The Nature of the Punishments in Hell
Mark. ix. 46. Where the Worm dieth not, and the Fire is not quenched.
INTRODUCTION.
These words are a short description of hell, by the lips of the Son of God, who came down from heaven: and he who lay in the bosom of his father, and was intimate in all the counsels of his mercy and justice, must be supposed to know what the terrors and the wrath of God are, as well as his compassion and his goodness.
It is confessed, that a discourse on this dreadful subject is not a direct ministration of grace and the glad tidings of salvation, yet it has a great and happy tendency to the same end, even the salvation of sinful men; for it awakens them to a more piercing sight, and to a more keen sensation of their own guilt and danger; it possesses their spirits with a more lively sense of their misery, it fills them with a holy dread of divine punishment, and excites the powerful passion of fear to make them flee from the wrath to come, and betake themselves to the grace of God revealed in the gospel.
The blessed Saviour himself, who was the most perfect image of his Father’s love, and the prime minister of his grace, publishes more of these terrors to the world, and preaches hell and damnation to sinners more than all the prophets or teachers that ever went before him; and several of the Apostles imitate their Lord in this practice. They kindle the flames of hell in their epistles, they thunder through the very hearts and consciences of men with the voice of damnation and eternal misery, to make stupid sinners feel as much of these terrors in the present prospect as is possible, in order to escape the actual sensation of them in time to come.
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Such awful discourses arc many times also of excellent use to keep the children of God, and the disciples of Jesus, in a holy and watchful frame, and to affright them from returning to sin and folly, and from the indulgence of any temptation, by sotting these terrors of the Lord before their eyes. 0 may these words of his terror, from the lips of one of the meanest of his ministers, be attended with divine power from the convincing and sanctifying Spirit, that they may answer these happy ends and purposes, that they may excite a solemn reverence of the dreadful majesty of God in all our souls, and awaken us to repentance for every sin, and a more watchful course of holiness!
Let us then consider the expression in my text: When our Saviour mentions the word ’ hell,’ he adds, ’ where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched;’ in which description we may read the nature of this punishment, and the perpetuity of it.
First, We shall consider the ‘nature of this punishment,’ as it is represented by the metaphors which our Saviour uses; and if I were to give the most natural and proper sense of this representation, I would say that our Saviour might borrow this figure of speech from these three considerations.
1. ‘Worms’ and ‘fire’ are the two most general ways whereby the bodies of the dead are destroyed; for whether they are buried or not buried, worms devour those who, by the custom of their country, are not burnt with fire. And perhaps he might refer to the words of Isaiah lxvi. 24, where the prophet seems to foretel the punishment of those who will not receive the gospel, when it shall be preached to all nations: They, says he (that is the true Israel, the saints of God, or Christians,) ‘they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men who have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.’ It is highly probable that this is only a metaphor referring to the punishment of the souls of obtinate unbelievers in hell; for it would be but a very small punishment indeed, if only their dead bodies were devoured by worms or fire, or rather no punishment at all besides a memorial of their sin.
2. Consider, the ‘gnawing of worms’ and the ‘burning of fire’ are some of the most smart and severe torments that a living man can feel in the flesh; therefore the vengeance of God, upon the souls of obstinate sinners, is set forth by it in our Saviour’s discourse; and it was probably well known amongst the Jews, as appears by some of the apocryphal writings; Judith xvi. 17, ‘Woe to the nation that rises up against my kindred; the Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the day of judgment, putting fire and worms in their flesh, and they shall feel them and weep for ever.’ And Eccles. vii. 16, 17, ‘Number not thyself among the multitude of sinners, but remember the wrath will not tarry long. Humble thy soul greatly, for the vengeance of the ungodly is fire and worms.’
3. Consider, whether ‘worms’ feed upon a living man or devour his dead body, still ‘they are such as are bred in his own flesh; but fire is brought by other hands,’ and applied to the flesh: even so this metaphor ‘of a worm’ happily represents the ‘inward torments,’ and the ‘teazing and vexing passions’ which shall arise in the souls of those unhappy creatures, who are the just objects of this punishment; and it is called ‘their worm,’ that worm that belongs to them, and is bred within them by the foul vices and diseases of their souls. But the ‘fire which never shall be quenched’ refers rather to the pains and anguish which come ‘from without,’ and that chiefly from the hand of God, the righteous avenger of sin, and from his indignation, which is compared to fire.
§ I. ‘The worm that dieth not.’
Let us begin with the first of these, viz. the ‘torments which are derived from the gnawing worm, those agonies and uneasy passions which will arise and work in the souls of these wretched creatures,’ so far as we can collect them from the word of God, from the reason of things, and the working powers of human nature.
When an impenitent sinner is cast into hell, we have abundant reason to suppose, that the evil temper of his soul, and the vicious principles within him, are not abated, but his natural powers, and the vices which have tainted them and mingle with them, are awakened and enraged into intense activity and exercise, under the first sensations of his dreadful punishment. Let us endeavour to conceive then what would be the ferments, the raging passions, and the vexing inward torments of a wicked man, seized by the officers of an almighty Judge, borne away by the executioners of vengeance, and plunged into a pit of torture and smarting misery, while at the same time he had a most fresh and piercing conviction ever present, that he had brought all this mischief upon himself by his own guilt and folly.
I. The first particular piece of wretchedness therefore contained in this metaphor, is the ‘remorse and terrible anguish of conscience which shall never be relieved.’ Plow terrible are the racks of a guilty conscience here on earth, which arise from a sense of past sins? How does David cry out and roar under the disquietude of his spirit? Psal. xxxii. 3, ‘While I kept silence’ and confessed not mine iniquity, ‘my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long, day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, and my moisture is turned into the drought of summer:’ and again, Psal. xxxviii. 4, ‘Mine iniquities are gone over mine head, as an heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.’ God has wisely so framed the nature and spirit of man, that a reflection on his past misbehaviour should raise such keen anguish at his heart; and thousands have felt it in a dreadful degree, even while they have continued in this world, in the land of life and hope.
But when death has divided the soul from this body, and from all the means of grace, and cut off all the hopes of pardoning mercy forever, what smart beyond all our thoughts and expressions must the sinner feel from such inward wounds of conscience? And it gives a twinging accent to every sorrow when the sinner is constrained to cry out, ‘It is- 1, it is I who have brought all this upon myself. Life and death were set before me in the world where once I dwelt, but I refused the blessings of eternal life, and the offers of saving grace. I turned my back upon the ways of holiness which led to life, and renounced the tenders of divine mercy: I chose the paths of sin, and folly, and madness, though I knew they led to everlasting misery and death. Wretch that I was, to choose those sins and these sorrows, though I knew they were necessarily joined together! I am sent into those regions of misery which I chose for myself, against all the kind admonitions and warnings of God and Christ, of his gospel and his ministers of grace! 0 these cursed eyes of mine, that led me into the snares of guilt and folly! these cursed hands that practised iniquity with greediness! these cursed lips of mine, which dishonoured my Maker! 0 these cursed appetites and passions, and this obstinate will, which have wrought my ruin! this cursed body and soul, that have procured their own everlasting wretchedness!’ These thoughts will be like a gnawing worm within, which will prey upon the spirit forever. The fretting smart arising from this vexatious worm must be painful in the highest extreme, when we know it is ‘a. worm which will never die,’ which will forever hang at our heart, and sting our vitals in the most tender and sensible parts of them without intermission, as well as without end.
Here on earth the stings and scourges of conscience meet with some intervals of relief, from necessary business which employs the mind, from gay company which diverts the heart, from the refreshments of nature by day, or from the sweet repose of returning night. But in the world to come every hour shall be filled up with these cutting sorrows, for there is no season of refreshment, no diversion of mind, no sleeping there. All things are forever awake in that world! There are no shadows and darkness to hide us where this torment shall not find us, for it is bred and lives within. There is no couch there to lull the conscience into soft repose, and to permit the sufferer to forget his agonies. Ancient crimes shall rise up and stand forever before the eyes of the sinner in all their glaring forms, and all their heinous aggravating circumstances. These will sit heavy upon the spirit with teazing and eternal vexation. 0 dreadful state of an immortal creature, which must forever be its own tormentor, &nd shall know no relief through all the ages of its immortality! Think cf this bitter anguish of soul, 0 sinner, to guard thee from sin in an hour of strong temptation.
