The Eternal Duration of the Punishments in Hell

Matik. ix. 46. Where their Worm dieth not, and the Fire is not quenched.

§ I. Arguments to prove the perpetuity of hell.

When the great and blessed God had a mind to make known his wisdom, his power, and his goodness amongst creatures, he built this world as a theatre, in which those perfections of his nature might be displayed amidst the various work of his hands. He spread it round with the blessings of life and pleasure, he overhung it with a canopy of skies and stars, and placed the glorious bodies of the sun and moon there, to appear in their alternate seasons; and even amidst the ruins which sin has brought into this world, yet still every eye may behold the traces of an almighty, an all-wise, and a bountiful God.

When the same divine and sovereign Being designed to exalt and diffuse the wonders of his grace among the best of his creatures, he built a heaven for them, and furnished it with unknown varieties of beauty and blessing: and we would hope in our appointed season to be raised to this upper world, and there to behold the riches of divine magnificence and mercy, and to be sharers thereof among the rest of the happy inhabitants.

But since sin and wickedness has entered into his creation of men and angels, he saw it necessary also to display the terrors of his justice, and to make his wrath and indignation known amongst rebellious creatures, that he might maintain a just awe and reverence of his own authority, and a constant hatred of sin through all his dominions. For this purpose he has built a hell, a dreadful building indeed, in some dismal region of his vast empire, where he has amassed together all that is grievous and formidable to sensible beings, and wicked spirits carry their own inward hell thither with them, a hell of sin and misery ;. and though he has sent his own Son to acquaint us with the distresses and agonies of that doleful world, and to warn us of the danger of failing into it; yet if any of us should be so unhappy as to continue in an obstinate state of impenitence and disobedience to God, we shall be made to confess, by dreadful experience, that not one-half hath been told us.

Therefore hath God set before us these terrors in his word, that we might flee from this wrath to come, and avoid these sufferings. And therefore do his ministers, by his commission, proceed to publish this vengeance and indignation of the Lord, that sinners might be awakened to lay hold on the hope that is set before them, and might be affrighted from plunging themselves into this pit of anguish, whence there is no redemption.

We have taken a short survey of these miseries, in the ‘kind and nature of them,’ in some former discourses, and we are now come to the last thing contained in our Saviour’s description of hell, and that is the ‘perpetuity’ of it. The misery is everlasting in both the parts of it; for ‘their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’ The arguments which shall be employed to prove it, are such as these.

I. Argument. The express words of Christ and his Apostles pronounce these punishments eternal; and surely these words are given to be the foundation of our faith and practice, and the rules of our hope and fear. My text seems to carry plain and unanswerable evidence in it. ‘Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’ And it is many times repeated in this chapter, and that with a special accent on the eternal duration of it, to make that circumstance of it more observed, and to aggravate the terror. Such an awful repetition from the lips of the Son of God should make the sound of the vengeance dwell longer on the ear, and the threatening sink deeper into the soul.

Let us next observe the final sentence which Christ, as Judge, pronounces against impenitent sinners among the sons of men, as well as against fallen spirits, in Matt. xxv. It is this, ‘Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. ‘And as soon as the sentence is pronounced, it is immediately executed, as our Saviour foretels, ‘in the last’ verse: ‘These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal.’ What he pronounces as a Judge, he foretels also as a Prophet, that it shall be put in execution.

The express word of God, in describing the punishment of sinners by the pen of his two apostles, Paul and John, declares the same thing, 2 Thes. i. 9, ‘They shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.’ And the book of Revelation gives us assurance that these miseries shall have no end. Rev. xiv. 10, 11. The ‘antichristian’ idolaters, ‘who worship the beast, shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out, without mixture, into the cup of his indignation, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.’ Jude the apostle bear a his testimony in the same manner, ver. 6; ‘the’ damned ‘spirits, who kept not their first station, are’ said to be ‘cast down’ into hell, ‘and bound in chains of everlasting darkness.’ Now, suppose a man plunged into a pit of thick darkness, by the command of God, and bound there with everlasting chains; what hope can he ever have of deliverance?

And if Christ, and his. apostles who were taught by him and by his blessed Spirit, assert this punishment shall be eternal, who shall dare to contradict them? Who is there so rash and confident as to say, ‘This torment shall not be everlasting, this worm one day shall die, and this fire shall be quenched?” Does it not approach to the crime of contradicting the Almighty, and the true.God?

II. Argument. There is a sort of infinite evil in sin, arising from the consideration of the person against whom it is committed, i. e. the great and blessed God: for every crime, according to the law of nations, and the common sense of Mankind, takes its aggravation from the dignity of the person offended, as well as from the heinousness of the act; so reproaches or assaults against a king, or a father, are much more criminal and heinous than the same assaults or reproaches cast on an equal or an inferior but all sin being an offence against God, an infinite object, and a violation of his law, is a dishonour of infinite Majesty, an affront to the divine authority, and therefore its aggravaz2 tions arise in that proportion to a sort of infinity, and require an equal punishment. But because the nature of a creature cannot suffer infinite punishment in the ‘intenseness of the pain,’ therefore he must bear it to an ‘infinite duration,’ i. e. to all everlasting.

When divine justice pronounces a sentence against the sinner, equal to the demerit of sin, it must be infinite, i. e. eternal; and the sinner shall never ‘be released from the prison’ and the punishment, ‘till he has paid the utmost farthing,’ Matth. ix. 25, and till he has made satisfaction to God, equal to his demands, and the demerit of the offence.

I know this argument is treated with much contempt and derision among those of the moderns, who would diminish the evil of sin, and shorten the punishment of it. But it is much easier to ridicule it than to answer it. A jest is no refutation. And after my best survey of it, I think, without prejudice or partiality, the force of it seems to me unanswerable as to the desert of sin; and I am not ashamed to employ it in the support of this truth.

But a very feeble opposition can be made to it by those who say, that ‘if sin be counted an infinite evil, and must have infinite punishment, then all sins are equal, and will require equal punishment,’ for there are no different degrees in infinity, or in things which are infinite.

But our Saviour has taught us, that there are certainly various degrees of punishment as well as of sin. He assures us that ‘it shall be more tolerable for’ the inhabitants of ‘Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than it shall be for Capernaum and Bethsaida,’ where he had preached and wrought his wonders, Luke x. 12, &c. and the reason is plain, viz. because the sins of Sodom were less than theirs.

And it is very easy to answer this pretence or objection about the equality of all sins, for sins may have different degrees of guilt and aggravation as to the act, where the object is the same, whether this object be finite or infinite; as the murder of a father or a king, is a much greater crime than a reproach or slander cast on the same persons. So the wilful hatred of God and blasphemy against him, with continued malice and public violent opposition to his name, or law, or gospel, are far greater sins than a single neglect of his daily worship for fear of persecution, or a distrusting his providence, though both have the same infinite Being, i. e. God, for their object; and in this sense there is a sort of infinity in each of the crimes.

And accordingly punishments may be proportioned to every crime, for they may differ greatly in the degree of severity and torture, though they may all be equal or eternal in the duration. Sodom and Gomorrah, Capernaum and Bethsaida, may all suffer infinite or everlasting sorrow, and yet the degrees of their pain may be exceedingly different all the while. They may have the same infinity of duration, though very different as to the intenseness or degree of the pain.

III. Argument. If the iniquities committed in this life were not punished with torment which is everlasting, yet the damned in hell are ever sinning against God, and therefore they provoke the vengeance of God to continue his punishing hand upon them forever. The law of God, in all its demands of duty, its prohibitions of sin, as well as in its sanctions of punishment, continues forever in force in heaven, and earth, and hell, and we see not how it can be abrogated where it arises from the very nature of God and a creature: and ‘cursed is he that continues not in all things which the law requires, Gal. iii. Every new sin demands a new curse and a new punishment, and there is no reason which forbids a righteous governor to cease punishing, while the rebellious creature will not cease to offend, and especially while ne maintains an everlasting enmity and rebellion against the law of God his Creator.

If there were any humble meltings of repentance in the guilty soul, if there were any sincere mournings in the sinful creature for having offended his Maker, if there were any softness of heart, relenting under a sense of the evil of sin, and returning to obedience and duty, even this would not oblige a righteous and wise governor to forgive the criminal; repentance is no compensation for a wilful offence; nor is it thought unrighteous or unwise for a prince to punish even a penitent offender with death.

But let us propose the case in utmost favour to a sinner against the blessed God, let us imagine that divine wisdom and divine mercy perhaps might be supposed to contrive and to offer some proposals to justice in a way of compassion, and might enquire whether the sentence of punishment could not be reversed, Or the terror of it relieved, 01 some new state of trial proposed. Let it be added in favour of the criminal, that we do not find through all the book of God the actual practice of true repentance beginning among men, but it has been always followed with proportionable degrees of compassion from God. But, on the other side, when there is nothing found in the heart of a sinner but obstinacy, and malice, and revenge, cursing and blasphemy against the Almighty, without the least moving or melting into a genuine penitence or holy sorrow, without any meek submission to the majesty and justice of God, or humble imploring of his mercy, what reasonable hope can such wretches have, that their chains of darkness should be broken, and the prisoners released from vengeance? When they shall curse his justice, because it punishes their crimes, when they shall curse his mercy, because it did not save their souls, and curse and blaspheme the blood of the blessed Jesus, because it has not washed away their sins, what possible excuse can be made for such creatures? Or what possible expectation can there be for such criminals, but an everlasting continuance of the fiery indignation?

Here it will be replied., but why should we suppose, and much more, why should we affirm, that ’ the damned will never repent?’ Are they not free in the other world from this flesh and blood, wherein there are so many unruly passions and appetites? Are they not far remote from all the temptations of flesh and sense, of intemperance, ambition, and covetousness? Have they not understanding to see divine truths more clearly than in this world? Have they not reason to distinguish good and evil, and free-will to choose that which is good? Will they not hate all sin, since they have been so long taught the mischief of sin by their sufferings? And is there any thing fitter than their agonies and torture by fire, to make men know and feel the dreadful evil of sinning against God, and to awaken them to repentance?

