618 / 674
MI
THE NATURE
OF
THE
YUNJST?MENT9
11
HELL.
[nose.
x22.
God continue
to punish
creatures
when
their
reason
is
lost
?
What
can such
punishments
avail
?
I
answer, surely
God
will
not
continue
to
punish
madmen
;
therefore
none
of
these
torments
shall
extin-
guish
our reason, or destroy
out
intellectual
powers
;
for
it
is as
creatures of
reason and free-will
that
sinners are
thus
punished,
and therefore
these powers
must
remain
in
their proper
exercise
;
besides
the
very
operations
of
these
powers.
in
self
condemnation, and
self
-
upbraiding,
are
part
of
their punishment. But whether
God
will
so
fortify the
natures of
the damned, which
probably
shall
not
be
made
of
flesh
and
blood,_
and
enable
them
to
bear
such intense
pain
without distraction,
or
whether
the
highest
extremes of their
torment
shall only
be inflicted.
t
some
certain
periods
or
intervals,
so
that
they
shall-
soon
return
to
their reasoning
powers again,
with
bitter
remembrance
of
what
passed, this
matter
is
hard
to de
termine
;
and because it
is
unwritten and unrevealed,
I
am silent.
But
it still
remains
that
punishment
shall
be.
so
intense and
severe, as becomes
a God of
holiness
and
justice
to inflict
on
rebellious-and obstinate creatures.
SECTION
III.
Reflexions
on
the
nature
of
these
punishments.
It
is
time
now
that
we
should
.
proceed
to form some special
reflexions on the
nature of
the punishments
of
hell,
such
as they have been
described
in the foregoing discourse.
The
first
is
this,
Reflexion I.
"
What dreadful
and
unknown
evil
is.
contained
in
the
nature
of
sin
which
grows
up
into such
misery, which,
breeds
this stinging worm in the
consci-
ence, which
prepares
the
creature
for
such
fiery
torments,
and
which
provokes
a God
to
inflict them
?
The
vessels
of
wrath
have
prepared
themselves for
it,
as
the apostle
intimates,
by
their
own
sins
;
Rom. ix.
22.
"
they are
fitted for
destruction
:"
Nor
does all the intense and
infinite anguish
of
this
punishment
exceed the desert
of
bur
sins.
The great God
in a
way
of
bounty,
may often
bestow upon us vastly beyond what our little
services can
ever pretend
to have deserved,
but
he
never
punishes
beyond
our
deserts.
What.a
dangerous and pernicious
mistake
is
it
in
the
children
of
men to
sport
with sin, as
with
a
harmless
thing?
It
is
much safer
sporting
with
a
poisonous ser-