Nero, that monster of nature, having once slain his mother, had never more any peace within, but was astonished with horrors, fears, visions, and clamours which his guilty conscience set before him and suggested unto him. Imo latens in prcedio, famiUares suspectos habuit, vocem humanam horruit, ad catuli latratum, galli cantum, rami ex vento motum, terrehatur ; loqui non ausus, ne audiretur : He suspected his nearest and dearest friends and favourites, he trembled at the barking of a puppy, and the crowing of a cock, yea, the wagging of a leaf, and neither durst speak unto others nor could endure others to speak to him, when he was retired into a private house, lest the noise should be heard by some who lay in wait for his life.i-
Now were there not a hell, were there not a place of torment where God will certainly inflict unspeakable miseries and intolerable torments upon wicked and ungodly men, why should their consciences thus amaze, torture, and torment them ? Yea, the very heathen had so much light in their natural consciences, as made such a discovery of that place of darkness, that some of them have been terrified with their own inventions concerning it, and distracted with the very sense of those very torments which their own persons have described. As Pygmalion doted on his own picture, so were they amazed with their own comments. The very flashes of hell-fire which sinners do daily experience in their own consciences in this world, may be an argument sufficient to satisfy them that there is a hell, a place of torment pro- vided for them in another world.
[5.] Fifthly, Those matchless, careless, and endless torments that God ivill certainly inflict upon the bodies and souls of all ivicked and ungodly men, after the resurrection, does sufficiently evidence that there is a hell, that there is a place of torment pi^ovided, prepared, and fitted by God, wherein he will, ' pour forth all the vials of his wrath upon wicked and ungodly men : ' Isa. xxx. 33, ' For Tophet is ordained of old, yea, for the king it is prepared ; he hath made it deep and large, the 2)ile thereof is fire and much wood, the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle it.' This place that was so famous for judgment and vengeance is used to express the torments of hell, the place of the damned. Tophet was a place in the valley of Hin- nom ; it was the place where the angel of the Lord destroyed the host of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, Isa. xxx. 31, 33 ; and this was the place where the idolatrous Jews were slain and massacred by the Babylonian armies, when their city was taken and their carcasses left, for want of room for bm-ial, for meat to the fowls of heaven and beasts of the field, according to the word of the Lord by the prophet Jere- miah, Jer. vii. 31-33, and xix. 4-6. And this was the place where the children of Israel committed that abominable idolatry in making their cliildren pass through the fire to Moloch ; that is, burnt them to the devil, 2 Kings xxiii. 10 ; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6 ; for an eternal de- struction whereof king Josiah polluted it, and made it a place exe- crable, ordaining it to be the place whither dead carcasses, garbage, and other unclean things should be cast out. For consuming whereof, to prevent annoyance, a continual fire was there burning, 2 Kings xxxiii. 8. Now this jjlace, being so many ways execrable for what had been
^ Xiphil. in Nerone, &c. [Xipilinus of Trapezus, abridgment of Dion. Cassias.— G.]
MATCHLESS, EASELESS, AND ENDLESS. 127
done therein, especially having been as it were the gate to eternal de- struction, by so remarkable judgments and vengeance of God there executed for sin, it came to be translated to signify the place of the damned, as the most accursed, execrable, and abominable place of all places. The Spirit of God, in Scripture, by metaphors of all sorts of things that are dreadful unto sense, sets forth the condition of the damned, and the torments that he has reserved for them in the life to come. Hell's punishments do infinitely exceed all other punishments ; no pain so extreme as that of the damned. Look, as there are no joys to the joys of heaven, so there are no pains to the pains of hell, Ps. cxvi. 3. All the cruelties in the world cannot possibly make up any horror comparable to the horrors of hell. The brick-kilns of Egypt, the furnace of Babel, ^ are but as the glowing sparkle, or as the blaze of a brush-faggot, to this tormenting Tophet that has been prepared of old to punish the bodies and souls of sinners with. Hanging, racking, burning, scourging, stoning, sawing asunder, flaying of the skin, &c., are not to be named in the day wherein the tortures of hell are spoken of. If all the pains, sorrows, miseries, and calamities that have been inflicted upon all the sons of men, since Adam fell in Paradise, should meet together and centre in one man, they would not so much as amount to one of the least of the pains of hell. Who can sum up the diversity of torments that are in hell 1 In hell there is, 1. Darkness ; hell is a dark region. 2. In hell there are sorrows. 3. In hell there are bonds and chains. 4. In hell there is pains and pangs. 5. In hell there is the worm that never dies. 6. In hell there is a lake of fire. 7. In hell there is a furnace of fire. 8. In hell there is the devil and his angels ; and oh, how dreadful must it be to be shut up for ever with those roaring lions ! 9. In hell there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. 2 Certainly, did men believe the torments of hell, that weeping for ex- tremity of heat, and that gnashing of teeth that is there for extremity of cold, they would never ofier to fetch profits or pleasures out of those flames.3 10. In heU there is unquenchable fire, Mat. iii. 12, ' He will burn the chafi" with unquenchable fire ;' in hell there is ' everlasting burnings,' Isa. xxxiii. 14. ' The sinners in Zion are afraid, fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites ; who among us shall dwell with the de- vouring fire ? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ? ' Wicked men, who are now the only jolly fellows of the time, shall one day go from i3urning to burning ; from burning in sin to burning in hell ; from burning in flames of lusts to burning in flames of torment, except there be found true repentance on their sides, and pardoning grace on God's. ^ 0 sirs ! in this devouring fire, in these everlasting burnings, Cain shall find no cities to build, nor his posterity shall have no instruments of music to invent there ; none shall take up the timbrel or harp, or rejoice at the sound of the organ. There Belshazzar
'i Jude 13; Ps. cxvi. 3; 2 Pet. ii. 4; Jude 6; Mark ix. 44; Rev. xx. 15; Mat. xiii. 41, 42, XXV. 41, xxiv. 51, xxv. 30, xiii. 42.