To this I answer, let us judge a little concerning the sinners in hell, by the practice of sinners on earth. How many wretched creatures are there who have been long imprisoned, and perhaps punished for crimes against, the state, and yet persist in their rebellious temper, and are never convinced they were in the wrong, so far as to change their treason into sincere submission, repentance, and obedience? Was not Pharaoh, king of Egypt, an instance of the stubbornness and impenitence of human nature, when in opposition to ten dreadful plagues he would still pursue the flying Israelites, and destroy a people beloved of God? Is not hardness and enmity against the governor often increased by the severe punishments that criminals lie under? Have these punishments any sufficient power to soften their hearts into true repentance?

What though they do not live in the midst, of sensual temptations, yet who knows how far their spirits, having been immersed in flesh and blood, may carry with them inward raging appetites to those sinful sensualities and defiling pleasures, of which they are for ever deprived?

Let me ask again, have the devils ever repented in almost six thousand years? Are they not the same enemies to God, and his glory, and his image through all ages? And though the damned spirits of men are absent from this world, and their evil companions on earthj yet are they not in the fittest company to teach them pride, and rage, resentment and malice, and the most unfit to teach them humility, repentance, and obedience to God? And when they have perversely sinned away all the means of grace in this life, is it reasonable to imagine, that God will powerfully soften their hearts by his sovereign grace, since he has never given the least hint or instance of it in all the discoveries made in the Bible? And has it not been often one way of God’s punishing sinners here in this world, by letting them go on in their iniquity and madness to the end? And why may not the wisdom and justice of God see fit to treat sinners, who have been incorrigible in this life, by the same method in the world to come?

IV. Argument. The natural effects and consequences of sin living in the soul, are misery and torment so long as the soul lives, i. e. forever. Sin, though it be a moral evil, as it is committed against God, yet it is such an enemy to the nature of man, that where it has established its habit and temper in the soul, it naturally prepares constant anguish of conscience and certain misery. A wicked spirit all over averse to God and goodness, gone from this world and all the soothing or busy amusements of it, intense in its desires of happiness, and yet a stranger to all that can make it truly happy, and at the same time shut out by God’s righteous judgment, from all the means and hopes of grace, must needs be miserable, and has prepared a state of endless misery for itself, because its nature and duration are immortal. An unholy creature who loves not God, and cannot delight in things holy and heavenly, but derives its chief joy from sinful pleasures, can never taste of felicity, can never relish the satisfactions that come from the knowledge, and love, and enjoyment of God; and when it is torn away, and banished from all the sensible amusements of this life, it must and will be a wretched creature in the world of spirits,and that by the very course of nature. And God cannot be obliged to change the established course of nature to relieve this misery which the sinner had wilfully brought on himself; nor can God make him happy without giving him a new temper of holiness, which he is not obliged to do by any perfection of his nature, or any promise of his grace.

If the souls of men are immortal, such will their passions be, their desires, their fears, and their sorrows. Now their natural desires of happiness, as I have said, will be inter e and strong, when God, the spring of all happiness, who hath been renounced and abandoned by them, hath now forever forsaken them, and separated himself from them. What can there remain for them but everlasting darkness and despair, without a dawn of hope through all the ages of eternity? Their guilty consciences, with the views of God’s unchangeable holiness, will forever fill them with new fears and terrors, what shall be the next punishment they are to suffer. Such is the state of devils at this time, who expect a more dreadful punishment at the great day, as several places of scripture make evident. Their being immersed in the guilt of sin, and under the constant and tyrannical dominion of it, will overwhelm them with present grief, with cutting sorrows, and horror unspeakable, which will sink into the centre of their souls, and make them an eternal terror and plague to themselves.

Jigain, let us consider that their immortality of soul will be spent in ’ thinking:’ and what comfortable or hopeful object is there in heaven, earth, or hell, on which they can fix or employ their thoughts for one moment, to give a short release from their extreme misery? So that they are left in endless successions of most painful thoughts and passions from the very nature of things.

Again, suppose this body of mine were by nature immortal, and was designed by my Creator in its constitution to live forever; and suppose by my own folly and madness, my own wilful indulgence of appetite and passion, I had brought some dreadful distemper into my flesh which was found to be incurable, whether it be the gout or the stone, or some more terrible malady of the nervous kind, must not this gout, by necessity of nature, become an immortal gout? Must not these distempers be immortal distempers, and create eternal pain? And is the God of nature bound to work a miracle to cure and heal these diseases which I have wilfully brought upon myself by my own iniquities, and that after many warnings? Is it unrighteous in God to let me languish on amidst my agonies and groans as long as my nature continues in being, i. e. to immortality? And especially when there are valuable ends in divine providence, and God’s government of the world, to be subserved, by suffering such wilful, rebellious, and impenitent creatures to become sacrifices to their own iniquity and his justice, and perpetual monuments to other worlds of their own madness and his holiness. Such is the case of a sinful spirit, and therefore a God of justice may pronounce upon it, and execute the eternal misery.

§ II. The strongest and most plausible objections against the perpetuity of hell answered.

I think these reasons, which have been given, are sufficient to justify the ministers of the gospel in representing the punishments of hell as everlasting. But man, sinful man, does not love to hear of this dreadful perpetuity of hell. They would fain find some period to these sorrows, they search on every side if there be no way for escape from this prison., no door of mercy, no cranny of hope left among the reasons of things, or among the attributes, or the transactions of the blessed God: and they are ever proposing some methods to cut short this eternity, which scripture ascribes to the punishment of impenitent sinners. I shall endeavour therefore to give a fair and plain answer to the strongest objections against this doctrine which I ever yet have met with.

The first objection is raised from a ‘criticism on the words of scripture.’ The Greek and Hebrew words, say they, which we translate eternal and everlasting, where the torments of hell are mentioned, arc not always used for proper and complete eternity, they sometimes signify only ’ a long duration.’ So God gave Abraham and his seed the land of ‘Canaan for an everlasting possession,’ Gen. xvii. 8, but now the Turks possess it. Several of the statutes of the Levitical law were said to be everlasting, Lev. xvi. 34, but they are all abolished in the gospel. The sons of Aaron had an ‘everlasting priesthood, conferred upon them, Exod. xl. 15, but this office is cancelled by the kingdom of the Messiah, and finished forever.

Besides, let it be remembered, say the objectors, that the Hebrew and Greek words, signify only the various ages or periods of time which belong to the duration of creatures, or to some constitutions of God concerning his creatures: and they should be translated an age, or ages, more properly than any thing else. And the Greek adjective, when applied to creatures, can relate only to these ages; but these expressions were never designed to enter into God’s own eternity, either before the existence of this world, or after the consummation of it: upon which reason it is highly improper and absurd to assert, that the duration or punishment of creatures in hell shall be properly eternal and equal to the duration of the blessed God himself. Now since every thing in God’s transactions towards creatures is sometimes limited by these terms, or ages, which are periods of time that shall be finished, why may not the damnation and the sorrows of hell be also finished and cancelled at a certain length of years, though the common words, which we translate ‘eternal’ and ‘everlasting,’ be ascribed to them in Scripture?

*dnsiu. 1. These are the same words both in Greek and Hebrew, by which God expresses ‘his own eternity,’ which is absolute and complete without end. He is ’ the everlasting God,’ Gen. xxi. 33, ‘the eternal God, and his everlasting arms,’ Deut. xxxiii. 27, Rom. i. 2C, and xvi. 26, and several other places. These are the words also by which the scripture expresses- the duration of the ‘felicities of heaven,’ and the eternal life and happiness of the saints, Dan. xii. 2, Rom, vi. 23, John iii. 15, &c. Now, why should we not suppose the same words to signify the same duration, when the Old or New Testament speaks of ’ everlasting burnings’ as the vengeance of God against the wicked, Isai. xxxiii. 14, or * everlasting shame and contempt?’ Dan. xii. 2. And especially where the joys of the saints, and the misery of sinners, are set in opposition to one another in the same text, as in Dan. xii. and Matt. xxvi. 45, The wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal?’ And yet further, when we find this doctrine sufficiently confirmed by many other places of Scripture which set forth the eternity of these torments? I grant that the eternity of God himself, before this world began, or after its consummation, has something in it so immense and so incomprehensible, that in my most mature thoughts I do not choose to enter into those infinite abysses; nor do I think we ought usually, when we speak concerning creatures, to affirm positively, that their existence shall be equal to that of the blessed God, especially with regard to the duration of their punishment. Perhaps this sort of language may carry in it something beyond what we are called to discourse about, at least in this mortal state, and therefore such comparisons are more safely omitted.

But I would remark here still, that these ages, both of reward and punishment, which are pronounced concerning saints or sinners, do but begin in their perfection at the end of this world; and thence it follows, that they must enter far away into the eternity of God’s existence yet to come. And the saints will be made happy, and the sinners will be punished, for long ages after the end of this world, and all the ages of it.

And though God, by his Spirit, has not been pleased to make this comparison expressly, nor assert our duration commensurate with his own, yet he is pleased to express the duration of the punishment of sinners in the same common language and phrases, whereby he expresses his own duration, and the happiness of the saints: and hereby he encourages us to express these punishments by the same common words in our language too, rather than venture to cut them short by a Greek or Hebrew criticism, without any divine warrant or necessity.

