hears, afflicts him; whatever he thinks, torments him. the diversions in the world, business, pleasures, merry conversation, comedies, are as ineffectual to give freedom from those stings and furies in the breast, as the sprinkling of holy water is to expel a raging Devil from a possessed person. Those who in their pride and jollity have despised serious religion, either as a fond transport and extasy towards God, or a dull melan All |