II. Another spring of this torment will be the ‘overwhelming sense of an angry God, and utter despair of his love, which is lost forever.’ It was the thought of the displeasure of God, which pierced the soul of David with such acute pain, when he remembered his sins, Psal. li. 3, 4, “My sin is ever before me: against thee, against thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.” And again he pleads with God, Psal. vi. 1, “0 Lord, chasten me not in thine anger, nor vex me in thy sore displeasure.” He could face an host of armed men without fear, but he could not face an angry God, ‘whose loving kindness is life,’ and the loss of whose love is worse than death. Psal. lxxvii. 3, “I remembered God,” said he, “and was troubled,” i. e. “lest he should be favourable no more, and shut up his tender mercies in everlasting anger.” This was the terror of that good man, under a deep sense of his crimes, and of God hiding his face from him, and this even while he was in the land of the living, and was not cast out beyond all hope.
But when the grave shuts its mouth on the sinner, and he is thrust out into utter darkness, where the light of God’s countenance never shines, nor will shine, how insupportable must such anguish be?
Here in this life perhaps a profane wretch has imagined he could live well enough ‘without God in the world,’ and was content to have nothing to do with him in a way of worship or dependence here. He determined with himself, that the less he could think of God the better, and so forgot his Maker days without number. But in those regions of hell, whither the sinner shall be driven, he can never forget an angry God, nor fly out of the reach of his terrors.
‘I am now convinced, saith he, but too late, that happiness dwells in his presence, and rivers of pleasures flow at his right hand; but this happiness I shall never see, these streams of pleasure I shall never taste; he is gone forever with all his love and with all his blessings, God is gone with all his graces and pardons beyond my reach. He stands afar off from my groanings. He told me of it heretofore in the ministry of his word; but, wretch that I was! I would not hearken, I would not believe. I was invited by the Son of his love to receive his gospel, and to partake of forgiving mercy; he stretched out his hands with divine compassion, and offered to receive my soul to his grace, and to wash away my defilements with his own blood; he beseeched me to repent and return to God, and assured me he would secure his Father’s favour to me, and a place among the mansions of his glory: but cursed rebel that I was, to despise this salvation, and resist the offers of such love, and to renounce such divine compassion! These offers of mercy are forever finished; I shall never see him more as surrounded with the blessings of his grace, but as the minister of his Father’s justice, and the avenger of his abused mercy. There is no other Saviour, no other intercessor, to procure divine favour for me, and my hopes are overwhelmed and buried in the eternal despair of his love.’
III. There will be found also among the damned, ‘a constant enmity, and malice, and hatred against the blessed God, which can never satisfy nor ease itself by revenge.’ It seems very strange indeed that a creature should design revenge against his Maker; but thus it is in these dismal regions of hell. Every wicked man is by nature at enmity with God, and in a state of rebellion; and when this enmity is wrought up to malice, under a sense of his punishing hand, then arises that cursed and detestable desire in the soul of revenging itself against its Maker. The fallen angels, those wicked spirits, have found this dismal temper of mind reigning in them: they hate the blessed God with intense malice, because his governing justice sees fit to punish their pride and other iniquities, and they would fain be revenged of him by destroying mankind who were made after his image. Their malice cannot reach him in the heights of his glory; but they can reach man his creature made in his likeness, and they began to take their revenge there near six thousand years ago. All the sins, and all the miseries of the sons and daughters of Adam, from the beginning of the world to this day, are owing to this madness of malice, this hatred of God in the hearts of evil angels, who were cast out from heaven and the regions of happiness: they began to exert this malice early, and still they are everlasting tempters of men, in order to avenge themselves upon a righteous God.
But alas, what a wretched satisfaction must the damned spirits of men propose to themselves in such a wild and extravagant attempt? The very name and mention of this iniquity seems to put our souls and our ears to pain, while we dwell in flesh and blood; but as cursed and hateful a temper as this is, it is the very spirit and temper of apostate angels; and this will be thy temper and tlry spirit, 0 wilful and impenitent sinner, when thou shalt have obstinately sinned thyself into damnation, and canst never deliver thyself from the punishing hand of God.
Think, 0 my soul, at what a dreadful distance such creatures must be from every glimpse of peace and happiness, whose hearts are filled with such blasphemy and rage, and who would be attempting such vain and impious efforts of mingled insolence and madness. Read, 0 ye foolish and wilful trangressors, read the temper and conduct of devils in tleir spite and opposition to every thing of God, through all the books of the Old Testament and the New, and remember and think, that such will your temper be when you also shall be banished from the presence of God for your wilful rebellions, as the fallen angels are, and be forever shut out from all the blessings of his love, and all hope of his favour.
IV. A further spring of continued torment is ‘such fixed and eternal hardness of heart as will never be softened, such impenitence and obstinacy of soul which will never relent or submit.’ The hardest sinner here on earth may now and then feel a relenting moment, and the most daring Atheist may sometimes have a softening thought come across him, which may perhaps bring a tear into his eyes, and may form a good wish or two in his soul, and wring a groan from his heart which looks like repentance; but when we are dismissed from this body, and this state of trial and of hope, eternal hardness seizes upon the mind: the neck is like an iron sinew hardened more (if I may so express it) in the fire of hell. The will is fixed in everlasting obstinacy against God, and against the glories of his holiness. If Moses and the prophets, if Christ and his apostles in the ministry of the word, could not soften the heart of bold transgressors, what can be expected when all the means of -grace and the methods of divine compassion are vanished and gone for ever?
It is granted indeed there will be bitter repentance among the damned in hell, and inward vexation of soul and self-cursing in abundance, for having plunged themselves into this misery, and having abandoned all the offers of divine mercy: but it will be only such a repentance as Judas the traitor felt, when ‘he repented and hanged himself.’ This is a sort of madness of rage within them for having made themselves miserable. But there will be found no hatred of the evil of sin, at it is an offence against God; no painful and relenting sense of their iniquity, as it has dishonored God and broken his law; no such sorrow for sin as is attended with an hearty aversion to it, and a desire to love God and obey him j but rather they will feel and nourish a growing aversion to God and his holiness.
Ask yourselves, my young friends, did you never feel your hearts indulging an angry and unrelenting mood, and stubborn in your wrath against a superior who had sharply reproved you? Or have you never felt an obstinate and unreconcileable hour in your younger years, even against a parent who had severely corrected you? Or have you not found, at some seasons, your soul rising and kindling into violent resentment and a revengeful temper against your neighbour upon some supposed affront, damage, or mischief he had done you? Call these unhappy minutes to mind, and learn what hell is. Think into what a wretched case you would be plunged, if this wrath and stubbornness, this enmity and hardness should become immortal and unchangeable, though it were but against a neighbour. But if this obstinacy and stubborn hardness of soul were bent against God himself, so that you would never relent, never si ncerely repent of your crimes, nor bow, nor melt, nor yield either to his majesty or his mercy, what would you think of yourselves and of your state? Would you not be wretched and horrible creatures indeed, without the least reason to hope for favour and compassion at his hands? Such is the case probably of every damned sinner. Amazing scene of complicated misery and rebellion! a guilty spirit which cannot repent! a rebellious spirit which cannot submit, even to God himself! a hardened soul that cannot bend nor yield to its Maker! Must not such a wretch be for ever the object of its own inward torment, as well as of divine punishment? 0 the hopeless and dreadful state of every bold transgressor, that is gone down to death without true repentance; for sincere and true repentance for having offended God, and ingenuous relentings of heart for sin are never found in those regions of future misery: no kindly meltings of soul toward God are ever known there.
