sinners, to take care to escape these eternal torments. If they be
eternal, one would think that would be enough to awaken your
concern and excite your diligence. If the punishment be eternal, it
is infinite, as we said before; and therefore no other evil, no
death, no temporary torment that ever you heard of, or that you can
imagine, is anything in comparison with it, but is as much less and
less considerable, not only as a grain of sand is less than the
whole universe, but as it is less than the boundless space which
encompasses the universe. Therefore here,
(1.) Be entreated to consider attentively how great and awful
a thing eternity is. Although you cannot comprehend it the more by
considering, yet you may be made more sensible that it is not a
thing to be disregarded. Do but consider what it is to suffer
extreme torment forever and ever to suffer it day and night, from
one day to another, from one year to another, from one age to
another, from one thousand ages to another, and so, adding age to
age, and thousands to thousands, in pain, in wailing and lamenting,
groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth; with your souls
full of dreadful grief and amazement, with your bodies and every
member full of racking torture, without any possibility of getting
ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your cries;
without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him; without any
possibility of diverting your thoughts from your pain; without any
possibility of obtaining any manner of mitigation, or help, or
change for the better any way.
(2.) Do but consider how dreadful despair will be in such
torment. How dismal will it be, when you are under these racking
torments, to know assuredly that you never, never shall be
delivered from them; to have no hope; when you shall wish that you
might but be turned into nothing, but shall have no hope of it;
when you shall wish that you might be turned into a toad or a
serpent, but shall have no hope of it; when you would rejoice, if
you might but have any relief, after you shall have endured these
torments millions of ages, but shall have no hope of it; when after
you shall have worn out the age of the sun, moon, and stars, in
your dolorous groans and lamentations, without any rest day or
night, or one minute’s ease, yet you shall have no hope of ever
being delivered; when after you shall have worn out a thousand more
such ages, yet you shall have no hope, but shall know that you are
not one whit nearer to the end of your torments; but that still
there are the same groans, the same shrieks, the same doleful
cries, incessantly to be made by you, and that the smoke of your
torment shall still ascend up, forever and ever; and that your
souls, which shall have been agitated with the wrath of God all
this while, yet will still exist to bear more wrath; your bodies,
which shall have been burning and roasting all this while in these
glowing flames, yet shall not have been consumed, but will remain
to roast through an eternity yet, which will not have been at all
shortened by what shall have been past.
You may by considering make yourselves more sensible than you
ordinarily are; but it is a little you can conceive of what it is
to have no hope in such torments.
How sinking would it be to you to endure such pain as you have
felt in this world, without any hopes, and to know that you never
should be delivered from it, nor have one minute’s rest! You can
now scarcely conceive how doleful that would be. How much more to
endure the vast weight of the wrath of God without hope! The more
the damned in hell think of the eternity of their torments, the
more amazing will it appear to them; and alas! they are not able to
avoid thinking of it, they will not be able to keep it out of their
minds. Their tortures will not divert them from it, but will fix
their attention to it. O how dreadful will eternity appear to them
after they shall have been thinking on it for ages together, and
shall have had so long an experience of their torments!- The damned
in hell will have two infinities perpetually to amaze them and
swallow them up: one is an infinite God, whose wrath they will
bear, and whom they will behold their perfect and irreconcilable
enemy. The other is the infinite duration of their torment.
The End
