A Christian Library, Chapter 19
CHAP. XIX.
Section I.
THus as the Unbeliever and Disobedient is cursed in eve… thing, and where-ever he goes, and in whatsover he does: Cursed in the City, and cursed also in the field; cursed in the fruit of his body, and in the fruit of his ground, and in the fruit of his Cattell: Cursed when he cometh in▪ and cursed also when he goeth out; cursed in this life, and cursed in the life to come; as is at large exprest, Deut. 28. So the Believer that obeyes the voice of the Lord, shall be blessed in every thing he does, where-ever he goes, and in whatsoever befals him, as God promiseth in the former part of the same Chapter, and as I have proved in the eleven foregoing Sections. Yea, God will bl…ss all that belong unto him; for his children and posterity, yea many generations after him shall fare the better for his sake, Exod. 20.6. Gen. 30.27. Isa. 54.15. & 65.8. Rom. 11.28. Gen. 18.26, 29, 31, 32. & 26.24. & 39.5. 1 King. 11.12, 32, 34▪ & … where he dwells, perhaps the whole Kingdom he lives in, Gen. 39, to 48. Chap. Whereas many, yea, multitudes, Numb. 25.18. Deut. 1.37. & 3.26. Psal. 106.32. even a whole Army, Iosh. 7.4, to 14. yea, his childrens children, unto the third and fourth generation, fare the worse for a wicked man, and an unbeliever, Exod. 20 5. Besides, his prayers shall profit many; for he is more prevalent with God, to take away a judgment from a people or a Nation, than a thousand others, Exod. 17.11, 12, 13. And he counts it a sin to cease praying for his greatest and most malicious enemies, 1 Sam. 12.23. Though they like fools, would (if they durst, or were permitted,) cut him off, and all the race of Gods people, Psal. 83.4. Hester 3.6, 9, 13. Which is as if one with a hatchet should cut off the bough of a Tree upon which he standeth: For they are beholding to Believers for their very lives: yea, it is for their sakes, and because the number of Christs Church is not yet accomplisht, that they are out of Hell. But to go on, as all things (viz.) poverty, imprisonment, slander, persecution, sickness, death, temporal judgments, spiritual desertions; yea even sin and Satan himself, shall turn together for the best unto those that love God, as you have seen: So all things shall turn together for the worst unto those that hate God, as all unbelievers do, Rom. 1.30. Iohn 15.18. even the mercy of God, and the means of grace, shall prove their bane, and inhaunce their damnation: yea Christ himself, that onelyonly summum bonum, who is a Saviour to all Believers, shall be a just revenger to all Unbelievers: and bid the one, Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his Angels, Matth. 25.41, 46. Which shall be an everlasting departure, not for a day, nor for years of dayes, nor for millions of years, but for eternity; into such pains as can neither be expressed nor conceived, Iude 6, 7. Rev. 20.10. Mat. 3.12. Heb. 6.2.
Sect. 2. Wickedness hath but a time, a short time, a moment of time; but the punishment of wickedness is beyond all time; There shall be no end of plagues to the wicked man, Prov. 24.20. Their worm shall not dye, neither shall their fire be quenched, Isa. 30.33. & 66.24. Matth. 25.41. Mark. 9.44. And therefore it is said, the smoak of their torment doth asce…d for ever and ever, Rev. 4.12. & 20.10. So that if all the men that ever have, or shall be created, were Briareus like hundred-handed, and should at once take pens in their hundred hands, and do nothing else for ten hundred thousand millions of years, but sum up in figures as many hundred thousand millions as they could; yet never could they reduce to a total, or confine within number, this trisyllable word [Eternall,] or that word of four syllables [Everlasting.]
Now let such as forget God, but seriously consider this; it will not be an imprisonment during the Kings pleasure, but during the King of Kings pleasure: It is not a captivity of seventy years, like that of the children of Israel in Babylon; for that had an end: nor like a captivity of seventy millions of generations; for that also would in time be expired: but even for ever: The wicked shall live as long in Hell, as there shall be a just God in Heaven.
Here we measure time by dayes, months, years ▪ but fot … is no Arithmetitian can number it: no Geometrician can measure it. Fo… suppose the whole world were turned into a mountain of sand, and that a little Wren should come every thousand year, and carry away from that heap but one grain of the sand, what an infinite number of years would be spent and expired, before the whole heap would be fercht away? but admit a man should stay in torments so long, and then have an end of his woe, it were some comfort to think, that an end will come: but alas▪ when she hath finished this task a thousand times over, he shall be as far from an end of his anguish, as ever he was the very first hour he entered into it.