Now are there any sinners so void of understanding, of so daring and desperate a mind, as to venture their ’ eternal all’ upon such a poor criticism of words? Even upon supposition that these .terms in the Greek and Hebrew might signify any long duration short of eternity: yet

2 A there is a terrible hazard in confining them to this sense, since they do not denote a proper eternity, when they describe the duration of the blessed God; and I think we may add also, the duration of the happiness of the saints. *

Besides, let it be remembered, that the other expressions of Scripture, which denote and pronounce the perpetuity or eternity of these punishments, are not liable to the same criticism or ambiguity of a word. ‘Their fire’ shall be ’ unquenchable,’ or ’ is not quenched, their worm dieth not. They have no rest day nor night, they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever,’ Rev. xx. 10. These expressions seem to carry with them a more certain signification of the perpetual continuance of the pun-

* I do not understand this sentence, as it stands in the text of Watts. It seems to be an admission of what contradicts and overthrows his own argument, viz. that “these are the same words, both in Greek and Hebrew, by which God expresses his oiun eternity, which is absolute and complete, without end.” Consistently with this position it cannot be said, that “they do not denote a proper eternity;” for, if the eternity of God be not proper and absolute, what can be such 1 It ought to read, “there is a terrible hazard in confining them to this sense,” (the sense assumed by the objector,) “since they must denote a proper eternity, when they describe the duration of the blessed God,” &c. A few paragraphs antecedent to this, the author makes another concession, which I think nearly overturns his argument, or at least much abates its force. He says, “Nor do I think we ought usually, when we speak concerning creatures, to affirm positively, that their existence shall be equal to that of the blessed God, especially with regard to the duration of their punishment.” By “their existence,” in this very obscure sentence, I suppose that the author means the duration of their future existence; for I cannot suppose him guilty of the absurdity of referring to the mode of the divine existence in this connexion. He therefore appears to signify that we should not affirm positively, that our future existence will be absolutely, and in this respect, like the existence of God, with out end, and especially that the duration of punishment will be interminable; and if we ought not to affirm it positively, our inability to do so must of course, be owing to want of evidence — to uncertainty. This is giving up the very point which the author has undertaken to prove! The doctrine of future existence, although entirely agreeable to reason, and supported by it, can be made certain to our minds, only by the light of revelation. That only source of certain evidence on this point employs the strongest terms which language affords, to express the interminable existence of every human being: and it uses the same terms to express the endless duration of the punishment of wicked men and angels. It never suggests a single doubt of the absolute eternity of either. I cannot see, therefore, by what rule of scripture, or of reason, we can be required “not to affirm positively,” that the existence of rational creatures shall not be equal in its future duration with that of God, or that the punishment of the wicked will be less durable than their eternal existence. — Ed.

ishment. Now can the tempter and the deceiver of souls have so unhappy an influence over you, as to persuade you to venture onward in the paths of sin, to put off religion, and delay your repentance, and neglect the means of salvation, in hopes that hereafter this weak criticism, upon some of the threatenings, may take place before the Judge of the whole earth, and thus excuse or save you? Is not such a sorry refuge and presumption a dangerous and a dismal sign upon impenitent sinners, that sin and Satan have darkened your understanding, and confounded your judgment, as well as hardened your hearts, in order to your everlasting destruction?

Jlnsiv. 2. Suppose the punishments of hell continue only for a long time, and not for an endless immortality, yet this time would certainly be found exceedingly Jong for sinners to bear the torment even according to their own criticisms. Let us consider this matter under some particulars. The Jewish dispensation, which is sometimes called ‘everlasting,’ stood nearly about fifteen hundred years, from Moses to Christ; and are ye content to languish and groan under torments and miseries for fifteen hundred years, merely to satisfy your vicious appetite of pleasure for a few days or a few years of this mortal life?

Again; the ’ rebellious sinners,’ who were destroyed at the flood, and their spirits, which were sent into the prison of hades, or hell, were certainly confined there foui and twenty hundred years: and if they were released then, as some imagine, by the preaching of Christ to them, it is a long and dreadful time to continue under the vengeance of God; and is it worth while for any man to continue in sin on earth, and to venture this length of punishment in hell?

What I build this computation upon, are some expressions of St. Peter, 1 Epist. iii. 19, 20, where Christ is said to ‘preach unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah;’ some have supposed, that this text informs us of Christ’s descent into hell after his death, and then preaching to those rebels who were drowned in the flood near two thousand four hundred years before, in order to awaken them to repentance and salvation: whereas others think this text may be better expounded concerning the spirit of Christ given to Noah, which made him a preacher of righteousness, when he foretold and threatened a flood of waters, and called men to repentance.

But if it should he granted, that those rebellious spirits among the dead did all repent, and were delivered by this preaching of Christ, would you choose to indulge the delights of sin for a short season, and venture twenty -four hundred years of torment and anguish for it?

Yet further, the devils have lain under punishment near six thousand years, viz. four thousand before Christ came, and almost two thousand years since, which may be thus computed from what St. Jude says of them. The ’ angels who kept wit J l oii first station’ were ‘cast into chains of darkness,’ prove before the creation of this our world; for they were Uilen, and they tempted Adam to sin as soon as this world was made: and they had been confined in these chains from that time about four thousand years before Christ came, and are waiting’ still for yet sharper punishment at the judgment of the great day, Jude vi; and it is evident that they are conscious of this terror and this future increase of punishment, for they expostulated with our Saviour, Matt. viii. 29, ‘Art thou come to torment us before the time?’ Now it is near two thousand years since Christ came, and from the time of their sinning, unto this day, it is almost six thousand years: and when the great day of judgment comes, their fiercer punishment is but then to begin. And are not the devil and his angels sentenced and confined to dwell together with the wicked children of Adam, when they shall be consigned at that dreadful day to the same ’ everlasting fire’ and torment, which was prepared for those evil spirits? And who knows when their torment will end? Now what folly and hardness of heart, or rather what madness is it. for men to continue in their sins, to delay their return to God, and abandon the grace of the gospel, under this foolish flattery and wild presumption, that above six thousand years hence perhaps a certain day may come when the ‘worm’ of conscience will die, and the ‘fire’ of hell will be quenched? Such presumption is madness and distraction rather than reasoning.

The ‘second objection’ is derived from the ‘justice and equity of God.’ Surely may some person say, the justice of God will proportion the punishment to the offence but since our sins are but the actions of mortal and short-lived creatures, and are committed in a few years of time, why should the punishment be immortal, and the ages be lengthened out to eternity? Can a righteous God pronounce such a severe and unjust sentence, and execute it in its full dimensions?

tdnsio. It is not the length of time which wicked men spent in committing their sins, nor the nature of the persons who have sinned, that determines the measures of punishment, but the dignity of that infinitely glorious Being, against whom sin is committed, that gives such a high aggravation as to require punishment without end. How many instances are there among men wherein offenders against their neighbours, or against a magistrate, who spent but a few moments in the crime, yet are doomed to imprisonment for months and years? And a lower degree of trespass against a king, which is short of high treason, is sometimes punished with confiscation of goods, and with poverty and close imprisonment for life. And by the same reason, the sins of men being committed against a God of infinite majesty, require an endless punishment, as I have proved in the second argument: and therefore divine justice pronounces or inflicts no longer penalty than the crimes of men deserve, according to their aggravations. If any sinners tarry then till they have paid the utmost farthing to divine justice, I grant God will release them, but he has given us no hope before.

The ‘third objection’ is drawn from ‘the sovereignty and goodness of God. ‘It is granted, say they, that the threatenings of eternal death are denounced against sinners in Scripture, yet it is not necessary God should execute them to the full. When a law is made, the threatenings of it only declare what punishment the offender shall be exposed to, and shall be obliged to bear when it is inflicted; but these expressions in a law do not oblige the government to inflict that sentence with all its terrors. It is granted, that in the case of promises, truth and veracity oblige the promiser to fulfil them punctually, because the right of the thing promised passes over to that other person to whom the promise was made, and he hath such a right to require it, that it is injustice to withhold it from him;. and therefore everlasting felicity must be given to the righteous: but in threatenings the case is otherwise; 39 2a2 for though the full punishment is due to sinners, yet they will never require the execution of it; and the goodness of God will incline him to relieve the sufferer, and to release him from the severity of such a punishment, where his veracity or truth does not forbid it.

To this I answer two ways:

1st, I will not debate this point of law now, how far a governor of sovereign and absolute authority can dispense with his own threatenings, can omit the execution of them, relax the degree of threatened punishment, or shorten the duration of it. But let it be considered, that here is not only the threatening of God, the universal Governor, but the prediction of this eternal punishment, by a ‘God who cannot lie.’ God’s own truth and veracity are concerned in this case, since his Son Jesus, who is the greatest of his messengers, together with the Prophets and Apostles, have in the name of God often foretold, that these punishments shall be eternal: and therefore whatsoever an absolute governor might do, as to shortening the punishment threatened, in a way of mercy and relaxation; yet I cannot see how the truth and veracity of God himself, or the veracity of his Son Jesus Christ, who is the great Prophet, or the truth of the rest of his prophets and messengers can be maintained, if this punishment be not executed according to the many express predictions of it. These all agree to tell us, by inspiration from heaven, in various forms of speech, that the torments of hell shall be everlasting; and (as 1 hinted before) the man Jesus who pronounces this eternal sentence as a Lord and a Judge, foretels it also as a Prophet, that the execution of it shall be to all everlasting.

t/lnsw. 2. Obstinate and impenitent sinners have no reason to expect, that the goodness of God should release them from their miseries, since the justice and the holiness, the righteous government and authority of God in his law require and demand their due of honour, as well as his goodness. Do we not see that these honours of divine justice, and of God’s hatred of sin, have been continually demanded and executed in the infinite and innumerable evils, sorrows, miseries, diseases and deaths, that have been spread over this world almost six thousand years because of sin? Nor does his goodness forbid or hinder it

And let it be remembered too, that all this immense variety and long succession of plagues and terrors arose originally from the just indignation and resentment of God against one sin, even that of the first man. Who was it that burnt Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from heaven? Who was it that chained fallen angels in darkness to a more terrible judgment? Was it not a God of supreme goodness? Who sent famines, and pestilences, and slaughters all over the earth in many distinct generations, whereby mankind have been made abundantly wretched, and plunged into millions of distresses? And yet the goodness of God abides forever. And while the great God is acting according to the glories of his nature and government in punishing rebellious creatures, his goodness will feel no soft and sensible impressions from all their groans and outcries; but if I may so express it, will be changed into just indignation without end. And the language of it to those impenitent wretches will be this, ‘because I have called and ye refused, ye have set at naught all my counsel and would none of my reproof, I will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you, then shall ye call upon me, but I will not answer; ye shall seek me early, but ye shall not find me; for ye hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord; ye would none of my counsels, ye despised all my rebukes; therefore shall ye eat of the fruit of your own way, and be filled with your own devices.’ Take them, angels, ‘bind them hand and foot, and cast them into everlasting fire and utter darkness; there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth,’ Pro v. i. Matt. xxii. 13.