V. There will be also ‘intense sorrow and wild impatience at the loss of present comforts, without any recompence, and without any relief If this world, 0 sinful creature, with the riches, or the honours, or the pleasures of it be all thy chosen happiness, what universal grief and vexation will overspread all the powers of thy nature, when thou shalt be torn away from them all, even from all thy happiness by death, and have nothing come in the room of them, nothing to relieve thy piercing grief, nothing to divert or amuse this vexation, nothing to soothe or ease this eternal pain at the heart.
And yet further, when thou shalt be as the Prophet speaks, f like a wild bull in a net, struggling and tossing to and fro to free thyself on all sides, when thou shalt be racked with inward fretfulness and impatience, and ‘full of the fury of the Lord’ that made thee, and the ‘rebuke of that God’ that punishes thee, Isai. li. 20, then shall thy heart, hard as it is in an obstinate course of sin, be ready to burst and break, not with penitence, but madness and overswelling sorrows: and yet it must not break nor dissolve, but will remain firm and hard forever to suffer these pangs. This is and must be an eternal head-ache, for there are no broken hearts in hell in any sense whatsoever. There the eyes are weeping, and the hands are wringing, and the tongue almost dried with long wailings and outcries, and the teeth gnashing with madness of thought: this is our Saviour’s frequent representation of hell, ‘there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth;’ and yet the heart ever living and ever obstinate, to supply fresh springs of these sorrows, and to feel the anguish of them all.
VI. There will be also ’ raging desires of ease and pleasure which shall never be satisfied, together with perpetual disappointment and endless confusion thrown upon all their schemes and their efforts of hope.’ It is the nature of man, while it continues in being, that it must desire happiness, and make some efforts towards it: and some divines have supposed, that men of wicked sensuality and luxury in this world, have so drenched their souls in fleshly appetite by indulging their lusts, and placing their chief satisfaction and happiness therein, that they will carry this very temper of sensuality with them into the world of spirits; and it is possible their raging appetites to this sensual happiness, may be increased while there are no objects to gratify them. Now if this be the case, it must be intense and constant misery to feel eternal hunger with no bread to relieve it; keen desire of dainties with no luxurious dishes to please their humourous taste; eternal thirst without one drop of wine or water to allay or cool it; eternal fatigue and weariness without power to sleep, and eternal lust of pleasure without any hope of gratification.
But if we should suppose these sensualities die together with the body, yet this is certain, the soul will have everlasting appetites of its own, i. e. the general desire of ease and happiness, and of some satisfying good: but God, who is the only true source of happiness to spirits, the only satisfying portion of souls, is forever departed and gone; and thus the natural appetite of felicity will be ever wakeful and violent in damned spirits, while every attempt or hope to satisfy it will meet with perpetual disappointment.
Milton, our English poet, has represented this part of the misery of devils in a beautiful manner. He supposes, that ever since they tempted man to sin by the forbidden tree of knowledge, they are once a year changed into the form of serpents, and brought by millions into a grove of such trees, with the same golden appearance of fruit upon them: and while with eager appetite they seize those fair appearances to allay their thirst and hunger, instead of fruit they chew nothing but bitter ashes, and reject the hateful taste with spattering noise; and still they repeat their attempts with shameful disappointment, till they arc vexed, are tormented, and torn with meagre famine, and then are permitted to resume the shape of devils again.* And why may we not suppose, that the crimes of which the wicked children of men have been guilty in the present life, may be punished with some such kind of pain and confusion, both of body and soul, as is here represented in this poetic emblem or parable?
VII. Another misery of damned creatures is, that ‘vexing envy which arises against the saints in glory, and which shall never be appeased or gratified.’ The blessed in heaven shall be forever blessed, and the envy of devils and damned souls shall never hurt their felicity, nor see their joys diminished. This vile passion of those cursed spirits therefore against the blessed inhabitants of heaven, though it rage never so high, is only preying upon their own hearts, and increasing their own inward anguish.
Let us imagine how many thousand holy souls are arrived safe at paradise, who were surrounded with mean and low circumstances here upon earth, while their haughty lords, and their rich insolent neighbours, have sinned
* See Paradise Lost, Book X. v. 504 — 584. — En.
themselves into hell: and do you think those children of pride can ever bear this sight without envy? How many martyrs have ascended to glory from racks, and tortures, and fires, here upon earth, while their bloody and cruel persecutors have been working out their own damnation by these inhuman acts of murder and cruelty? And will not these wretches, under their righteous sufferings and punishments in hell, envy the creatures whom they have scorned, and oppressed, and murdered here on earth, when they shall see them placed on high seats in the kingdom of heaven, and themselves cast into utter darkness?
And what does all this envy do but increase their own wretchedness? They are distracted with pride and rage, to think of these high favours of the blessed God bestowed on creatures whom they treated once with utmost disdain. But their envy, like a viper, preys upon their own entrails, and shall never be allayed or made easy. They send a thousand curses up to the heavenly world; but the saints are forever secured in happiness, under the eye of God their heavenly Father, and the care of Jesus their almighty Friend.
0 what a painful plague must this envy be, when with all her envenomed whips and stings she does but scourge and torment the heart where she dwells? What an unspeakable torture must it be to feel this envy so violent and so constant, that it gives itself no ease through everlasting ages? Who, that dwells in flesh and blood, can conceive or express the horror and the twinging agonies that arise from such a hateful passion, fermenting and raging through all the powers of the soul?
VIII. The last thing I shall mention, as part of those punishments of hell which affect the spirit, is a ‘perpetual expectation and dread of new and increasing punishments without end;’ and it is highly probable, that this shall be the portion of multitudes. When the souls of the saint? are released by death, and arrive at the blessed regions, they are not vested with all their brightest glories in a moment, nor fixed in the highest point of knowledge and happiness at their first entrance; but as their knowledge and their love increases, so their capacities are enlarged to take in new scenes and new degrees of pleasure, and it is probable that their felicities shall be ever increasing. And in the same manner, it is not unlikely, that the increasing sins, the growing wickedness, and mad rebellion of damned spirits, may bring upon them new judgments and more weighty vengeance. So it was with Pharaoh the Egyptian tyrant, when he remained obstinate and rebellious against the messages of God by Moses, even while he and his nation lay under smarting scourges of the Almighty: how did his plagues increase with his iniquities? And he may be set before us as an emblem of sinners, and their sufferings, under the wrath of God in hell, as in Rom. ix. 17, 18.
Or perhaps as the wicked of this world when they die, have left evil and pernicious examples behind them, or have corrupted the morals of their neighbours by their enticements, or their commands, or by their wicked influence of any kind, so their punishment may be increased in proportion to the lasting effects of their vile example, or their vicious influences. And perhaps, too, there are none among all the ranks of the damned, whose souls will be filled so high with the dread and horror of increasing woes, as lewd and profane writers, profane and immoral princes, or cruel persecutors of religion. Jeroboam, the king, not only sinned himself grievously, but ‘made Israel to sin,’ as the scripture frequently expresses it with an emphasis, by setting up the idolatry of calves in the land, 1 Kings xiv, and xv, and xvi. His ghost stood fair for such an increase of torment from age to age, as his idolatry prevailed further in the land. And all the wanton poets and the vile persecutors, whether of heathen or of Christian name, whose writings, whose example, or whose laws have conveyed and propagated their wickedness from age to age after their decease, will be some of these wretched expectants of new and increasing punishment.
Have a care, 0 ye witty and ye mighty sinners! have a care of setting vile temptations and bad examples before the men of your age! have a care of spreading the contagion of your vices around you, by the softness and the force of your allurements! have a care of establishing iniquity by a law, and propagating loose and wicked opinions, or of encouraging persecution for conscience-sake! Take heed lest the cursed influence of your crimes should descend from generation to generation among the iiving, long after you are dead, and should call for new and sharper strokes from the punishing hand of the Almighty!