Now, Suppose thou shouldest lye but one night grieviously aff…cted with a raging fit of the stone, strangury, tooth-ach, pangs of travel, or the like; though thou hadst to help and ease thee, a soft bed to lye on, friends about to comfort thee, Physitians to cure thee, all cordial and comfortable things to aswage thy pain; yet how tedious and painfull would that one night seem unto thee? how wouldest thou toss, and tumble, and turn from one side to another? counting the clock, esteeming every minute a month, and thy present misery unsupportable. What then will it be to lie in stames of fire? (to which our fire is but ayre in comparison,) fire and brimstone kept in the highest flame by the unquenchable wrath of God, world without end; where thou shalt have nothing about thee but darkness and horrour; wayling and wringing of hands, desperate yellings and gnashing of teeth; thy old companions in vanity and sin, to ban and curse thee; the Devils insulting over thee, with cruelty and scorn; the never-dying worm of conscience, to feed upon thy soul and flesh, for ever and ever. O everlasting eternity ▪ a never-dying life, an ever-living death!
Which yet is but just with God; for if thou mightest have lived for ever, thou wouldst have sinned for ever. If God would everlastingly have spared thee, thou wouldest have everlastingly hated and provoked him. What then can be more equal, then that thou shouldst suffer everlastingly?
O then bethink thy self of this word eternal and everlasting, and ponder upon it: yea do but indeed believe it, and it will be enough to break thine hard heart, and make it relent and repent, and thereby prevent the wrath to come. It will put thee to a demur, What have I done? what am I now about? whether will this course tend? how will it end? what will become of me if I go on? in chambering and wantonness, surfeting and drunkenness, strife and envying, swearing, prophaneness, earthly-mindedness, and the like? For indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, shall be upon the soul of every one that doth evil, and continueth therein, as the Apostle witnesseth, Rom. 2.8, 9. O then! break off thy sins without delay, and let there be an healing of thine errors.
Sect. 3. Neither is the extremity of pain inferiour to the perpetuity of it, it is a place full of horrour and amazedness; where is no remission of sin, no dismission of pain, no intermission of sense, no permission of comfort; its torments are both intollerable and interminable: and … neither he enda…
The pangs of the first death are pleasant, compared with those of the second: For mountains of sand were lighter, and millions of years shorter, than a tithe of those torments, Rev. 20.10. Iude 7. It is a death which hath no death; it hath a beginning, it hath no ending, Matth. 3.12. Isa. 66 24.
The pain of the body, is but the body of pain; the anguish of the soul, is the soul of anguish: For should we first burn off one hand, then another, after that each arm, and so all the parts of the body, it would be deemed intollerable; and no man would endure it for all the profits and pleasures this world can afford; and yet it is nothing to the burning of body and soul in hell. Should we endure ten thousand years torments in hell, it were grievous; but nothing to eternity: Should we suffer one pain it were miserable enough; but if ever we come there, our pains shall be for number and kinds, infinitely various, as our pleasures have been here; every sence and member, each power and faculty both of soul and body, shall have their several objects of wretchedness, and that without intermission, or end, or eas… ▪ or patience to endure it, Luke 12 5. & 16.23. Matth. 3.12. & 5.22. & 22.23.
The Schools affirm, that the least torture in Hell, exceeds the greatest that can be devised by all the men on earth; even as the least joy in Heaven, surpasseth the greatest comfort here on earth. There is scarce any pain here on earth, but there is ever some hope of ease, mitigation, or intermission; of some relief or deliverance: but in Hell, their torments are easeless, endless, and remediless; unsufferable, and yet ineviteable, and themselves left hopeless, helpless, pittyless.
It were misery enough, to have the head-ach, tooth-ach, Collick, gowt, burning in the fire; or if there be any thing more grievous: Yea, should all these, and many more meet together in one man, at one instant: they would come infinitely short of the pains of Hell. Yea, they would all b… bar as the stinging of Antes, to the lashes of those Scorpions: but as dr…pes, to those Vials of wrath, as sparks to that flame, as Chrysostome speaks. The Furnace of Babell, was but a flea-biting, to this tormenting Tophet, prepared of old, Isa. 30. He hath made it deep and large, the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it, vers. 32. So that it were happy for reprobate spirits, if they were in no worse condition, than so many Toads or Serpents. As consider, If a dark dungeon here be so loathsome, what is that dungeon of eternal, of utter darkness? If material fire be so terrible, what is Hell fire? Here we cry out of a burning feaver, or, if a very coal from the hearth do but light on our flesh, O how it grieves us; we cannot hold our finger for one minute in scalding lead; but there both body and soul, shall fry in everlasting flames, and be continually tormented, by infernal fiends; whose society alone, would be sufficiently frightfull.
