665 / 674
DISC.
XIILi
THE PUNISHMENTS IN HELL.
64;
make haste
to
rescue their
souls
from this
everlasting
vengeance
?
With
what
warm
and
solicitous
zeal
should
they
lay hold
of
those
poor thoughtless wretches
who
are
Madly
indulging
their
lusts
and
follies,
and thereby pre-
paring
themselves to become
fit fuel
for this
eternal
fire
?
They
are
forming
themselve's by
their iniquities to
become
vessels
of
this
everlasting
indignation
:
let
us
seize them
by
some
kind and constraining
words
of
love,
Some
outcries
of
compassion and fear,
lest
they
rush
into
those
flames which will
never
be
quenched: perhaps
when they are summoned
away from
us
by
the stroke
of
death,
they may leave us in
the most uncomfortable' sor-
rows
for
our
neglect, while they
are
suffering
the long
endless
punishment
due to
their
own
iniquities.
Reflec.
VI.
"
How
unreasonable
a
thing
is
it for
us
ministers, who
are charged and
intrusted
with
the
whole
counsel
of God
for the salvation of
men, to avoid
the
mention
of
these
his
eternal terrors
in
our
sermons, and in
our
addresses to
mortal creatures
;"
creatures
who
are
daily preparing
themselves
for them
by
their
sins,
and are
ready to plunge
into
the midst
of
them
?
Has
not
our
blessed Saviour made
frequent
mention of
them
in his
gospel,
and set them in
their
dreadful array
before his
hearers
?
Has
he
not
expressed them
in
their
strongest
terms,
and spread them
in
their
most frightful colours,
and set them
in
their
full
and everlasting extent,
before
the sinners
which
attended
his
ministry
!
And
did
he
ever
give
any
hint
that
they should
be
understood
in
a
milder
sense
?
Have not
the apostles
followed
their
Lord
in the same
dreadful display of thé sharp and
ever-during
punishments
of
hell
?
And
have they
taught
us
to qua
-
lify
these
terrors?
by
gentler
interpretations of them?
And
have
not
such
kind of
discourses been
abundantly
blessed in the providence
of God, both
in
ancient and
later
ages,
to awaken and
save
multitudes of the souls
of
men
?
How
many holy
and
happy
spirits
are
now
rejoicing
before God, and
before the
throne
of
his love,
and en-
/compassed
with
all
the joys of immortality,
who ewe the
beginnings
of their
repentance, and the
first
turn
of
their
souls towards faith
and
salvation
to
such
Words
of terror
-as
these?
How
many
of
the saints on
high have
been
first awakened from
their
deadly
sleep
'in
sin
by
the
Ministrations
of
this
eternal
vengeance
of God?
Ilow