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But suppose there were nothing else but the long dreadful view of the eternity of their present miseries, with an everlasting despair of ease or deliverance, this would add unspeakably to their torment: The constant sensation of what they feel now, and the dread of what they must feel, is sufficient to make their wretchedness intolerable.
If all these springs of misery, which I have already mentioned, are, and will be found in the souls of damned sinners, there is no need of more to make them exquisitely miserable: and yet, since their bodies shall be raised from the dust, in order to be joined with their souls in punishment, as they were united in sin, why may we not suppose, that the great God will create bodies for them of such an unhappy mould and contexture, as shall be another perpetual source of pain and anguish? What if their bodies shall be raised with all the seeds of disease in them, like the gout or the stone, or any more smarting malady? And what if the smart of these bodily distempers should mingle with the raging passions of the mind, as far as it is consistent with immortality and everlasting duration? Who can say, that when God exerts ‘his power and makes his wrath known,’ in punishing obstinate, rebellious, and impenitent sinners, as Rom. ix. he will not frame such bodies for them to dwell in, as shall be a hateful burden, and an incessant plague to them through all ages of their duration? And perhaps these bodily pains may be also included in the metaphor of a ‘gnawing’ worm bred within them, ‘which shall never die,’ which shall never cease to fill them with grievous anguish.
Here perhaps, it may be enquired, are there not multitudes of men in this world, who are not sinners of the grosser kind, but have lived, in the main, in the practice of the common social duties, and have maintained the usual forms of religion, according to the outward rules of the gospel, and the’ custom of their nation, but they have been negligent indeed of any sincere repentance towards God, and have been strangers to inward vital religion throughout their whole course? Shall these creatures, who seem to stand in a sort of indifferent character, who are outwardly blameless, with regard to common morality, and have exercised the common virtues of justice and benevolence towards their fellow-creatures, perhaps under the influences of education or custom, or perhaps by the effect that reason or philosophy, or other inward fears, have had toward the restraint of their passions and appetites; I say, shall such sort of creatures as these be filled with those furies of rage and resentment against God, envy and malice toward their fellow-sinners, and all the vile and unsociable passions in these regions of misery, which they have never found working in them here on earth, or but m a low degree? Shall all the torments and inward anguish of soul that you have been describing, fall upon this rank of sinners, whom the eye of the world could hardly distinguish from good men, and who were very far from the character of wicked?
I answer,’ 1st, that however there may seem to be three sorts of persons in our esteem, viz. the good, the bad, snd the indifferent, yet the word of God seems to acknowledge but two sorts, viz. ‘Those who fear God and serve him, and those who fear him not, Mai. iii. 18, those who have acted from principles of inward religion, or the love of God, and those who had no such principle within them and therefore the scripture reveals and declares but two sorts of states in the future world, viz. that of e rewards and punishments,’ or that of ’ happiness and misery:’ and, as God the righteous Judge is intimately acquainted with all the secret principles and workings of every heart, he alone knows who have practised virtue sincerely from pious principles, and who have had no such principles within them. He well distinguishes who they are that have complied with the rules of the dispensation under which they have lived, or who have not complied with it: and such as may have the good esteem of men may be highly offensive to God, who knows all things, and may be worthy of his final punishment. ‘The Judge of the whole earth will do right.’*
* It has been the opinion of some writers in order and in later times, that the vast numbers of indifferent persons who have neither been evidently holy nor evidently wicked, shall be sent to a new state of trial in the other world; but I can find nothing of this doctrine in the Bible, nor any hint of it, unless in that obscure text of St. Peter, 1 Epist. ch. iii. 19, where Christ is said ’ to go and preach to the spirits’ of those sinners who were drowned in the flood of Noah, which may be construed to another sense with truth and justice. — Watts.
The true sense of this passage is clearly given by Henry, Scott, Doddridge, Clarke, and other commentators, which the reader can consult at his convenience. I shall here subjoin Macnight’s view of the passage, in which he
And since he has declared it to be his rule of judgment, that he will reward every one according to their works, and it shall be much more tolerable for some of those creatures than it shall be for others, by reason of their lesser crimes, or their nearer approaches to virtue and piety, so it is certain he will act in perfect justice and equity towards every criminal, and none shall be punished above their demerits, though no impenitent sinner shall go unpunished.
We do not, therefore, imagine, that every condemned criminal shall have the same degree of inward raging passions, the same madness and fury against God and their fellow-creatures, nor the same anguish of conscience as those who have been more grossly and obstinately wicked and vicious, and have wilfully refused and renounced the well known offers of grace and salvation. There are innumerable degrees of inward punishment and pain, according to the degrees of sin.
JSnsiv. 2. It should be added too, that that world of punishment is also a world of increasing wickedness, and those that have had some natural virtues, and some appearances of goodness here, may and will renounce it all in the world to come, where they find themselves punished for their impenitence and irreligion, and their criminal neglect of God and godliness: and the least and the lightest of the punishments of damned souls will, be terrible enough,
briefly and clearly expresses the opinion common to the great body of protestant divines and expositors. —” Christ is said, by the same Spirit who made him alive, to have preached to the antediluvians, because his Spirit in spited Noah to preach to them, as is plain from Gen. vi. 3. ‘My Spirit shall not always strive with man.’ Hence Noah is called ’ a preacher of righteousness,’ 2 Pet. ii. 5. By attributing the preaching of the ancient prophets to Christ, the apostle hath taught us, that from the beginning the. economy of man’s redemption hath been under the direction of Christ. Accordingly the same apostle hath expressly affirmed, 1 Pet. i. 11. that the Spirit
who was in the ancient prophets was the Spirit of Christ Eph.
ii. 15 — 17. ‘Having abolished,’ &c. ’ and came and preached peace to you who were afar ofl”, and to them who were nigh.’ [Now] it is certain, that our Lord, after his resurrection, did not go personally to the Gentiles to preach peace to them: he preached to them by his apostles only. But if Christ is said by Paul to go and do, what he did by his apostles, he may with equal propriety be said by Peter, to go and do what he did by his
prophet Noah [The antediluvians] were men on earth in the flesh
when Christ preached to them by his Spirit speaking in Noah; but they are now ’ spirits in prison,’ detained like the fallen angels, (Jude 6,) ’ unto the judgment of the great day.’ — Ed.
and yet not surpass the desert of their offences. They have been all in greater or less degrees, treasuring up food for this immortal worm, and fuel for this fire, which is unquenchable.
Besides, it may be added here, that in threatenings the Holy Scripture generally expresses them in their highest degrees, and most formidable appearances, on purpose to secure men from coming near the peril and border of them.
This shall suffice to explain the first part of the metaphor in my text, i. e. ‘The worm that dieth not.’
§ II. The fire shall not be quenched.
I proceed now to consider the second part of the description of hell in the nature of it, as it is represented by our Saviour, and that is, that ‘the fire is never quenched/
Fire signifies the medium or instrument of torture from without, which God has threatened to employ in the punishment of guilty creatures, even as the gnawing worm signifies their inward torment. Fire applied to the sensible and tender parts of the flesh, gives the sharpest pain of any thing that comes within our common notice, and it is used in scripture to signify the punishments of damned sinners, and the wrath of God in the world to come. And perhaps that text is the foundation of it, Isa. xxx. last verse, ‘Tophet is ordained of old, he has made it deep and large, the pile thereof is fire and much wood, and the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.’ This Tophet was a place in the valley of Hinnom, where children were wont to be burnt in sacrifice to the idol Moloch; and from these Hebrew words, hell in the New Testament is called Geenna, because of the burning torture and the terrible shrieks of dying children in the valley of Hinnom.