Sect. 4. Now consider▪ Is one hours twitches of t… …orm of conscience here? yo… one minutes t…ch of a tooth pulling out, so unsufferable? what is a …mented in that flame: what think we shall that torment be, when body and soul come to be united in torment? since the pains of Hell are more exquisite, than all the united torments, that the earth can invent. Yea, the pains and sufferings of the damned, are ten thousand times more than can be imagined by any heart under heaven, and can rather (through necessity) be endured, than expressed. It is a death never to be painted to the life; no pen nor pencil, nor art, nor heart, can comprehend it, Matth. 18.8, 9, 10. & 25.30. Luke 16 23, 24. 2 Pet. 2.4. Isa. 5.14. & 30 33. Prov. 15.11. Yea were all the land paper, and all the water ink, every plant a pen, and every other creature a ready Writer, yet they could not set down the least piece of the great pains of hell-fire.
Now add eternity to extremity, and then consider hell to be hell indeed. For if the Ague of a year, or the Collick of a month, or the Rack of a day, or the burning of an hour be so bitter here; how will it break the hearts of the wicked, to feel all these beyond all measure, beyond all time? So that it is an evil and bitter thing, to depart from the living God.
We poor mortals, (until God does bring us from under the power of Satan unto himself) do live in the world, as if hell were not so hot, no… the Devil so black, as indeed they are: as if Hell and Heaven, were the one not worth the avoiding, the other not worth the enjoying: but the heat of fire was never painted, and the Devil is more deformed than represented on the wall. There are unexpressible torments in Hell, as well as unspeakable joyes in Heaven.
Nor will this be their case alone, that are desparately wicked; cursing and blaspheming Drunkards, and sheders of blood; but of all impenitent persons. As for instance, They who have lived in the fire of lust here, must not think much to be scorched in the flames of Hell hereafter, Heb. 13.4. Rev. 21.8. & 22.15. The detractor is a devil above ground, his tongue is already set on fire from hell, James 3.6. Rev. 16.10, 11. which does sadly presage, what will be his portion for ever, unless repenta…ce quench, those flames; and so of the like offenders, Psal. 9.17. Revel. 22.12. As what sayes the Apostle? Neither fornicators, nor thieves, nor murtherers, nor drunkards, nor swearers, nor raylors, nor lyers, nor covetous persons, nor unbelievers, nor no unrighteous persons shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, but shall have their part and portion in that lake which burneth with the fire and brimstone, which is the second death, 1 Cor. 6.9, 10. Rev. 21.8. which did they well consider, they durst not continue in the practise of these sins without fear or remorse, or care of amendment.
Sect. 5. Now what heart would not bleed, to see men run headlong into these tortures that are thus intollerable? Dance hoodwinkt into this perdition? O that it were allowed to the desperate russians of our dayes, that swear and curse, drink and drab, rob, shed blood, &c. (as if Heaven were blind and deaf to what they do) to have but a sight of this Hell! how would it charm their mouths, appale their spirits, strik… fear and astonishment into their hearts? Yea if a sinner could see but one glimpse of hell, or be suffered to look one moment into that fiery Lake, he would rath… sin. Nor can I think they would do as they do, if they did but either see or foresee, what they shall one day (without serious and unfeigned repentance) feel. And indeed, therefore are we dissolute, because we do not think what a judgment there is after our dissolution: because we make it the least, and last thing we think on; yea, it is death, we think, to think upon death: and we cannot endure that dolefull bell which summons us to judgment, Lam. 1.9. Deut. 32.29. Oh that men would believe and consider this truth, and do accordingly!
Oh that thou wouldest remember, that there is a day of account, a day of death, a day of judgment coming, Heb. 9.27. Matth. 25. wherein the Lord Iesus Christ shall be revealed from Heaven▪ with his mighty Angels, in flaming fire, to render vengeance unto them which obey not his Gospel; and to punish them with everlasting perdition from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, as the Apostle speaks, 2 Thes. 1.7, 8, 9. Iude 15. Isa. 33 14. Mat. 25.46.
