[7.] Seventhly and lastly. Our fire may he quenched and ex- iinguislicd. The hottest flames, the greatest conflagrations have been quenched and extinguished by water. Fires on our hearths and in our chimneys are sometimes put out by the sun's beams, and often they die and go out of themselves. Our fire is maintained with wood, and put out with water ; but the fire of hell never goes out, it can never be quenched. 2 It is an everlasting fire, an eternal fire, an unquenchable fire. In Mark ix. from ver. 43 to ver. 49, this fire is no less than five times said to be unquenchable, as if the Lord could never speak enough of it. Beloved, the Holy Ghost is never guilty of idle repetitions ; but by these frequent repetitions the Holy Ghost would teach men to look about them, and to look upon it as a real thing, and as a serious thing, and not sport themselves with unquench- able flames, nor go to hell in a dream. Certainly the fire into which the damned shall be cast shall be without all intermission of time or punishment. No tears, nor blood, nor time, can extinguish the fire of hell. Could every damned sinner weep a whole ocean, yet all those oceans together would never extinguish one spark of infernal fire. The damned are in everlasting chains of darkness; they are under the ' vengeance of eternal fire,' Jude 7 ; they are ' in blackness of dark- ness for ever.' ' The smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever, and they shall have no rest day nor night,' Eev. xiv. 11.3 The damned in hell would fain die, but they cannot. Mors sine morte, they shall be always dying, yet never dead ; they shall be always a- consuming, yet never consumed. ' The smoke of their furnace ascends for ever and ever.' lEtcrnis punientur pa^nis, they shall be everlast- ingly punished, saith Mollerus on Ps. ix. 17. And Musculus on the same text saith, Animi impiorum cruciatibus debit is apud inferos jmnienfur, The souls of the ungodly shall be punished in hell with deserved torments. Ubi i^er millia millia annorum cruciandi, nee in secida secidurum liberandi, Myriads of years shall not determine or put a period to their suftcrings, saith Augustine, Plato could say that whoever are not expiated, but ])rofane, shall go into hell to be tor- mented for their wickedness with the greatest, the most bitter, and terrible punishments for ever in that prison of hell. And Trismegistus could say. That souls going out of the body defiled were tossed to and
' Hell torments punish but not finish the bodies of men. — Prosper.
■ Jerome was out wlien he said, Jnfernum nihil esse, 7iisi conscienlice horrorem. And Tully was out, who held that there arc no other hell furies than the stings of conscienec.
* Oh that word never, said a poor despairing creature on his deathbed, breaks my heart! They are lying histories that tell us that Trajan was delivered out of hell by the prayers of Giegory, and Faleonella by the prayers of Tcclacs.
ISA, XLII. 24, 25.] THE LATE FIERY DISPENSATION. 209
fro witli eternal punishments. Yea, the very Turks, speaking of the house of perdition, do affirm, i That tliey who have turned God's grace into wantonness, shall abide eternally in the fire of hell, and there be eternally tormented. A certain religious man going to visit Olympius, who lived cloistered up in a monastery near Jordan, and finding him cloistered up in a dark cell, which he thought uninhabitable by reason of heat and swarms of gnats and flies, and asking him how he could endure to live in such a place, he answered, ' All this is but a light matter, that I may escape eternal torments. I can endure the sting- ing of gnats, that I might not endure the stinging of conscience and the gnawing of that worm that never dies. This heat thou thinkest grievous, I can easily endure when I think of the eternal fire of hell ; these sufferings are but short, but the sufi'erings of hell are eternal.' Certainly infernal fire is neither tolerable nor terminable. The ex- tremity and eternity of helhsh torments is set forth by the worm that never dieth. Christ at the close of his sermon makes a threefold repetition of this worm : Mark ix. 44, ' Where their worm dieth not ;' and again, ver. 46, ' Where their worm dieth not ;' and again, ver. 48, ' Where their worm dieth not, and their fire goeth not out.' Certainly those punishments are beyond all conception and expression which our Lord Jesus doth so often inculcate within so small a space.
' In hell there 's nothing heard but yells and cries ; In hell the fire never slacks, nor worm never dies. But where this hell is placed, my muse, stop there. Lord, shew me what it is, but never where. To worm and fire, to torments there No term he gave; they cannot wear.'^
If after so many millions of years as there be drops in the ocean, there might be a deliverance out of hell, this would yield a little ease, a little comfort to the damned. Oh but this word eternity^ eternity, eternity, this word everlasting, everlasting , everlasting, will even break the hearts of the damned in ten thousand pieces ! There is scarce any pain or torment here on earth but there is ever some hope of ease, mitigation, or intermission, there is some hope of relief or delivery ; but in hell the torments there are all easeless, remediless, and endless. Here if one fall into the fire, he may like a brand be pulled out of it and saved; but out of that fiery lake there is no redemption. That majesty that the sinner hath offended and pro- voked is an infinite majesty. Now there must be some proportion betwixt the sinner's sin, and his punishment and torment. Now the sinner being a finite creature, he is not capable of bearing the weight of that punishment or torment that is intensively infinite, because it would be his abolishing or annihilating ; and therefore he must bear the weight of that punishment or torment that is extensively infinite — namely, duratione infinita, infinite in the continuance and endurance. What is wanting in torment must be made up in time. Everlasting fire and everlasting punishment in the New Testament is directly opposed to eternal life, to that blessed state of the righteous which will never have an end ; ^ and therefore, according to the rules and
' Alcoran. Mahom. cap. 14, p. I&Q, &c. ; cap. 20, p. 193. ^ A peutelogia dolor inferni. — Prudentins the poet.
^ Mat. XXV. ; 2 Thes. i. 7-10, &c. Vide August., lib. xxi. cap. 23, 24, De Civitate Dei. VOL. VI. O
•210 London's lamentations on [Isa. XLII. 24, 25.