Let us cease then to murmur against the threatenings and the transactions of the great God, till we are become fitter judges of his perfections and their demands. Let us cavil no more against his conduct and government, till we can teach him how far his punishing justice shall go in the execution of his threatenings, and till we can assign to him the point and limit where his goodness shall interpose and restrain that justice.

The ‘fourth objection’ is derived from the ‘rectitude of the nature of God,’ or ‘his common equity and mercy united,’ which has been represented in this manner. Suppose ore of the damned spirits among nankind should address himself to the great God in such s it of language as this, “Lord, I was created by tb sovereign pleasure without my own will, I did not desire to he made, much less to be born in such a relation to Auam, whereby I brought a sinful nature into the world with me; but 1 was united by thy power and pleasure to a body which had the seeds of sin and misery in it. There were strong appetites and violent passions mingled with my flesh and blood, which I myself had no hand in procuring; they fermented in me with much vehemence, and I was tempted to many excesses: I made some resistance at first, and many times tried to subdue them, but I was overcome. At last I suffered myself to be carried away by the stream of these sinful affections and appetites which I could not possibly avoid, nor easily subdue. Is it agreeable to thine equity, 0 blessed God, to punish such a poor wretch with everlasting torments? And can thy mercy continue to see this my misery forever and ever, and not help me? I intreat thee, 0 thou almighty Author of my being, to destroy and annihilate me utterly soul and body: take away this being which I never asked nor desired; nay, which I would not have consented to accept among the sinful race of mankind, because in this track of generation and existence I stood much more likely to be miserable than to be happy.”

Jlnsw. 1st. As for the reasonableness and equity of the conveyance and communication of the original effects of the sin of Adam’ through every generation of man, it is granted there are some difficulties attending it; but these are generally answered by the writers on that subject; and for me to divert from my present discourse, in order to debate this point here, would be too tedious.

The equity of this wise and awful constitution of God has been lately vindicated in a large treatise on the ’ ruin and recovery of mankind,’ especially in the second edition of that book. But it is enough for my present argument to say, that God himself will make the equity of this constitution to appear with much more evidence and conviction in the last great day, when millions of actual criminals shall stand before the judgment-seat, who owe the first spring of their sin and ruin to our common parent, and yet will fall under the righteous condemnation of the judge.

Jlnsiv. 2. When God decreed to give thee a being, 0 sinner, and designed thee in his eternal ideas to be a man, placed among a thousand blessings of nature and providence, it was then a favour of thy Creator; for thou wert designed also in this original divine idea to have full sufficiency of power to become wise and happy. It was also a favour from thy Creator, that he took all these thy sufficiencies of power, and put them into the hand of one man, even the father of thy race, because he was as wise, and holy, and as well able as any man of his posterity could be, to preserve his station in the favour of God, and to secure thy happiness together with his own; and he had much stronger obligations to obeyr his Maker, and more powerful motives to secure thy happiness than thou thyself, or any single man could possibly have, because he was intrusted with the felicity of so imny millions of his own dear offspring, as well as his own. Now though Adam, thy first father, being thus furnished with sufficiencies of power, and with the strongest obligations to preserve himself and thee, has actually sinned and ruined himself and his offspring; (this is indeed an unhappy truth;) but the great God is not to blame, who has not only acted wisely but kindly towards his creatures in this constitution, because so far as we can judge, it was much more probable that Adam would have maintained his innocence and his happiness, together with that of his offspring.

Jlgain, when the race of man was ruined, and God saw that every man would come into the vrorld under unhappy circumstances of guilt and corruption of nature, he provided a covenant of grace, and brought thee into some knowledge of it. And this had been effectual to have recovered and saved thee from the ruins of the fall if thou hadst exerted all thy force, employed all thy natural powers of understanding and will for this purpose, and used all thy diligence to follow the methods of his grace, and hadst sought earnestly for divine aids. For there is no man among the damned who is able to say, ‘I have done everything that was in my power to do.’ No man shall be condemned for what was utterly impossible for him to avoid. It is confessed indeed, thou art laid under some hardships and difficulties by the sin of thy first father; yet it is thine own actual and personal crimes for which thou art here condemned at this judgment, wherein ’ every one shall be* judged and ‘rewarded according to his works.’ It is for many wilful offences against the law of God, and for sinning against the offers of divine grace; it is for obstinacy against thy own conscience, and all the outward and inward monitions of thy duty, that thou art fallen under this sentence, and because thou didst not labour and strive against sin, and resist it even to the end of thy state of life and trial. Thou hast had many an inward reproof for sin, many a secret or public call to virtue, and perhaps loud and fair warnings of thy danger; but thou hast turned a deaf ear to them all, and it is thy own folly, obstinacy, and iniquity, that have brought thee into this misery’, and thou must eat the fruit of thy own works.

If there should be any person found indeed among Jews, Gentiles, or Christians, who can justly complain, ‘I have not had a fair and full state of trial, and yet I am condemned,’ I think we may grant that the righteous God will release such from their misery, after they have worn out a proper number of years in punishment proportionable to their past crimes; and that there shall be a fair, and full, and proper state of trial appointed to them before they shall be utterly and irretrievably miserable. But if no such person be found there, if there be no such just complaint to be made among the millions of the damned, then they may be still continued in their prison and punishment without any imputation upon divine justice and equity.

Jlnnv. 3. Whensoever any such criminal in hell shall be found making such a sincere and mournful address to the righteous and merciful Judge of all, if at the same time he is truly humble and penitent for his past sins, and is grieved at his heart for having offended his Maker, and melts into sincere repentance, I cannot think that a God of perfect equity and rich mercy will continue such a creature under his vengeance; but rather, that the perfections of God will contrive a way for escape, though God has not given us here any revelation or discovery of such special grace as this.

But on the other hand, whatever melting and moving speeches may be made by sinners here on earth, in compassion to the sinners who are gone before them to hell; yet if no such person be ever found in hell, truly and humbly repenting of his sins, nor have we any reason to think there ever will, why should a righteous God be obliged to cease punishing a rebel who only is vexed and raged under his own chains, and who continues in the spirit of obstinacy and rebellion against God, and will not repent of it?

‘Objection the fifth’ is derived from the ’ mercy and compassion of God, compared with the mercy and compassion of man.’ Surely the compassion of the ever-blessed God, who has described himself rich in mercy, abundant in goodness, and whose very name is ’ love,’ 1 John iv. 8, must have transcendant tenderness and pity towards his creatures, the work of his hands, above all the compassions that any one fellow-creature can express towards another. Now the very thought and name of eternal punishments, or endless torment, is such as seems to shock the nature of a good-natured man; and though he was ever so much injured, yet he would never have a thought of wishing his enemy any kind of eternal punishment for it, much less of condemning him to everlasting misery, and supporting him in being on purpose to suffer it; and therefore we cannot suppose that God will do it.

This ‘objection’ is further strengthened by an expression of our Saviour himself, who says, Mark, xviii. 19, ‘There is none good, save one, that is God:’ as much as to say, there is no:,-* equal or comparable in goodness to God himself. Arvi it is further supported still by the common notions which good men have of God; those expressions in the apocryphal writings confirm it, 2 Esd. v. 33, ‘Then said the Lord unto me, thou art sore troubled in mind for Israel; lovest thou that people more than he that made them?’ And in the same book, chap. viii. 47, ‘Thou comest far short, that thou shouldst be able to love my creature more than I.’ Now since no good man could wish such a curse or mischief to his worst and most wicked enemy, as torment without end, surely we cannot conceive the great God will ever be so severe as to inflict it.

Answ. 1st. It is readily allowed, that God has more goodness than any creature, but God has also more wisdom and knowledge, which concur with his goodness in all his actions, and he forms a much juster judgment concerning the evil and demerits of sin and rebellion against himself, than it is possible for any creature to form. And I think I may boldly assert, none can know the complete evil of sin, or its full desert, but that same glorious Being against whom sin is committed, who knows well the dignity of his own nature and his own law, and what unspeakable injury is done thereto by the sins of men. Now his goodness in all his transactions must be regulated and limited by this infinite wisdom; and if a man docs not see and consent to the just demerits of sin against his Maker, it is because he has less wisdom and knowledge than the great God has, and his tenderness and compassion may run into very great excesses, and may be in some instances a sign of his weakness and folly, as well as of his goodness and pity, as I shall shew under the next answer.

At present let us represent the case in a common instance. When criminals go to execution from month to month, or from year to year, in this great city; and especially if some of them have a handsome and agreeable appearance, and if they are wringing their hands with outcries, and vexing their own hearts, and are stung by their own consciences for their having brought this misery upon themselves, you will find several of the spectators of so tender a make as to grieve for the execution of such criminals, and to wish in their hearts it was in their power to save them. And yet further, if there are numbers of these wicked creatures that are sent at once to the punishment of the sword or the gallows, there may be many of these spectators grieving for them, and pitying them, and perhaps exclaiming against the severity of the law, and the cruelty of the judge, for condemning such malefactors to death.