This description of Hell by fire is used by our Saviour and his Apostles, in their speeches and writings on this subject. Hell-fire is mentioned six times in six verses where my text lies; the last sentence of judgment passed upon sinners, as it is represented by our Saviour, is expressed in the same language, Matt, xxv, ‘Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.’ The Apostle Paul, speaking of the return of Christ, 2 Thess. i. 8, asserts that ’ he shall appear in flaming fire, to take vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel:’ and in Rev. xiv. 10, 1 1, as well as in other parts of this book, the final punishment of sinners is represented by fire and brimstone,’ as the instruments of their torment.
It is true indeed, spirits or beings which have no body cannot feel burning by material fire, unless they are united to some sort of material vehicles; but that God will use material fire, to punish obstinate and rebellious sinners hereafter at the resurrection, is not improbable, though it is very hard to say with full assurance. Since the bodies of the wicked are to be raised again, it is not at all unlikely that their habitation shall be a place of fire, and their bodies may be made immortal to endure the smart and torture without consuming. Did not this God, by his almighty power and mercy, preserve the bodies of Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, in the burning furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, so that the fire had no power to consume or destroy them? and cannot his power do the same thing under the influence of his justice as well as of his mercy? May they not be maintained forever in their existence to endure the appointed and deserved vengeance? If the blessed God has ’ with much long-suffering borne with these vessels of wrath,’ under their repeated oppositions to his law and gospel, and they still go on in their vice, obstinacy and impenitence, and have ’ fitted themselves for destruction,’ surely he will ’ make his wrath and power known’ in their punishment, as St. Paul expresses it, Rom. ix, and when the power and wrath of God unite to punish a creature, how miserable must that creature be?
It is certain, that God has been pleased in his word frequently to make use of fire, brimstone, burning, smoke, darkness, and chains, and every thing that is painful and noisome to nature on earth, in order to represent the miseries that he has prepared for sinners in hell: and we must suppose that all these metaphors, if they are but mere metaphors, carry with them a sense of most intense pain and anguish with which God will afflict the bodies, as well as the spirits of those guilty creatures, who have rebelled against his majesty, rejected his mercy, and exposed themselves to his indignation. But what particular instruments and methods of punishment, what other elements or means of torture the great God will make use of to execute his sentence in this tremendous work, is more than we can now declare, because God has not fully declared it. And I pray God none of us may be ever doomed to learn it by terrible experience. But if there be nothing but fire, the anguish will be intolerable, as one bi our poets expresses it,
In liquid burnings, or on dry, to dwell,
Is all the sad variety of hell.
Or what if the Almighty, who has all nature, with all its powers, at his command, should employ other material instruments for the execution of his deserved wrath? What if he should choose the alternate extremes of fire and frost, as some have imagined, to torment those impenitent criminals? Or what if the creatures which they have abused to their impious and brutish purposes, should be made instruments and mediums of their punishment? Wine may be rendered a frequent means of sickness, agony and pain to the drunkard, and meat and other dainties to the glutton, and gold to the covetous wretches who made gold their god, that they may all remember their crimes and their sufferings. The wisdom of God will execute the sentence of his justice in the most honourable manner.
And after all, if we call away our thoughts from fire, and every material instrument of pain, which the great God may employ in punishing obstinate rebels, and survey only those acute and dreadful impressions of horror and anguish, which a just and holy God may make on sinful spirits in an immediate manner in hell, this would overwhelm our souls with insupportable agonies. ‘Who knows the power of thine anger? For according to thy fear, so is tby wrath,’ says Moses, Psal. xc. Our fears do not rise above those evils which the wrath of God will inflict. Who knows what are those arrows of the Almighty, of which Job speaks, ’ the poison whereof drank up his spirits, and those terrors of God which set themselves in array against him V WTho knows what our Saviour felt in the hour of his agony and atonement for our sins, which made him sweat drops of blood? And what sort of terrible impressions God himself may make of his own wrath and vengeance, on the heart of such criminals as wilfully reject his salvation, is beyond our thoughts to conceive, or our language to express.
This much shall suffice concerning the metaphor of fire, and the hand of God himself in kindling this fire for the execution of his sentence against impenitents. But since
I have entered so far into this subject, I cannot think it proper entirely to finish it, without giving notice of some different and dreadful additions to their torment which will arise from evil angels, and from their companions in sin and misery among the children of men: for in the agonies of our Saviour, men and devils joined together to afflict him, when it ‘pleased the Father to bruise him, and to make his soul an offering for our sins.’
I. ‘Evil angels, wicked and unclean spirits, with all their furious dispositions and active powers, will increase the misery of the damned.’ They paved the way to hell for man by the first temptation of our parents in paradise, and they have been ever since busy in tempting the children of men to sin, and they will be hereafter as busy in giving them torment. When these wicked spirits, 0 sinner, who have taken thee as a willing captive by their baits and devices in this world, have led thee down through the paths of vice to the regions of sorrow, they will begin then to insult thee with hateful reproaches, and to triumph over thee with insolence and scorn. When they have deceived thee on earth, to thy own perdition, they will make thee the object of their bitter ridicule and mockery in hell.
0 could we turn aside the veil of the invisible world,, and hold the bottomless pit open before you, what bitter groans of ghosts would you hear, not only oppressed and agonizing under the wrath of a righteous God, but also under the insults of cruel devils? As there is joy among the angels of heaven when a sinner repents,’ or when a soul arrives safely at those blessed mansions; so when a rebellious and obstinate criminal is sent down to hell, you would hear the triumphs of those malicious spirits over him, with the voice of insulting pride, and hellish joy. And while they domineer over you, and tear you as roaring lions, who seek and tear their prey, you will curse yourselves a thousand times for hearkening to their deceitful allurements. You will vent your rage against yourselves at the same time that they scoff at you as eternal fools, who have lost a God, and a heaven, and immortal happiness, by your own madness and folly in hearkening to their temptations.
II. * The mutual upbraidings of fellow-sinners and fellow-sufferers among the children of men, will aggravate your wretchedness day and night without end.’ Those who drew each other into foul iniquities, shall fill the ears of each other with loud and sharp reproaches for their mutual influence on both their ruin, and shall charge their damnation, and all their heavy sorrows, as a heavy load on each other’s souls. Some of those who have been joined in the nearest ties of kindred and friendship, while they dwelt in flesh and blood, shall be the terrible instruments of their keenest remorse and vexation, and teaze their spirits with endless upbraidings.
Here the ’ sons of pride,’ that most hateful iniquity, shall be overwhelmed, with huge mortification and disdain. The mighty sinner shall be insulted by the meanest of the crowd, and princes shall be bearded and affronted by those gay slaves of the court, whom they once employed in flattering and adoring them. They were once vain enough to believe, that they were something more than mortal; but now they are spurned by those very flatterers with a foot of contempt, and their eternal pride still swellings gives their own hearts new stings and twinges at every resentment. None but a proud and haughty creature here in this world, who has sometimes met with scorn and insult from his inferiors, can speak feelingly of the exquisite sensibility of these torments of a soul in hell.
But besides this, there are many sinners who lived in malice, and who died wTith their hearts full of revenge against their fellow-sinners; and when they shall meet them in those deplorable regions, how natural is it to suppose they will endeavour to execute this revenge upon them without end and without mercy? For it may be easily supposed, that malice, revenge, and cruelty, which are the proper character of devils, shall not be abated among the children of men, when they are grown so near akin in their tempers to those evil spirits, and are now forever mingled amongst them.
And yet further, who knows what the damned in hell shall endure from the endless brawls and bitter quarrels among themselves? What new contentions will arise perpetually in such a country, where it is perhaps the practice and custom of the place, and the nature of the inhabitants, for the most part, to make every one of their fellows as uneasy and as miserable as they can? 0 what mad and furious pride, and malice, and every hellish pasysion, will be raging almost in every bosom against all those who are near them, and this in a dark prison where all are intensely tormented, and where there is no such thing as compassion or sincere love, nothing to sooth each other’s sorrows, but every thing that may add to the smart and anguish!
