DTSC. XIIr.J THE PUNISHMENT'S 'TN HE'LL. 621 Fits in prison, which some time were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah;" some have supposed, that this text informs us of Christ's descent intó hell after his death, and then preaching to those rebels who were drowned in the flood; near two thousand four hundred years before, in order to awaken them to repentance and salvation : Whereas others think this text may be better expounded concern- ing the Spirit of Christ given to Noah, which made him a preacher of righteousness, when he foretold and threat- ened a flood of waters, and called men to repentance. But if it should be granted, that those rebellious spirits among the dead did all repent, and were delivered by this preaching of Christ, would you chuse to indulge the delights of sin for a short ,season, and twenty-four hun- dred years of torment for it ? Yet further, the devils have lain under punishment near six thousand years, viz. four thousand before Christ came, and almost two thousandyears since, which may be thus computed fromwhat St. Jude says of them. The angels who kept not their first station, they were cast into chains ofdarkness probably before the creation of this our wOrld, for they were fallen, and tempted Adam to sin as soon as this world was made : And they had been confined in these chains' from that time about four thousand years before Christ came, and are waiting still for yet sharper punishment at the judgment of the great day," Jude, verse 6. And it is evident they are conscious of this terror and this future increase of pu- nishment, for they expostulated with our Saviour; Mat. 29. " Art thou conic to torment us before the time :" Now it is near two thousand years since Christ came, and from the time of their sinning, unto this day, it is almost six thousand years : And when the great: day ofjudgment comes, their fiercer punishment is but then to begin : And are not the devil and,his angels sentenced and confined to dwell together with the wicked children of Adam, when they shall be consigned at that dreadful day to the same everlasting fire and torment, which was prepared for those evil spirits? And who knows when their torment will end ? Now what folly and hardness of heart, or rather what madness is it for men to continue in ,their sins, to delay-their return to God, and abandon
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