But do all these weepers and complainers judge justly of the case? Do they consider how pernicious and ruinous a thing it would be to a government to let such traitors go unpunished? Do they know, that it is a piece of clemency and goodness to the innocent to punish the wicked? Or that it is a piece of necessary honour due to the laws, to make those who insolently break them sustain the penalty that the law has appointed? Do they remember that the few good qualities, or supposed talents, or fine appearances which these offenders are possessed of, should out-weigh the demands of the law and justice, the peace of the nation or kingdom, and the restraint of others from the same crimes?

Jlnsw. 2. The goodness of God, the eternal Spirit, is a much superior thing to the tenderness and compassion of man dwelling in flesh and blood. Man grows compassionate by a sort of sympathy or sensation of miseries which his fellow-creatures endure; and though this is exceedingly useful for many purposes of human life, and therefore God planted it in our natures; yet it has so much mixture of animal nature with it, that it frequently degenerates into weakness, fondness, and folly. And indeed, if every tender creature must be gratified in this weakness, and form the rules of government, there would never a malefactor fall under execution, but the vilest criminals would be spared, though the government were ruined.

On the other hand, the goodness or mercy of God is a sedate willingness or design to do good to creatures, and particularly to the miserable, but always according to the directions of wisdom and holiness. As God cannot have such anger, resentment, or cruelty in his nature, as mankind may fall into when they are punishing offenders, so properly speaking, he has no such sort of passionate tenderness and sympathy in sparing them. Though the words of greatest affection are sometimes used by the sacred writers to figure out the mercies of God to man; yet God both punishes and spares according to the calm and righteous exercises of his wisdom, and not under the influence of such passions as we feel.

Since therefore the exercise of such sort of passions among men oftentimes appears to be the weakness of nature, joined with their ignorance, of the rules of equity, is it reasonable that the great and all-wise God should make such creatures his patterns in the limitation of the exercises of his justice? Or that he should be as weak as they are, and as much moved to swerve from the rules of his own righteous government by such a sort of tenderness as ignorant, weak and foolish man may sometimes express towards criminals in their deserved misery?

It is readily granted, that a wise and a good man may and ought to be sorry and grieved, that any of his fellow-creatures should be so vicious as to bring themselves under so severe a penalty by their own wilful crimes; but still in their calmest and wisest thoughts they acknowledge the wisdom and equity of the government, in inflicting such penalties upon those who heinously oflend, and they acquiesce in the sentence and the execution. 40 2B

Our blessed Lord Jesus himself, who was the wisest and the best of creatures,* looked upon the city of Jerusalem with an eye of compassion, ‘and wept over it,’ Luke xiii. 34, “0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would 1 have gathered thy children as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not? Therefore behold your house is left unto you desolate.” Let it be observed here, that our Saviour had the bowels and compassions, and tenderness of the best of men; but he still maintains the vindictive exercise of the government of God. “Your desolation must and shall come upon you, nor will I forbid or withhold it.” And I am sure the human nature of our blessed Saviour was formed nearest to the image of God beyond any creature besides: and as I have hinted before, it is he, who is the supreme messenger of his Father’s love, that has pronounced these eternal punishments upon impenitent sinners in many parts of his ministry.

tflnsw. 3. How far will these objectors permit the justice of God to go in the punishment of impenitent sinners? If eternal punishment must neither be threatened nor inflicted, lest divine goodness be injured, then all mankind, even the worst and vilest of criminals, must certainly be one day delivered from their miseries; and thus the great God, who is infinitely offended, is bound to finish his wrath one day, and return in mercy to the offenders, whether they return to him by repentance or no. What! may the criminal rebel creature with impudence and spite affront the Creator infinitely, and must not the Creatoi have a right to demand equal vengeance? No, he must not, according to these writers: for if the essential goodness of God do certainly forbid eternal punishments, these absurdities, as gross as they appear, will be the necessary consequences of it: And though the creature be not restrained from sinning, yet the blessed God will be utterly restrained from punishing. And is this a doctrine fit to be believed by Christians, or to be taught by those who have no commission for it from their Bible? Or indeed, will the light of nature and reason ever justify and support this sort of pleading?

* I. e. as to his human nature. — Ed.

‘Objection the sixth’ is drawn from the ‘wisdom of God in his government of the world.’ Surely, will the sinner say, it was for some valuable end that God at first pronounced punishment to attend the sins of his creatures, for ‘he does not afflict willingly, nor’ delight to ‘grieve the children of men.’ His design must be therefore one of these two things; either to correct and reform the sinners whom he punishes, and reduce them to their duty, in order to partake of his mercy, or else it must be to ‘maintain a public monument and demonstration of his justice,’ and to support the authority of his law, and honour of his government, that he may deter other creatures from sinning against him. But when this world is come to its period, and his governing providence over it is finished, and all the means of grace are ended, the first end, viz. ‘correction and reformation’ ceases. There is no more hope of reforming such sinners as these. And what further need can there be of the secondary design of punishment, viz. the ‘demonstration of his justice’ in so terrible a manner to ‘restrain others from sinning,’ when the state of our trial is ended, and all mankind are sent either to heaven or hell?

Answ. 1. I might here reply, by way of concession, that if there were no other intelligent creatures to be witnesses of these eternal demonstrations of God’s holiness, his justice and his hatred of sin; and if God himself was the only Being who knew of these eternal punishments, I acknowledge I cannot see sufficient reason for this endless duration of them; I cannot give any probable account why creatures, who are never to be corrected and reformed, should be tormented forever in secret; God perfectly knows his own holiness and justice without such monuments of it; and since he has asserted this punishment, T think there must be some creatures to receive a moral influence from the knowledge of it.

I answer 2dly, when there is a representation made of the punishment of the worshippers of the beast, in Rev. xiv. 10, 11, that ‘they shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture, and they shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth forever and ever,’ it is ‘in the presence of the holy angels’ as well as in the ‘presence of the Lamb.’ Angels and other innocent beings may improve such a sight to valuable purposes.

Objection the seventh, When we remember that Jesus Christ himself hath assured us that ‘but few shall be saved,’ and that the broad way is full of sinners running d< wn to destruction and death; if we suppose these punishments to be endless, some will he ready to say, What! shall the greatest part of God’s creatures he made miserable forever and ever? Is this consistent with the wisdom and goodness of the blessed God, to form such an immense multitude of spuls dwelling in bodies, in make them forever miserable? What will a God of goodness have to prove his goodness to his creatures, if far the greatest part of them are left in everlasting sorrows? *

Anstv. The far greatest part of the creation of God may be holy and happy still. For this world of ours, ev-

* How can the goodness of God be proved to wicked creatures 1 They will assent to the evidence of his goodness, only while they are left to follow their inclinations with impunity. But God, as the moral Governor of the universe, as essentially holy and just, cannot leave the violators of his law unpunished. To treat the obedient and disobedient alike, would be opposed to all our ideas of justice, and would effectually obliterate all distinction between virtue and vice, holiness and wickedness. As soon as a wicked creature becomes the subject of deserved punishment, no proof that can be offered, will satisfy him that God is good. The impenitent sinner’s notion of goodness is inaccurate and selfish. Whatever falls in with his preferred enjoyments and pursuits, is good in his esteem; whatever crosses or destroys them, he views as evil. Therefore, evil is his good, and what is truly good, he pronounces evil. A holy creature perceives and experiences, in every thing and every where, manifest proofs of the goodness of God; in the punishment itself of the wicked, he discovers this, as it restrains them from working deeper and more diffusive evil. Had all the transgressors of mankind, instead of a part of them, been subjected t<> deserved punishment, there could have been no objection raised from this against the goodness of God, among those who perceive the consistency of goodness and justice, and who cannot deem that being perfectly good, who is not at the same time perfectly just. That any part of guilty men ate saved, and saved too in entire consistency with justice, is indeed a wonderful illustration of the goodness of God, as well as of his other attributes. But without depending upon the hypothetical answer to this objection which follows in the text, it is sufficiently met, by denying that God formed a single soul to be miserable, and by affirming the truth, that the “immense number” spoken of, have rendered themselves miserable, by violating the laws of their moral being. Every one will acknowledge the impossibility of being healthy and free from pain, if we neglect the laws of our physical being; and no one will impute the sufferings which our negligence has incurred, to any want of goodness in God. Why then shouW that misery be imputed to any defect in the divine goodness, which men bring upon themselves by transgressing the laws of their moral being! And why should any dream, that either at death, or at some undefined period beyond it, these laws will cease to operate on sinners 1 — En.

en all mankind, is a very small portion of God’s immense dominions; and when the transactions of our earth, and God’s present government of it, shall be finished, he has a thousand other dominions among the planets and stars, which has been proved by the reason of men to a great degree of probability; and these he governs by righteous laws, and though he has not revealed much of them to us in this life, yet he has discovered something of this kind in his own word. He has acquainted us with his wise and righteous government over ‘fallen angels,’ and what was their sin, viz. their pride and ambition, and what was their punishment for their last rebellion, Jude vi. and this is done by the wisdom and mercy of God to affright men from sinning, while we behold how those fallen spirits are exposed and set forth as terrible examples for our warning. And why may not the everlasting punishment of sinners among the children of men be made a standing monument of God’s justice, to deter many other worlds from offending him? Other worlds, I say, of unknown creatures, which perhaps may inhabit the planetary globes rolling round the same sun as our earth does; and their state of trial perhaps is not yet begun, or it may be half run out, and yet shall not be finished for some thousands of years?

Or perhaps there are other worlds of spirits, and invisible, incorporeal, intelligent creatures in a state of trial, who may persevere in glorious innocence and complete happiness, to the eternal praise of their Maker’s goodness, and may yet be kept in their constant duty and obedience, by having always in their view the eternal punishments of wicked men. See this subject treated of more at large, in a book called The strength and weakness of human reason,’ 2d edition, p. 288.