As consider seriously, I beseech you, whether it will not be worth the while, so to foresee the torments of Hell, that you may prevent them: Or if otherwise, will you not one day wish you had, when death comes and arrests you to appear before the great and terrible Iudge of all the world? Luke 16 23. to 32. Matth. 13.30, 38. at which time an Assizes or Quarter-Sessions shall be held within thee, where Reason shall sit as Iudge, and Satan shall put in a Bill of Indictment, as long as that Book in Zechary, Chap. 5.2. Ezek. 2.9, 10. wherein shall be alleged all the evil deeds that ever thou hast committed, and all the good deeds that ever thou hast omitted, with their several circumstances that may aggravate them, Eccles. 11.9. & 12.14. 2 Cor. 5.10. and all the curses and judgments that are due to every sin. Thine own Conscience shall accuse thee, and thy memory shall give bitter evidence against thee; and thou shalt condemn thy self, before the just condemnation of thy Iudg, who knows all thy misdeeds better than thy self, 1 Iohn 3 20. Which sins of thine will not then leave thee, but cry unto thee, We are thy works, and we will follow thee, Rev. 14.13.
And then who can sufficiently express what thy grief and anguish will be, when the summons both of the first and second death do overtake thee at once? Prov. 1.27. And when at once thou shalt think of thy sins past, thy present misery, and the terrour of thy torments to come; and how thou hast made Earth thy Paradise, thy belly thy God, and lust thy Law; so sowing vanity, and reaping misery. And finding, that as in thy prosperity thou neglectedst to serve God, so now in thy adversity God refuseth to save thee, Prov. 1.24. to 32. Ezek. 23.35. When thou shalt call to mind the many warnings thou hast had of this dolefull day, from Christs faithfull Ambassadours, and how thou then madest but a mock or jeer at it, Prov. 1 25. and think how for the short sinfull pleasures thou hast enjoyed, thou must endure eternal pains, Luk. 16.24, 25. & Rev. 6.12.10.18. Which yet thou shalt think most just and equal; saying, As I have deserved, so I am served: for I was oft enough offered mercy, yea … to accept thereof▪ but I preferr… … pleasing of my … and the allurements of Satan, than the Word of God, or the motions of his holy Spirit, Prov. 1.24, &c. Mark 16.16. And (which I would have thee think upon) Hell fire is made more hot, by neglecting so great salvation, Heb. 2.3. This is the condemnation (saith our Saviour, none like this) that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil, Joh. 3.29. Now salvation is freely offered, but men reject it; hereafter they would accept of salvation, but God will reject them. Yea then a whole world (if thou hadst it) for one hours delay, or … spite, that thou mightest have space to repent, and sue unto God for mercy: but it cannot be, because thy body, which joyned with thy soul in thy sinfull actions, is now altogether unfit to joyn with her in the exercise of repentance; and repentance must be of the whole man. Besides, death will take no pitty; the Devil knows no mercy, and the God of mercy will have utterly forsaken thee. Then wilt thou say, Oh that I had been more wise! or that I were now to begin my life again; then would I contemn the world with all its vanities: yea, if Satan should then offer me all the treasures, pleasures and promotions of this world, he should never entice me to forget the terrours of this dreadfull hour, and those worse which are to follow, Luke 16.24, &c. & 13.28.
But, Oh wretched Caitiff that I am! how hath the Devil and my own deceitfull and devilish heart deluded me? and how am I served accordingly? For now is my case more miserable than the most despised Toad or Serpent, that perisheth when it dieth; in that I must go to answer at the great Judgement-seat for all my sins, that am not able to answer for one of the least of them, Eccles. 12.14. Mat. 18.34. that I who heretofore gloried in my lawless liberty, am now to be enclosed in the very claws of Satan, as the trembling Partridge within the griping tallons of the ravening and devouring Falcon. Oh, Cursed be the day when I was born, and the time when my mother conceived me, &c. Job. 3.