0 that the present survey of these horrors of soul, these complicated distresses and miseries from within us and without us, from every quarter of heaven and hell, from the ‘gnawing worm’ within us, and from the ‘fire’ of the wrath of God, and the mutual insults, railings and injuries of men and devils, might all lie with its due weight upon our spirits now, while we are in the land of hope; that every one of us may be awakened to a timely concern about our highest interest, and hasten to make our escape as Lot did from Sodom, lest the sentence of death be pronounced upon us while we delay, and the fiery deluge overtake us.
But here I would tarry a little to answer a repeated objection, viz. the terror of this outward punishment from the hand of God, which is described by ‘avenging fire,’ is so severe and intolerable, that it awakens some lesser criminals to raise the same cavil against this ‘unquenchable fire,’ or God’s punishing hand, as was raised before against the ‘never-dying worm,’ or the inward anguish of soul arising from its own conscience.
It is possible some lesser sinner, who has had more appearances of piety or religion here on earth, may rise and say, you have set the punishments of sin in a most horrible and tremendous light, from this metaphor of ‘fire,’ as well as from the deathless ‘worm:’ but surely this cannot be the case, nor these the sufferings which God will inflict on every wretched creature in hell. Are not the punishments there proportioned to the offences? What if these sharpest and deepest tortures and horrors should be the portion of the vilest criminals, the most impious rebels against God, the profane and obstinate abusers of grace, the scoffers at Christ and his gospel, and the cruel persecutors of all the saints, yet will every soul who had not quite religion and holiness enough to reach heaven, be thus terribly tormented in hell? Does not Christ himself tell us, and did you not allow before, that it shall be more tolerable for some sinners than for others? And will there be no easier abodes, no milder regions, no kinder and more favourable appointments for such as have many good wishes and hopes, many friendly exercises of virtue towards men, and some workings of imperfect piety toward God?
To this I answer, as before, it is certain that ‘every one shall be judged according to their works,’ by an unerring rule of equity, and shall be punished according to the aggravation of their iniquities. But dost thou know, 0 sinner, how great is that punishment which the least transgression against the law of God deserves? One single sin, which thou wilt not part with, will create insufferable misery. And though there may be other criminals there of much more heinous and aggravated guilt, profaneness, and rebellion than thine is, yet if thy soul be filled with all that torment which one sin may create and deserve, there will be hell enough around thee to make thy distress too terrible for thee to bear.
Besides, let it be remembered, that whatsoever tendencies toward piety, or appearances of goodness, might be found with thee in this world, all these will vanish and be lost, when once thy day of grace is finished, and all the means of grace and salvation are ended forever. If thou hast refused the proposals of mercy, and continued in thy sins without repentance, and hast never accepted the salvation of Christ while it was offered, all the good ‘that thou seemedst to have shall be taken from thee,’ Matt, xxv. 29, or rather thy heart itself will grow more hard, thy will more obstinate against God, and every evil passion will rise, and prevail, and make thee perhaps as very a devil as thy companions in guilt and misery. It is for those who would not part with their beWed sins, which were as dear as ‘right hands,’ or as ‘right eyes,’ that the ‘never-dying worm’ and the ‘unquenchable fire’ are prepared, as the context itself informs us in this place. And as the worm of conscience, even for lesser sins, will gnaw thy heart with intense anguish, so the vengeance of divine fire will torment thee with exquisite pain, though thy pain and thy anguish shall not be equal to what greater criminals endure. But it is wise and kind in the blessed God to denounce the terrors and sanctions of his law in their utmost severity, to guard his law the better against every transgression, and to frighten and secure his creatures from sin and punishment.
Trifle not, therefore, 0 sinner, with the means of mercy, and venture not upon little sins, in hope of little misery, nor dare to continue in an impenitent state without God, without Christ and his salvation, upon a foolish presumption that thy sins are but small, and thy punishment shall be less than others: for the least of those sorrows will be found greater than any mortal creature can bear, and therefore thou shalt be made immortal to suffer them.
It is granted, there are many mansions in hell, as well as in heaven, but, as the lowest mansion in heaven is happiness, so the easiest place in hell is misery.
There is another objection arises here, which it is necessary to give some answer to; viz. if the punishments of hell are so intense and terrible, between the worm of conscience, the fire of God’s anger, and the malice of evil spirits, surely it will work up human nature into extacy and madness; it will take away all the regular exercise of our natural powers; it will render us perhaps mere passive miserable beings, of keen sensations without reasoning. This is certain, that such and so various tortures would have that influence upon our natures at present, and why should it not hereafter? And will the blessed God continue to punish creatures when their reason is lost? What can punishments avail?
I answer, surely God will not continue to punish madmen; therefore none of these torments shall extinguish our reason, or destroy our intellectual powers; for it is as creatures of reason and free-will that sinners are thus punished, and therefore these powers must remain in their proper exercise; besides, the very operation of these powers in self-ccndemnation, and self-upbraiding, are part of their punishment. But whether God will so fortify the natures of the damned, which probably shall not be made of flesh and blood, and enable them to bear such intense pain without distraction, or whether the highest extremes of their torment shall only be inflicted at some certain periods or intervals, so that they shall soon return to their reasoning powers again, with bitter remembrance of what passed, this matter is hard to determine; and because it is unwritten and unrevealed, I am silent. But it still remains, that punishment shall be so intense and severe, as becomes a God of holiness and justice to inflict on rebellious and obstinate creatures.
§ III. Reflections on the nature of these ‘punishments.
It is time now that we should proceed to form some special ‘reflections on the nature of the punishments of hell,’ such as they have been described in the foregoing discourse.
The first is this; ’ what dreadful and unknown evil is contained in the nature of sin which grows up into such misery, which breeds this stinging worm in the conscience, which prepares the creature for such fiery torments, and which provokes God to inflict them? The * vessels of wrath have prepared themselves’ for it, as the Apostle intimates, by their own sins, Rom. ix. 22, ‘they are fitted for destruction:’ nor does all the intense and infinite anguish of this punishment exceed the desert of our sins. The great God, in a way of bounty, may often bestow upon us vastly beyond what our little services can ever pretend to have deserved, but he never punishes beyond our deserts.
What a dangerous and pernicious mistake is it in the children of men to sport with sin, as with a harmless thing? It is much safer sporting with a poisonous serpent, or with burning firebrands. The serpent has many gay and pleasing colours on its skin, and appears a very charming creature, which tempts children and fools to play with it: and the same ignorance inclines them sometimes to sport with fire, because of its shining brightness: and till they are burnt with the fire, or bit by the serpent, they will not forsake their foolish choice, nor be convinced of their danger. Such is the case and temper of sinful mortals: their senses indulge the pleasing flatteries of sin, and are fond of its tempting amusements, till they feel the smart of the fire raging in their bosoms, and the adder stings them to death. Thus the wise man describes the flatteries of wine in the view of the drunkard, Prov. xxiii. 31, 32: but the same wise man pronounces every one ‘a fool what makes a mock at sin,’ or trifles with so formidable a mischief, Prov. xiv. 9.
How vain are the gay fancies of sinful men in the hour of temptation, and how shacking and dreadful will be their disappointment? They think the descriptions of sin, which are blown up and kindled into such terror by the lips of the preacher, are but as mock-fire which never 36 t2 burns; but the great day of vengeance, which makes haste towards them, will terribly and eternally convince them of the iatal mischief of it by the various plagues that shall seize upon them. The living worm shall gnaw their consciences, and the fire of God will torment their spirits, and spread a raging anguish through their whole natures; and every twinging accent of their pain shall teach them, but with a terrible and hopeless conviction, ’ what unspeakable evil is contained in sin.’ They will then find what a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God,’ who has a right, and power to punish, and who will punish, Heb. x. 31.