The counsels of God are far above our reach, and his dominions and governments are unknown to us. What if the great God will have creatures in some of his territories, who in themselves are weak and ready to fall, and may be deterred from sin and apostacy by such standing manifestations of his hatred of it, and his righteous vengeance against it? And since others have been monuments of warning to us, what if he please to make this wicked world of ours, when he has taken the few righteous out of it to heaven; I say, what if he please to make the rest an everlasting spectacle of his justice and holiness 2 b2 to a hundred or a thousand other worlds, which may be utterly unknown to us? And he may, for this end, reveal his transactions with mankind to those worlds, though he has not revealed much of their affairs to us.

If I were to mention any other objection worthy of notice, I know of none but this, viz. ‘some learned men suppose it to have been the opinion of the primitive fathers,’ that souls departing from this world were sent into hades, or the state of the dead, where the righteous rest in a state of peace and hope till the resurrection should bring them to heaven: and the most wicked among mankind went also to hades, or this state of the dead, under a long and fearful expectation of the final punishments of hell. But that great multitudes who were of an indifferent character, and who were not so bad but they might be reclaimed, had another state of trial in hades, whither, they say, our Lord Jesus Christ at his death descended and preached the gospel to them, and many of them were recovered, and shall be hereafter raised to eternal life. The chief Scripture whence they borrow this is 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20, of which we have spoken before; and that at the great day of judgment incorrigible sinners should be sent with the devils into the punishment of fire, which, though it may last for a shorter or longer time, yet should destroy both their bodies and their souls forever.

To this I answer, first, If this had been the doctrine of many ancient Christians, yet unless they could bring plainer proofs of it from the word of God than one difficult and obscure text of St. Peter, there is no great reason for us to receive from them such traditions. The word of God is our only test of truth, and our instructor in matters of the invisible world.

Jlnsw. 2d, Though there might be a few of the early writers who seemed to incline to some of these opinions; yet this sense is drawn out from most of them by learned men with much difficulty, uncertainty and conjecture: and there are many others of them who make the punishments of hell as durable as the writers of later ages: nor do they mention or allow of any such sort of purgatory for souls of an indifferent character as this objection pretends. Those who look into their writings will find abundant evidence, that most of them talk of ‘eternal punishment by fire’ in the very words and language of the

New Testament, and in direct opposition to this doctrine of temporal punishments in hell. T shall cite but two writers, one of which is the very earliest of the fathers, an acquaintance of St. Paul, and that is Clemens the Roman, who in the eighth section of his second epistle says thus:

Let us therefore repent whilst we are yet upon the earth: for we are as clay in the hand of the artificer. For as the potter, if he makes a vessel, and it be distorted in his hands, or broken, again forms it anew; but if he hath gone so far as to throw it into the furnace of fire, he can no more bring any remedy to it: so we, whilst we are in this world, should repent with our whole heart for whatsoever evil we have done in the flesh, while we have yet the time of repentance, that we may be saved by the Lord. For after we shall have departed out of this world, we shall no longer be able either to confess our sins, or repent, in the other.’ The English reader may find this in Archbishop Wake’s translation of the most primitive fathers.

Justin Martyr, who is also one of the most early writers, in the eighth section of his l first apology, tells us, that Plato ’ teaches that Rhadamanthus and Minos punished the unrighteous who came before them: and that we Christians say the same thing will be done,’ but it is by Christ: when their bodies are joined with their souls, and they shall be punished with eternal punishment, and not for the period of a thousand years only, as Plato said.’ This same writer also, in very many places of his works, talks of ‘eternal punishment,’ and of ‘punishment for an endless age,’ and ’ eternal fire, with eternal sensation’ or pain.

Irenaeus also after him, as well as Ignatius and Polycarp before him, speak of this ’ fire which is not to be quenched,’ and of death and punishment, not temporal, but eternal. So that it is really an imposition upon unlearned readers to pretend, that the doctrine which denies the eternity of the punishments of hell, was the common sense of the primitive fathers, though it is granted that Origen and some others might be of this opinion.

To conclude; since the word of God has expressly assured us, that these punishments of sinful men shall be eternal, it is not for us to hearken to any other doctrines, and neglect what God has said, nor is it fit for us to dispute the wisdom and justice of divine conduct, nor to impeach his goodness. ‘Let God be true, though every man be a liar;’ let God be wise, though every man be a fool; let God be just and righteous in all his ways, though man vainly murmur against him, and raise these noisy and feeble remonstrances against his judgments ‘The counsel of the Lord shall stand, and he will do all his pleasure,’ in the eternal manifestations of his justice as well as his grace. If there be any supposed inconsistency or cloud of difficulty remaining on his conduct, h3 will clear it up to the satisfaction of every rational mind one day, and will bring the conscience of every condemned sinner to acknowledge the equity of his proceedings. The whole creation shall then justify the final sentence of judgment on all the sons of men.

I cannot finish this awful argument better than the Apostle finishes the same sort of subject in the ninth and eleventh chapters to the Romans. 0 man, who art thou that repliest against God? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, hath endured, with much long-suffering, the vessels of wrath, who have fitted themselves for destruction? And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he hath afore prepared unto glory? 0 the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge, the justice and the goodness of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things, to whom be glory forever and ever.’ Amen.

§ III. Reflections on the Eternity of Punishment in Hell

As we have before drawn various inferences from the nature of those punishments that are prepared from sinners in the world to come, so there are other inferences and terrible reflections which may be derived from the duration or perpetuity of the torments of hell.

Reflect. I. ‘What unspeakable anguish and torture doth this one circumstance add to eveiy pain and sorrow of damned creatures, that it is everlasting and has no end?’ What unknown twinges in the conscience doth this thought give to the gnawing of the cruel worm, viz. that it is a worm that never dies?’ What unconceivable force and sting of torment docs this add to the fire of God’s indignation in hell, that it is a ‘fire which shall never be quenched?’ When one year of torment and sorrow is ended, or one thousand years are come to their period, the case of sinners is still much the same, the vengeance remains still as heavy as ever, and seems as far off from its end. This dreadful price, which the justice of God demands for the reparation of our offences against his law and his authority, is a price which creatures can never pay, for it is infinite; and therefore, when a finite creature begins to make payment thereof with his own sufferings, these sufferings must he everlasting.

It is evident, that one wilful sin is sufficient to sink creatures under the indignation of God for six thousand years: I call the angels who sinned for witnesses to this truth. They were formed in holiness and in glory before the creation of this lower world, and probably they sinned and fell before this creation too; and they are yet imprisoned and confined ’ under perpetual chains of darkness,’ as the word of God tells us, and reserved to’ everlasting punishment ‘at the judgment of the great day.’ And if thou, 0 sinner, among the sons of men, if thou diest in an unregenerate, unholy, and unpardoned state, the sins of thy whole life are charged upon thee, and thou art ’ daily treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath, and thou shalt not escape from this prison till thou “hast paid the utmost farthing,’ Rom. ii. 5. Matt. v. 26.

If one sin deserves all this misery which has been described, what a dreadful reckoning will the sins of thy whole life come to, when every command of God which thou hast broken shall appear and demand reparation for its injured honour? Remember, 0 sinner, obstinate and rebellious, remember thou hast to do with a great and dreadful God, who has all thine * iniquities ever before his eyes;’ Isa. lvi. 5, Behold they are written before me, and I will recompence, saith the Lord, their iniquity into their bosom.’ He is a God that will never forget any one of thy crimes. Amos viii. 7. ‘The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works.’ Though thou hast lost and forgot them, he will bring them again into thy conscience with a terrible remembrance; and when this God comes forth in a way of vengeance, ’ every transgression and disobedience shall receive a just recompence of reward. Vengeance belongeth unto mc, sailh the Lord,’ Heb. ii. 2. and x. 30. ‘He that spared not his own Son, when he laid on him the iniquity of us all,’ will never spare thee who art the personal and criminal transgressor. Eternal recompences are due to the demands of justice, and he will punish till full payment is made equal to the evil of sin, i. e. to all everlasting.

Reflect. II. What infinite and eternal concerns of men hang upon the short and slender thread of human life?’ An eternal heaven or an eternal hell depend on our good or ill behaviour in this short and mortal state. While life remains the sinner’s hope remains; he abides on the stage of action, and this is the state of trial for eternity: but as soon as the thread of life is broken, immediately ensues endless joy or endless sorrow.

What a poor fleeting vapour, what a thin and frail bubble is this feeble and uncertain thing which we call ‘life?’ And yet what matters of immense importance depend upon it? This present life is a prize put into our hands, for it is the only time given us to obtain deliverance and escape from eternal death. Life in this view, as mere a bubble and vapour as it is, carries in it something of infinite and everlasting moment: but alas, how wretchedly does foolish and sinful mankind trifle and squander it away amidst a thousand vanities and impertinences, or saunter it out in sloth and laziness, with an utter disregard of the important eternity that depends upon it? What multitudes are there that waste the golden hours of grace and the seasons of hope, in procuring to themselves, by their own wilful iniquities, a length of damnation and everlasting despair ?.

Whilst we dwell here in the midst of the means of mercy and salvation, there is hope that our sinful souls may be healed of that disease which is breeding the evergnawing worm within us. We may prevent the fuel of divine wrath from kindling into a flame which cannot be quenched: but when once the clock of life has gone through its appointed spaces, and the last hour strikes, whether it be three or five, whether at twelve at noon or at midnight, all hope is forever gone; we are plunged into the regions of death, despondency and darkness, and nothing remains but the actual torture of the ’ worm’ of conscience to seize on us, and the ’ fire’ of divine anger actually breaks out, which shall burn to the lowest hell.

0 could we but behold ourselves in the glass of wisdom, while we are yet standing upon the slippery edge of this burning precipice, and playing with painted bubbles there, cv in warm pursuit of a flying shining feather along the brink of this burning torrent, what fools and madmen should we appear to be even in our own eyes! And yet we go on to practise this folly, this madness, day after day, id spite of all the warnings of God and man, till at last our foot slips in some dreadful moment, and we vanish out of the sight of our companions, and are lost forever.

