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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
of
appetite
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
God
of
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