0 that each of us might arrive at this holy wisdom, to learn the dreadful ’ evil of sin’ from this Bible, this book of the divine law and grace, and not provoke the blessed God to teach us so necessary a lesson by the rod of his vengeance! 0 that we could look upon every unlawful action, and particularly every sin against conscience, as the seed of that worm which will gnaw our souls in hell with intense pain, as part of that fuel which is kindling into a flame to torment our consciences forever, and that under the powerful influences of these representations of sin we might flee to the utmost distance from it with horror, and make our safe escape!
Reflect. II. If the punishments of hell, appointed by the blessed God, carry so much terror in them, ’ how much mistaken are the sinful children of men in the ideas which they form of the great and blessed God? This representation of the vengeance of the Lord in hell may be of use to refute such mistaken opinions.
Some have framed a God for themselves; not such as dwells in the heavens, not such as he has described himself in his word; but their vain imagination has raised up an idol made of mere goodness and mercy, without holiness and justice. It is their own self-love which forms this idle and foolish image of the God that made them, because they do not like to think of falling under the terrors of his power. They venture to affront him to his face, they dare him to vengeance; and as the writer of the book of Job expresses it, ’ they stretch out their hands against God, they strengthen themselves against the Almighty, they run upon him with insolence, and venture, upon the thick bosses of his buckler,’ Job xv. 25. There are multitudes in our day that are arrived at such a dreadful height of impiety, as to call upon him for the damnation of themselves, as well as of their friends, in sport and merriment. They will not believe that the blessed God will ever be found so severe and formidable as preachers describe him; and ‘because judgment is not speedily executed’ against the men of iniquity, ‘therefore the sons of men have their hearts set in them to do mischief. Madness is in their hearts,’ Eccles. viii. 11, and ix. 3. Because God delays his indignation they will not believe he has any belonging to him, notwithstanding all the terrible words by which he is represented by the prophets, the apostles, and the Son of God himself. And while they rush boldly on those crimes which God has severely forbidden, they are ready to think ‘God is just such an one as themselves,’ regardless of virtue and government, Psal. 1. 21: and because they make nothing of sin, they imagine God will make nothing of it.
0 that the sons of men would once learn to know God better, for ‘there are many who have not the true knowledge of God, I speak it to their shame, when they’ fancy he is all made up of gentleness and forbearance, without holiness and justice! Alas, sirs, these attributes are as necessary in God as grace and compassion. He is and he must be a wise, a righteous governor of the world; and his wisdom requires that impenitent sinners should be punished, to secure the honour of his law, and to guard his gospel from contempt.* These awful perfections of the blessed God are as necessary to vindicate his authority and his government from insult and rebellion, as his goodness is needful to encourage sinful creatures to repent and return to their duty. The word of God expressly tells us, he is a God of ‘holiness and a consuming fire,’ Heb. xii. 29; but there is many a sinner that will never learn
* A governor made up of mere goodness and mercy, could be no governor at all; for it is absurd to call that a government, where every subject may do what iniquity and mischief he pleases with impunity. The laws of such a government would cease to be laws, and become mere rules and directions for living, which every one might observe or not, just according to his inclination. To say that it became the wisdom of God to threaten offenders, but that his goodness will interpose in the end and hinder the punishment, is to say, that God is not wise; for if he were, he would certainly have taken care not to let those men into the secret. Bishop Hort’s sermons, p. 315.
this lessor, till the torments of hell teach ii him by dismal experience. They have trifled with his majesty, and mocked at his threatenings all their life, till at the moment of death he awakes like a lion, and tears their spirits with everlasting; anrniish.
I might take notice also in this place, that there is another mistaken notion of God, into which some persons have unhappily fallen, as ‘though God were the cause and author of sin,’ and have spoken unadvisedly with their lips, in such language as borders too near upon blasphemy. But it is evident, that a God, who will punish the sins of men with such intense pain and torment, can never be so inconsistent with himself as to be the author or cause of those sins. It is granted, that his universal providence has a concern in every thing that is transacted among men, but since he has informed us in what a dreadful manner he will execute his vengeance against sinners in the world to come, it is insolence and indignity against the blessed God to represent him as introducing sin into our world. ‘Let God be true, though every man be a liar;’ let God be pure, and righteous, and holy, though every man be found guilty and criminal: ‘otherwise, how shall God judge the world?’ How can he inflict such torments on rebellious creatures, if he constrain or influence them to practise this rebellion? All opinions therefore, that allow of such an inference, as though ‘God were the author of sin,’ must be pronounced false and pernicious to men, as well as injurious to the justice of God; for these notions throw a vile imputation on the blessed God, and charge him with heinous insincerity, to forbid the commission of sin by all these terrors, and yet suppose him to influence men to the practice of them.
Reflect. III. ‘How reasonable is it for us to believe, that such a hell, as I have described, is prepared for impenitent sinners, since there are so many appearances of the beginnings of it here on earth,’ so many indications, and signs, and forerunners of such misery and torment inflicted on sinful men. Survey the remarkable executions of God’s judgments on the world in several ages and nations; look back to our first parents, who were thrust out of paradise, the garden of pleasure, and banished from the gates of it forever, upon the account of the first sin, and the entrance of it was guarded by a flaming sword to forbid their return.
Behold the flood of watery vengeance in the days of Noah breaking up from the vast caverns of the earth, and pouring down from the windows of heaven to punish sin. ‘Deep calls unto deep’ in the tremendous noise of these waterspouts, which spread death and desolation over the face of the whole earth, ‘because all flesh had sinned’ against God their Creator. Turn your eyes to Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain, ‘suffering the vengeance’ of heaven with lightning and devouring fire bursting from the clouds to punish the unnatural crimes of that country. See the fiery flying serpents, as the messengers of divine anger, to punish the rebellion of the Israelites, in the wilderness. Mark what multitudes in the camp of Israel received their mortal sting, and were given up to destruction and death. Cast your eyes abroad over the nations, and what records have we of all former ages, which do not manifest the vengeance of God pursuing the iniquities of men, by wars, and famines, and pestilences, and every thing that is bitter and dreadful to human nature. See Jerusalem, the city of God, all in flames, and the whole land of Judea laid desolate with deepest distress, diffused and reigning among all the inhabitants of it. Above a million of them were actually slaughtered and consumed by famine and sword, as a sacrifice to the anger of God. for their long provocations, and the cruel barbarous murder of his Son Jesus. And when you have taken all these surveys, then tell me if such terrors of the Lord do not. give us sufficient warning what unknown agonies and destructions may be expected by obstinate and impenitent sinners from the hand of God, when the utmost limits of his patience restrain his wrath no longer, but his wisdom gives a loose to all his fiery indignation.
To inforce this yet upon your hearts, think again of all the pains and torments of flesh and spirit, which arise from the distempers of body, and from the anguish of soul, even in this present state of trial, this land of hope, this season of divine long-suffering. Go to the hospitals, where the gout, and stone, and rheumatism, and a thousand maladies torture the nerves and the joints of men with intolerable smart; and infer thence what God will inflict both on the flesh and spirit, or the soul and body of sinners in the day of his complete vengeance, when his offers of mercy and the years of his grace are come to
SJ8tl THE NATURE OP THE
their last period. Go and survey the fields of battle and slaughter, where thousands of the dead and the dying are mingled in confused heaps, and groan out their souls in long anguish and extreme torture, with bruises and wounds and all the smarting effects of the instruments of war. Now if all these things come under the conduct of divine providence in a sinful world, which is yet in a way of nope, what may those resolved and obstinate rebels expect, when all the doors of hope are shut up forever, and providence has nothing to do on earth or in hell, but to execute the vengeance of God.
Shall we take one step yet further, and think of the inward pangs of conscience, which some awakened criminals have felt in this life on the account of sin, when the arrows of God have been shot into their souls, and the poison thereof lies drinking up their spirits? Think what dreadful ferments of passion, and rage, and hatred of God have been found in the hearts of some sinful creatures, when they have grown mad with revenge against God, and against themselves, and envy against all their fellow-mortals, who are not in the same circumstances; think yet again how terribly their misery must be aggravated, when the torture of everlasting despair attends all the rest of the pains and sorrows they suffer; and then say, if the description of a future hell in the word of God may not be true and real. What anguish beyond all the power of present thought and language, may seize all the powers of wilful and impious rebels against the authority and the mercy of God, when all the stores of his vengeance that have been treasuring up for many years, shall be poured out upon them without any mitigation or mixture of mercy.