Reflect. III. If the miseries of hell are eternal, ’ how unreasonable a thing is it ever to suffer the loss of any possessions or joys which are temporal and perishing, to come into competition with them V Surely there is nothing that belongs to time that should tempt us to run the risk of the sorrows of eternity, nor allure us to commit one sin against God, which is the fatal spring of such sorrows! Stand still, 0 sinner, and hearken to the voice of wisdom. Do the pleasures of sense, or the gaieties of sight, or the wealth or grandeurs of this life allure thee to make thy way boldly through any * means’ toward the possession of them, think with thyself, is it by offending this great and dreadful God? And wilt thou dare to take one step towards these dangerous and deceitful vanities, and risk thine immortal welfare in the pursuit? What a foolish bargain wilt thou make ’ to gain the whole world’ of short-lived perishing trifles, and ’ to lose thy soul’ in endless perdition? Mark viii. 36. Dare any of us venture an eternal state of torment to gain the flattering and delusive joy )f a short hour, or a winter’s day?

What are all the gratifications of flesh and sense! — What are all the swelling titles of honour amongst men! vVhat are all the treasures of this perishing world! How short is their duration, and how short is the possession of them! All earthly felicities ‘perish in the using,’ and are no sooner enjoyed but are quickly lost again, or expire in the enjoyment: but if the ruin of a soul, and a lost heaven, be the price of them, how mad is the purchase, and how wretched is the purchaser?

Reflect. IV. ‘How patiently should we bear all the labours, and fatigues, the pains and miseries of this mortal life, when we have any hope of our deliverance from the pains and sorrows of immortality?’ As for our maladies and sorrows here on earth, blessed be God they are not eternal; there are some intervals to relieve, and there is some period to finish them. When we ask a friend who is sick and in pain, “how fare you? I am in pain now, says he, but I hope I shall be easy anon: I am sick to-day, but I trust I shall be in health to-morrow.” This is a sweet mitigation of the present uneasiness, and gives relief to the patient. But how dreadful and piercing would these accents be, if we should hear our friend make this answer to us, “I am all over in extreme pain and anguish, and I shall never, never be eased of it: I lie under exquisite torment of the flesh, and horror in my soul, and I shall forever feel this horror and this torment.” Such ie the case of the damned sinners in hell, and therefore their agonies are intolerable.

But if you have any comfortable prospect of the pardon of sin, and a well-grounded hope of eternal salvation through the blood of ‘Christ,’ and by the rules and promises of the gospel, all the temporal toils and plagues that can possibly stand between us and heaven should be despised and disregarded by us, and we should learn to triumph over them with the victorious songs of thankfulness and praise. Blessed be the name of our God, ‘though he has smitten us’ sorely, ’ yet he has not given us over to’ everlasting ‘death.’

Let our thoughts ascend to the heavenly regions, and let us ask those who are arrived thither out of the land of temptation and conflict, out of these tabernacles of sin and sorrow; let us ask them what gave them so divine a courage, and so firm a patience, in the midst of all their trials? With one voice they will all make answer, it was the view of our deliverance from an eternal hell, and the hopes of obtaining salvation by ‘Christ Jesus’ with eternal glory; it is this that supported us under every burden, and bore us on with a spirit of faith and victory through every hardship on earth. It was for this we laboured, and suffered, and ’ counted not life,’ nor any of the blessings of it, ’ dear to us,’ nor any of the sorrows of it intolerable, that we might escape the everlasting sorrows of a future state, and enjoy the blessings of life eternal. And, 0 may every one of us ‘be the followers of those who through’ this ‘faith and patience have obtained the promised’ felicity I May we also make our way by the same motives, through the floods and the fires of affliction and distress, to reach this everlasting heaven, and to escape everlasting burnings!

In order to confirm our patience, and to animate our zeal, let us survey the blessed example of St. i Paul, who was reproached, who was buffeted, who was persecuted with stones, and whips, and scourges, and bore a thousand indignities, who was assaulted with endless strokes of injury and violence, and yet rejoiced in the midst of all his sufferings in the view of his eternal hope. The spirit of faith in the midst of all his sufferings taught him to sing this divine song, -our lightafflictions which are but for a moment, are working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed, 2 Cor. iv. 17. Rom. viii. 18. Nor are they worthy to be compared with that exceeding and eternal weight of vengeance, from which we are delivered by faith and patient obedience to the gospel of our Lord ‘Jesus Christ.’

Reflect. V. If ’ the miseries of hell are eternal, we can never have our deliverance from them made too secure.’ If the danger of any mischief to which we might be exposed, were but slight, and the duration of it short, there might be possibly some excuse for our delay to escape it. But when it is total and irrevocable ruin to which we are liable every moment, while we continue in a state of sin, we should fly with all the wings of our souls, and never be at ease or quiet till we are got without the reach of danger, and settled in a place of safety, or on the rock of our salvation.

0 could we but perceive a thousandth part of the horror that is contained in an eternal hell, an eternal banishment from the face and favour of God, and the eternal impressions of his anger, we should never give ourselves rest one moment, till we had returned to God by a sincere repentance, and were reconciled to him that made us: till we fled for refuge to the blood of Jesus, and to his sanctifying grace, which is the only hope that is set before us. We should never give ourselves leave to lie down, or awake in quiet, while we were .destitute of a saving interest in the salvation of Christ, and had attained to some clear evidence of it, and a well-grounded hope.

Have we not sometimes felt the worm of conscience’ begin to gnaw within us, and to prey upon our spirits after the commission of some sin? And shall we not apply ourselves with all holy speed to the divine Physician, who can kill this gnawing worm within us, and can heal those sinful maladies that are breeding it? Have we not sometimes felt the threatenings of the wrath of God in his law, like a fire in our bones? With what infinite desire then, and what restless vehemence should we fly to the blood of Jesus our great sacrifice, which alone can quench the fiery indignation of God, and prevent it from growing up to an everlasting flame.

Had we upon our spirits such a sense of the terrors of the Lord in hell, as his threatenings represent, we should never be satisfied with such cold doubtful hopes of our deliverance from them, as thousands of nominal Christians are contented with; but we should make every needful and critical enquiry, whether our repentance were sincere, whether our faith in Christ were unfeigned, whether our hopes had a solid foundation in the divine promise. We should search every power of our souls, and examine our hearts through every corner, whether sin be mortified there, whether the christian virtues are formed within us, and the divine image is begun to be stamped upon our minds. We should be restless and impatient in our inward searches, whether wre are made new creatures, whether we are born of God and become his children, and are secured by his gospel from this everlasting vengeance. The degree and the infinite duration of this misery should appoint the proportion of our zeal and solicitude to escape it.

A man who sees or feels his own house on fire under him, does not continue upon his bed of sloth, or sit amusing himself among the ornaments of his chamber, till the flames have broke through and seized him: but with huge outcries he seeks for help, and flees in haste for his life, wheresoever he finds a way. Such should be the language, and such the activity of sinful creatures, to escape the wrath to come; and such will be the outcries of sinners when they are thoroughly awakened; this language of every place,, and of every hour will then be awakened, i what shall I do to be saved? Whither shall I flee for refuge V 0 blessed Jesus, receive me into thy protection, and be thou my deliverer.

Give me leave to repeat this sort of expostulation with lingering and delaying sinners, or with drowsy and formal Christians. If you would set yourselves often in the blaze of these everlasting burnings, you would never satisfy yourselves with such cold faint wishes, such lazy endeavours, such languid efforts of faith and repentance, to escape this fiery indignation that shall never be quenched nor would you content yourselves with dark and doubtful evidences of your interest in the love of God, and the grace of our Lord Jesus; but you would be day and night busy with your own hearts in the most intimate and careful search after converting grace and living Christianity: you would never be at rest till you felt the new nature working with power and bright evidence within you, that you might be able to say, “we know there is no condemnation belongs to us, but that we are passed from death unto life.”

Let us proceed upon this subject, turning the discourse from ourselves to our friends, and say with what fervour of love, with what holy zeal and compassion should we labour to save our friends and all that are dear to us, from this eternal destruction? What words of fiery terror shall we choose to awaken those who slumber on the edge of endless burnings? What language of kind and tender passion shall we chuse to reach their hearts? What phrases of melting pity to hasten their escape from this precipice of burning ruin, or to pluck them as brands out of the fire before it becomes unquenchable? ‘Knowing these terror;? of the Lord,’ with what vehemence of zeal should we try to persuade men, our fellow mortals, that they would not venture into the midst of these miseries, and beseech them in the name of Christ to be reconciled to God? This was the practice, and these the motives of the great Apostle, as he describes them at the latter end of the fifth chapter in his second epistle to the Corinthians.

0 with what force of ardent and active compassion should ministers preach both the curses of the law, and the grace of the blessed gospel, to perishing sinners, and make haste to rescue their souls from this everlasting vengeance? With what warm and solicitous zeal should they lay hold of those poor thoughtless wretches who are madly indulging their lusts and follies, and thereby preparing themselves to become fit fuel for this eternal fire? They are forming themselves by their iniquities to become vessels of this everlasting indignation. Let us seize them by some kind and constraining words of love, some outcries of compassion and fear, lest they rush into those flames which will never be quenched. Perhaps when they are summoned away from us by the stroke of death, they may leave us in the most uncomfortable sorrows for our neglect, while they are suffering the long endless punishment due to their own iniquities.

Reflect. VI. * How unreasonable a thing is it for us ministers, who are charged and entrusted with the whole counsel of God for the salvation of men, to avoid the mention of these his eternal terrors in our sermons, and in our addresses to mortal creatures; creatures’ who are daily preparing themselves for them by their sins, and are ready to plunge into the midst of them! Has not our blessed Saviour made frequent mention of them in his gospel, and set them in their dreadful array before his hearers? Has he not expressed them in their strongest terms, and spread them in their most frightful colours, and set them in their full and everlasting extent, before the sinners which attended his ministry? And did he ever give any hint that they should be understood in a milder sense? Have not the Apostles followed their Lord in the same dreadful display of the sharp and ever-during punishments of hell? And have they taught us to qualify these terrors by gen tier interpretations of them? And have not such kind of discourses been abundantly blessed in the providence of God, both in ancient and later ages, to awaken and save multitudes of the souls of men?

