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SEE
THE NATURE
OF
THE PUNISHMENTS IN
HELL.
['DISC.
X"Ir.
may
we
not
suppose
that
the
great God
will
create
bo,.
dies for them
of such
an unhappy mould
and contexture,
as
shall be
another perpetual
source
of
pain
and
anguish
?
What
if
their
bodies shall
be
raised
with all the seeds
of
disease
in them,
like the
gout
or
the
stone,
or
any other
smarting malady
?
And
what
if
the
smart
of
these
bodily
distempers should
mingle with the raging passions
of
the
mind,
as
far
as
it
is
consistent
with
immortality
and
ever-
lasting
duration
?
Who
can
say,
that
when
God
exerts
his
power,
and makes
his
wrath
known," in
punishing
obstinate,
rebellious and
impenitent
sinners,
as
Rom.
ix.
2.
he
will
not
frame such bodies for them to
dwell in,
as shall be a
hateful
burden, and an incessant plague
to
them through
all ages
of
their duration
P.
And perhaps
these
bodily pains may
be also
included in the metaphor
of
a
gnawing worm bred within them, which
will
never
die, which
shall
never cease
to
fill
them
with
grievous
anguish.
Here
perhaps
it
may be
enquired,
"
area
there
not muh
titudes
of
men in this world,
who
are
not sinners
of
grosser
kind,
but
have lived, in
the
main, in
the practice
of
common social duties, and have maintained the usual
forms
of
religion,
according
to
the outward rules
of
the
gospel,
and
the custom
of their
nation,
but
they have
been negligent indeed
of
any sincere
repentance
towards
God,
and have been strangers
to
inward
vital religion
throughout their
whole
course
?
Shall
these creatures,
who seem
to stand
in
a
sort
of
indifferent character;
who
are outwardly
blameless,.
with
,regard
to common
morality, and have exercised the
common virtues
of
justice
and
benevolence towards
their
fellow-
creatures,
perhaps under
the influences
of
education
or
custom,
or
perhaps
by
the
effect
that
reason or
philosophy, or
their
inward fears have had toward the
restraint
of their
pas-
sions and appetites
;
I
say,
shall such sort
of creatures
as
these
be
filled with
those furies
of
rage and
resentment
against God,
envy
and
malice"
toward their
fellow-sin-
ners, and all the
vile
and
unsociable passions
in
these
regions
of
misery which they
have never found
working
in them
here
on
earth,
or but
in
a
low
degree
?
Shall
all
the
torments and
inward anguish
of
soul
that
you have
been describing,
fall
upon this
rank of
sinners,
,whom
the