616 THE ETERNAL DURATION OF Drsc. xftt) If the souls of men are immortal, such will their pas- sions be, their desires, their fears and their sorrows. Now their natural desires of happiness, as I have said, will be intense and strong, when God, the spring of all happiness, who hath been renounced and abandoned by them, bath now for ever forsaken them, and separated himself from them. What can there remain for them but everlasting darkness and despair, without a dawn of hope through all the ages of eternity? Their guilty consci- ences, with the views of God's unchangeable holiness, will for ever fill them with new fears and terrors, what shall be the next punishment they are to suffer. Such is the state of devils at this time, who expect a more dreadful punishment at the great day, as several places of scripture make evident. Their being immersed in the guilt of sin, and under the constant and tyrannical dominion of it, will overwhelm them with present grief, with cutting sorrows and horror unspeakable, which will sink into the centre of their souls, and make them an eternal terror and plague to themselves. Again, let us consider their immortality of soul will be spent in thinking : And what comfortable or hopeful ob- ject is there in heaven, earth, or hell, on which they can fix or employ their thoughts for one moment, to give a short release from their extreme misery ? So that they are left in endless successions of most painful thoughts and passions from the very nature of things. Again, suppose this body of mine were by nature im- mortal, and was designed by my Creator in its consti- tution to live for ever; and suppose by my own folly and madness, my own wilful indulgence ofappetite and passion, I had brought some dreadful distemper into my flesh which was found to be incurable, whether it be the gout or the stone, or some more terrible malady of the nervous kind, must not this gout, by necessity of nature, become an immortal gout ? Must not these distempers be immortal distempers, and created eternal pain ? And is the Godof nature bound to work a miracle to cure and heal these diseases which I have wilfully brought upon myself by my own iniquities, and that after many warn- ings ? Is it unrighteous in God to let me languish on amidst my agonies and groans as long as my nature con- tinues in being, that is, to immortality ? And especially
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