How many holy and happy spirits are now rejoicing before God, and before the throne of his love, and encompassed with all the joys of immortality, who owe the beginnings of their repentance, and the first turn of theii souls towards faith and salvation to such words of terror as these? How many of the saints on high have been first awakened from their deadly sleep in sin, by the ministrations of this eternal vengeance of God? How many have been affrighted out of their indolence at first by the discovery of these everlasting horrors of conscience and agonies of soul? The dread of the worm that never dies has affrighted their consciences from a course of sin: the fiery indignation which shall never be quenched has flashed in their bosoms from the lips of the preacher, and has set them all over trembling, and filled all their inward powers with dismay and anguish. Their tongue has broke into loud and earnest enquiries, ‘Who shall deliver me from this eternal death? How shall I escape this everlasting wrath to come?’ And the spirit of God by degrees has led them to Jesus, and his atoning blood, his gospel, his righteousness, and his converting grace, as the only way of deliverance and salvation.

How unreasonable a thing is it for ministers in their preaching to soften these terrors of the Lord, to cut short these endless horrors and anguish, and to mitigate the miseries of hell and damnation, since even all that length and eternity in which Christ and his Apostles preached these terrors, have not been sufficient to reclaim mankind from their iniquities; but multitudes of them, in the face of all these threatenings, still persist in the broad way to destruction and death?

Can we possibly do any honour to the ministry of our blessed Lord, or is there any real service done to the souls of men by our fond and vain reasonings to shorten these sorrows, and put a period to these threatened torments? Will the blessed Jesus when he sits on the throne of judgment, give us thanks for running counter to the language of his own ministry, and for daring to contradict his denounced vengeance?

By the various expressions and representatives of this matter in scripture, in such solemn and dreadful language, must I not suppose that the blessed God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, designed and intended that mankind should believe the pains and punishments of hell will be eternal? Can I then be censured for endeavouring to establish and promote the awful doctrine which both God the Father and his Son intended should be believed, and by which they designed to guard both the law and the gospel? A doctrine which was left on record to deter sinners from the paths of sin and destruction, and to awaken the souls and consciences of men to repentance? On the other hand, can those teachers be approved of God or good men, whose evident design is to lead the world to disbelieve this solemn and terrible warning of the great God?

Let us proceed in these enquiries, and address ourselves to those wicked and miserable creatures, who are actually suffering this divine vengeance. Let us ask them, how they approve of this sort of preaching which withholds from the eyes, and ears, and consciences of men, the most dreadful circumstance of these horrors? Will any of the damned wretches of hell thank us for hiding so dreadful a part of these miseries from them? Will they bless us for lessening the threatened curses and indignation of God? “No, says the condemned wretch, those preachers are worthy of my curses and not my thanks, who abated these terrors of the Lord, and shortened his threatened punishment; for they persuaded me to hope there would be an end of my misery, and thereby tempted me to venture upon those sins which I should have renounced with abomination, had I believed the words of God, and these everlasting torments. 0 cursed and cruel preachers, who, by softening and curtailing the sentence of eternal misery, gave a sort of licence to my wickedness, and broke one of the strongest bars that restrained me from sinning! It is by this sort of flattery they paved my way down to hell, and have brought me into this prison, this eternal anguish, whence there is no release.” *

Say, ye who preach that the gates of hell shall one day be opened to let out the prisoners, ye who tell sinners there is a time of release for them, say, do ye expect to fright them out of their sins by lessening their fear of God and his wrath to come? Do ye hope to bring obstinate and impenitent rebels to a more speedy remorse for sin, and to begin a life of holiness, by persuading them that these terrors of God shall have an end? Can ye imagine that such vain tidings, such soothing flattery, will ever melt them to repentance and love, when all the grace of the gospel, mingled with the blood and tears of the Son of God will not do it? Would not this manner of preaching rather encourage them to run on still in their rebellions, and make them more regardless of their highest interest? Would it not tempt them to give a loose to their vilest inclinations, and all the flagrant and abominable enormities of their own heart, when they shall be told that

* Some of the ancients have called those preachers who shorten the pains of hell, the merciful or compassionate doctors: and Dr. T. Burnet calls those merciless or uncompassionate, who preach the eternity of it. But I think it will appear one day, that those are truly the compassionate writers and teachers, who most effectually affright and prevent men from sin and damnation; and those who have given wicked men hope of their release from hell, will be in danger of being charged with smoothing their way to this misery, by softening the terrors of it. — Watts.

THE PUNISHMENTS IN HELL. 33l

these punishments, which the Bible calls everlasting, shall one day come to an end?

Besides, I believe it has been observed in every age, that the fears of this ‘worm which never dies,’ and this eternal ‘fire which shall never be quenched,’ have been made abundantly useful in the providence of God to lay a powerful restraint on the unruly vices of some sinners, who have never been awakened and drawn into saving penitence, or reclaimed to a life of sincere holiness. And, if the restraint of this terror were taken away, how much more would all iniquity abound among those who have no inward principle of goodness?

Let us proceed then to preach the same terror which the blessed Jesus thought not unworthy of his ministry; and may the providence and the grace of God give success to our labours, both for the restraining the extravagant vices of the wicked, for the saving conversion of many sinners, and for a guard and restraint to the young and wavering Christians.*

Notwithstanding all the express language of scripture on our side of the question, and all our arguments drawn from it; yet there are some of the reasoners and the disputers of this world, who will still suppose that it is more for the honour of God, and for the glory of our blessed Saviour, for ministers to dwell always upon the promises

* The late Dr. Thomas Burnet, in his Latin treatise of the ’ state of the dead, and those who rise again,’ opposes the doctrine of the eternity of future punishments, and shews who of the ancient fathers seem to be of the same opinion with him. But he tells us, that these ancient fathers, when they treated of this subject, often gave the same advice to others, which he himself gives in these words: “Whatsoever you determine within yourself, and in your own breast, concerning these punishments, whether they are eternal or no, yet you ought to use the common doctrine and the common language when you preach’ or speak to the people, especially (hose of the lower rank, who are ready to run headlong into vice, and are to be restrained from evil only by the fear of punishment. And even among good christians there are infants to be nourished with milk; nor is their diet to be rashly changed, lest through intemperance they fall into diseases.”

And he adds in the margin, “whosoever shall translate these sentiments into our mother tongue, I shall think it was done with an evil design and to bad purpose.” So th.it if this were a true doctrine, yet the learned author agrees, that neither the holy writers of the Bible, nor the fathers, think it proper that the bulk of the people should know it. But if it should not be translated, I would ask, why did the author write it, and leave it to be published 1 Did he suppose all men and boys, who understood Latin, to be sufficiently guarded against the abuse of such an opinion 1 — Watts.

of the new covenant, and the riches of the grace of Christ, and the overflowing measures of the love of God, in order to save sinful men. “Surely, say they, preachers have tried long enough what the words of terror will do; let us now allure sinful men to be reconciled to God by a ministry of universal love and grace; and let us see whether the boundless compassions of God, in putting a final period to the miseries of his guilty creatures after a certain number of years, will not draw sinners with a sweetei violence to the love and obedience of their Maker, than all this doctrine of severity and terror.”

In the first place, I answer, that surely Jesus himself, who is the prime minister of his Father’s kingdom, and the divinest messenger of his love, knew better than we do, how to pay the highest honour to his heavenly Father, and to display his own grace. Surely he was well acquainted with the best way to begin with sinners, in order to their reconciliation to God, and knew also the most effectual avenues to the consciences of sinful creatures, incomparably beyond what any of us can pretend to. Had he not as tender a sense of the honour of his Father’s mercy, as warm a zeal for the glory of his own grace and gospel, and as wise and melting a compassion for the souls of men as the best of us can boast of? And yet he thought it proper to lay the foundation of his own, and his Apostles, ministrations of grace, in this language of terror, in these threatenings of eternal punishment. And in the course of his providence throughout all ages, he has, in some measure, made this doctrine successful to recover souls from the snares of the devil, and to enlarge his own heavenly kingdom.

But I answer further, it must be granted that the tempers of men are various, and it is possible that some may be of so ingenuous and refined a disposition, that the words of love and grace, without any terror, might reach their hearts, and through the influences of heaven, touch them effectually: But as for the bulk of mankind, while they continue in their sins, daily experience convinceth us that they are best awakened by the terrors of the Lord, by representations of the gnawing ‘worm which never dies,’ and the ‘fire which shall not be quenched.’ I never knew but one person in the whole course of my ministry, who acknowledged that the first motions of religion in their own heart arose from a sense of the goodness of God, and that they were gently and sweetly led at first to this enquiry, ‘What shall I render to the Lord who hath dealt so bountifully with me?’ But I think all besides, who have come within my notice, have rather been first awakened, by the passion of fear, to flee from the wrath to come.

If, therefore, we will practice, according to the example of Jesus, the greatest and the wisest Prophet of his church, and his holy Apostles, and the best of preachers in all ages who have followed him, if we would obey the dictates of long experience, and our best observations on the methods of converting grace, I think we must proceed to denounce these eternal terrors of the Lord against the transgressors of his law, and the despijers of his gospel. This seems to be the appointed and most effectual way to rouse their consciences to seek a deliverance from the curses of the law, which carry in them everlasting punishment. This appears to be the first spring of religion in sinful men, and the first motive to receive the glad tidings of salvation which are displayed in the New Testament. This spurs on their passions to escape the vengeance of God, by fleeing to his gospel, where there is rich and abundant grace to encourage the hope of rebellious creatures in their returns to God by Jesus Christ the Saviour. To Jesus, who is the awful messenger of his father’s terrors, and the prime minister of his love, be glory and honour to everlasting ages. Amen.