Reflect. IV. ‘It is matter of surprise, and great astonishment, that thousands and ten thousands of the sinful children of men, from clay to day, and from year to year, are walking on the borders of all this misery, and yet are so thoughtless and unconcerned about it.’ They carry peaceful and easy minds in the midst of this dreadful danger, and while they have all the symptoms of the children of wrath upon them, they live without fear, and make no effort toward their escape. Wretched creatures indeed! Who have a mortal disease upon them that will breed this growing worm of conscience, that will grow up into all this anguish and distress, and yet are senseless of their own peril, unacquainted with their own state of soul, and are daily treading their earthly rounds of business and of pleasure with a merry heart. All the heavy artillery of divine vengeance is ready to be discharged upon them as soon as ‘the door of death opens and lets them into the invisible world; and yet they walk on fearless and joyful, and have no guard or defence from all this misery, besides their own vain presumption. Stupid creatures, to lie down at night, and awake in the morning within an inch of hell, and yet secure and fearless! They live without God in the world,’ and that even in this land of light and hope, where he offers to visit them with all his graces; and yet they are hasting hourly to the eternal world, where they must meet and behold him in all his terrors.
Will nothing awaken you, 0 ye obstinate transgressors against God, ye obstinate rejecters of his grace and gospel? Will nothing warn you to flee from the wrath to come? But just thus it was in the days of Noah; the sinners of that generation would not hearken to that preacher of righteousness; and even when they saw the clouds of heaven grow big and black over their heads, and the rain began to be poured down from the skies, little did they imagine that it would have drowned the earth, till they were overwhelmed with the rising destruction. And so shall it be in the days of the Son of man, when all the warnings of the preachers have been despised, and the threatened vengeance of the book of God deridsd, when they have set up for bold and witty scoffers, and impudently demanded, ’ where is the promise of his coming?’ Then shall the great and terrible day of the Lord come, and pour out upon them the full measure of wrath and indignation.
Is it not time, my friends, to bethink yourselves, whether this be your case? Is it not time for every one of us to examine our souls? Am I exposed to this danger? Am I every moment on the brink of this misery, and yet content to continue so one night or one day longer? Can I eVer hope to escape the fury of God, while I thus abuse his patience? Or can I have any expectation of living with him as my God hereafter, if I never seek after him here? The face of God, as a stranger in the world to come, carries infinite terrors in it, and yet we are content to be strangers to him, and to live without his acquaintance. ‘The wrath of God abides upon’ every man who isunregenerale m this life, and ‘who has not trusted in the name of the Son of God,’ John iii. 36; yet they are thoughtless of it, for they feel it not; but the moment when they shall awake in the world of spirits, that wrath will be felt with sadden and dreadful anguish, as a mostunsupportable burthen, and will crush all the powers of the soul into torment.
Reflect. V. ‘It deserves and it demands our highest gratitude to the great God, our humblest acknowledgements and our most exalted praises to his majesty and his mercy, that we, who have long ago deserved this misery, are not yet plunged into the midst of it:’ that we have not been entirely cut off from the land of hope, and sent down to this destruction. Blessed be the name and the grace of our God for ever and ever.
While there are thousands who have been sent down to the place of punishment, whence there is no redemption, before they had continued so long in sin as many of us have done, what a peculiar instance is it of divine long-suffering and goodness, that we are not actually put under the sting of this living worm, under this fiery vengeance from the hand of God? What was there in us that should secure us from this destruction, while we continued in our state of guilt, rebellion and impenitence? Have we not seen many sinners on our right hand, and on our left, cut off in their sins, and to all appearance they seem to be sent down to the place of sorrows? What is it but the special mercy and distinguishing favour of God that has dealt thus kindly with us, and spared and saved us, week after week, and month after month, while we continued in our iniquities, and has given us space for repentance and hope? What shall we render to the Lord for all his patience and long-suffering, even to this day? How often have we incurred the penalty of the law of God, and the fiery sentence of condemnation by our repeated iniquities, both against the authority and the grace of God? And yet we are alive in his presence, and are hearing the words pf hope and salvation. 0 let us look back and shudder at the thoughts of that dreadful precipice, on the edge of which we have so long wandered. Let us flee for escape to the refuge that is set before us, and give a thousand glories to the divine mercy that we are not plunged into this perdition.
Reflect. VI. Let us learn from this description of hell, and our imminent danger of it, ’ the infinite value and worth of the gospel o§ Christ:’ this gospel, which calls us aloud to flee from the wrath to come, and points out to us the only effectual way to escape it. What can all the riches of the Indies do to relieve us under the guilt and distress into which sin has brought us? What can the favour of princes, and the flattering honours of the world do to rescue us from this danger? What can the highest gust of sensuality, and the most exquisite delights of flesh and blood do to secure us against this overwhelming misery? It is only the gospel of the blessed Jesus which is our refuge, and our safety from the tremendous destruction.
What are the heights, and depths, and lengths of human science, with all the boasted acquisitions of the brightest genius of mankind? Learning and science can measure the globe, can sound the depths of the sea, can compass the heavens, can mete out the distances of the sun and moon, and mark out the path of every twinkling star for many ages past, or ages to come: but they cannot acquaint us with the way of salvation from this long, this endless distress. What are all the sublime reasonings of philosophers upon the abstruse and most difficult subjects? What is the whole circle of sciences which human wit and thought can trace out and comprehend? Can they deliver us from the guilt of one sin? Can they free us from one of the terrors of the Almighty? Can they assuage the torment of a wounded spirit, or guard us from the impressions of divine indignation? Alas! they are all but trifles, in comparison of this blessed gospel, which saves us from eternal anguish and death.
It is the gospel that teaches us the holy skill to prevent this worm of conscience from gnawing the soul, and instructs us how to kill it in the seed and first springs of it, to mortify the corruptions of the heart, to resist the temptations of Satan, and where to wash away the guilt of sin. It is this blessed gospel that clearly discovers to us how we may guard against the fire of divine wrath, or rather how to secure our souls from becoming the fuel of it. It is this book that teaches us to sprinkle the blood of Christ on a guilty conscience by faith, i. e. by receiving him as sincere penitents, and thereby defends us from the angel of death and destruction. This is that experimental philosophy of the saints in heaven, whereby they have been re- 37 Z leased from the bonds of their sins, have been rescued from the curse of the law, and been secured from the gnawing worm and the devouring fire.
A serious meditation of hell in its exquisite pain and sorrow, will enhance our value of the salvation of Christ, and will exalt our esteem and honour of the love of God, who has delivered us from eternal death. If we will but appoint our thoughts to dwell a little on the terrors and vengeance from which the blessed Jesus has rescued us by his glorious undertaking, if we will stretch the powers of our souls, and survey the lengths, and the breadths, and the depths of this distress and misery, which we have deserved, this will discover to us the heights, and the depths, and the lengths of his love, who submitted himself to the curses of the law of God, ‘and was made a curse for us,’ that he might redeem us to the possession of an eternal blessing, Gal. iii. 23. This will shew us what exceeding riches of the grace of God have been laid out upon us for our salvation. This will spread before us the unmeasurable love of Jesus, which has brought him down from the bosom of his Father into such agonies as he sustained in the garden, and on the cross, that he might rescue us from the wrath to come. 0 what immense and endless debts of gratitude and love are due from every ransomed sinner, who has been released from the bonds of his guilt, and from all this wretchedness, by the love of God the Father, and the grace of his Son Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and honour, and most exalted praise, forever and ever. Jlmen.