Sect. 6. And so death having given thee thy fatal stroke, the Devil shall seize upon, or snatch away thy soul, so soon as it leaves thy body, Luk. 12.20. and hale the hence into the bottomless lake, that burneth with fire and brimstone; where she is to be kept in chains of darkness, until the general judgment of the great day, Jude 6, 7. 1 Pet. 3.19 Rev. 21.8. Thy body in the mean time being cast into the earth, expecting a fearfull resurrection, when it shall be re-united to thy soul; that as they sinned together, so they may be everlastingly tormented together, Heb. 10.27. At which general Iudgment, Christ sitting upon his Throne, Joh. 5.22. shall rip up all the Benefits he hath bestowed on thee, and the miseries he hath suffered for thee; and all the ungodly deeds that thou hast committed, and all the hard speeches which thou hast spoken against him, and his holy ones, Jude 15. Eccles. 12.14. & 11.9. Within thee shall be thine own conscience, more then a thousand witnesses to accuse thee: the Devils who tempted thee to all thy lewdness, shall on the …ne side testifie with thy conscience against thee; … on the other side shall stand the holy Saints and Angels, approv… thee all the world burning with flaming fire; above thee an irefull Iudg of deserved vengeance, ready to pronounce his heavy sentence upon thee: beneath thee the fiery and sulphureous mouth of the bottomless pit, gaping to receive thee, Isa. 5.11, 14. And in this wofull and dolefull condition thou must stand forth to receive with other Reprobates this thy sentence, Rom. 14.10. 2 Cor. 5.10. [Depart from me] there is a separa…ion from all joy and happiness, [ye cursed,] there is a black and direfull excommunication, [into fire] there is the extremity of pain, [everlasting,] there is the perpetuity of punishment; [prepared for the Devil and his Angels] there are thy infernal tormenting, and tormented companions, Matth. 25.41. O terrible sentence! from which there is no escaping, withstanding, excepting, or appealing. Then, O then shall thy mind be tormented to think; how for the love of abortive pleasures, which even perished before they budded; thou ha…t so foolishly lost Heavens joyes, and incurred hellish pains, which last to all eternity, Luke 16.24, 25. Thy conscience shall ever sting thee like an Adder; when thou calle…t to mind, how often Christ by his Ministers offered thee remission of sins; and the Kingdom of Heaven freely; if thou wouldst but believe and repent, and how easily thou mightest have obtained mercy in those dayes. How near thou wast many times to have repented; and yet didst suffer the Devil and the World, to keep thee still in impenitency; and how the day of mercy is now past, and will never dawn again. Thy understanding shall be racked to consider, how for momentary riches, thou hast lost eternal treasure; and exchanged Heavens felicity, for Hells misery: where every part and faculty, both of thy body and soul, shall be continually and alike tormented, without intermission or dismission of pain, or from it: and be for ever deprived of the beatifical sight of God; wherein consists the soveraign good, and life of the soul. Thou shalt never see light, nor the least sight of joy; but lye in a perpetual prison of utter darkness: where shall be no order but horrour; no voice but howling and blaspheming; no noise but screeching and gnashing of teeth; no society but of the Devil and his Angels, who being tormented themselves, shall have no other ease, but to wreak their fury in tormenting thee, Matth. 13.42. & 25.36, &c. Where shall be punishment without any pity, misery without any mercy, sorrow without succour, crying without comfort, malice without measure, torment without ease, Rev. 14.10, 11. Where the wrath of God shall seize upon thy soul and body, as the flame of fire does on the lump of pitch, or brimstone, Dan. 7.10. In which flame thou shalt ever be burning, and never consumed; ever dying, and never dead, ever roaring in the pangs of death, and never rid of those pangs; nor expecting …d of thy pains. So that after thou hast endured them so many thousand years as there are blades of grass on the earth, or sands in the Sea, … on the heads of all the sons of Adam from the first to the last born; … there have been creatures in Heaven and Earth; thou shalt be no nearer … and of thy torments, than thou wast the very first day that thou … into them: yea so far are they …, that they are ever … damned soul could but conceive some hope, that those torments should have an end: this would be some comfort, to think that at length an …nd will come, but as often as thy mind shall think of this word never, (and thou shalt ever be thinking of it) it will rend thy heart in pieces with …ge, and hideous lamentation: as giving still new life, to those unsufferable sorrows; which exceed all expression, or imagination. It will be another hell in the midst of hell. Wherefore consider seriously what I say, and that while the compassionate arms of Iesus Christ lye open to receive you; and do thereafter, Prov. 1.24, &c. Take warning by Pharaoh's example, who in the Rich mans scalding torments hath a Discite à me, Learn of me, Luke 16.23, &c. For he can testifie out of wofull experience, that if we will not take warn…ing by the Word, (that gentle warner) the next shall be harder, the third and fourth harder than that; yea, as all the ten plagues did exceed one another; so the eleventh single exceeds them altogether. Innumerable are the curses of God against sinners, Deut. 28. but the …ast is the worst, comprehending and transcending all the rest. The fearfullest plagues, God still reserves for the upshot: all the former do but make way for the last.
H…ll in Scripture is called a Lake, that burneth with fire and brimstone: and than the torment of the former, what more acute? than the smell of the latter, what more noysome?