Oh, damned souls will have thoughts that will clash with
glory, clash with justice, clash with law, clash with themselves,
clash with hell, and with the everlastingness of misery.
Miseries as well as mercies sharpen and make quick the apprehensions
of the soul. Behold Spira in his book, Cain in his guilt, and Saul
with the witch of Endor, and you shall see men ripened, men enlarged
and greatened in their fancies, imaginations, and apprehensions,
though not about God and heaven and glory, yet about their loss,
their misery, their woe, and their hell.
A man may endure to touch the fire with a short touch, and away; but
to dwell with everlasting burnings, that is fearful. Oh then, what
is dwelling with them and in them for ever and ever? We use to say,
"Light burdens carried far are heavy:" what then will it be to bear
that burden, that guilt, that the law and the justice and the wrath
of God will lay upon the lost soul for ever? Now tell the stars, now
tell the drops of the sea, and now tell the blades of grass that are
spread upon the face of all the earth, if thou canst; and yet sooner
mayest thou do this than count the thousands of millions of
thousands of years that a damned soul shall lie in hell! Suppose
every star that is now in the firmament was to burn by himself one
by one, a thousand years apiece, would it not be a long while before
the last of them was burnt out? and yet sooner might that be done
than the damned soul be at the end of punishment.
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