582 THE NATCRE OF THE PVNISIÌMENTS TN Ft ELL. [DISC. XII. and this state of trial and of hope, eternal hardness seizes upon the mind : The neck is like an iron sinew hardened móre, if I may so express it, in the fire of hell. The will is fixed in everlasting obstinacy against God, and against the glories of his holiness. If Moses and the prophets, if Christ and his apostles, in the ministry of the word, could not soften the heart of bold trans gressors, what can be expected when all the means of grace and the methods of divine compassion are vanished and gone for ever ? It is granted indeed there will be bitter repentance among the damned in hell, and inward vexation of soul and self -cursing in abundance, forhaving plunged them- selves into this misery, and having abandoned all the offers of divine mercy : But it will he only such a repen- tance as Judas the traitor felt, when " he repented and hanged himself ;" Mat. xxvii. 5. This is a sort of mad- ness of rage within them for having made themselves miserable. But there will be found no hatred of the evil of sin, as it is an offence against God, no painful and relenting sense of their iniquity, as it has dishonoured God and broken his law, no such sorrow for sin as i$ attended with a hearty aversion to it, and a desire to love God and obey him ; but rather they will feel and nou- rish a growing aversion to God andhis holiness. " Ask yourselves my young friends, Did you never feel your hearts indulging an angry and unrelenting mood, and stubborn in your wrath against a superior who had sharply reproved you ? Or have you never felt an obstinate and unreconcileable hour in your younger years, even against a parent who had severely corrected you'? Or have you not found, at some seasons, your soul rising and kindling into violent resentment and a re- vengeful temper against your neighbour upon some sup- posed affront, damage, or mischief he had done you? Call these unhappy minutes to mind, and learn what hell is: Think into what a wretched case you would be plunged, if this wrath and stubbornness, this enmity and hardness should become immortal and unchangeable, though it were but against a neighbour: But if this ob- stinacy and stubborn hardiness of soul were bent against God himself, so that you would never relent, never sin- cerely repent of your crimes, nor bow, nor yield either
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