641 / 674
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
thousand
years since, which
may be thus
computed
from
what
St.
Jude
says
of
them.
The
angels who
kept
not
their
first station, they
were
cast
into chains
of
darkness 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
of
judgment
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