DISCOURSE XII. The Nature of the Punishments in Hell. Mark ix. 46. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. INTRODUCTION. THESE words are a short description of hell, by the lips of the Son of God, who came down from heaven : And he who lay in the bosom of his Father, and was intimate in all the counsels of his mercy and justice, must be supposed to know what the terrors and the wrath of God are, as well as his compassion and his goodness. It is confessed, that a discourse on this dreadful subject is nbt a direct ministration of grace, and the glad tidings of salvation, yet it has a great and happy tendency to the sanie end, even the salvation of sinful men ; for it awakens them to a more piercing sight, and to a more keen sensation of their own guilt and danger ; it possesses their spirits with a more lively sense of their misery, it fills them with a holy dread of divino punishment, and excites the powerful passion of fear to make them fly from the wrath to come, and betake themselves to the grace of God revealed in the gospel. The blessed Saviour himself, who was the most perfect image of his Father's love, and the prime minister of his grace, . publishes more of these terrors to the world, and preaches hell and damnation to sinners more than all the prophets or teachers that ever went before him ; and several of the apostles imitate their Lord in this practice : They kindle the flames of hell in their epistles, they thunder through the very hearts and consci- ences of men with the voice of damnation and eternal misery, to make stupid sinners feel as much of these terrors in the present prospect as is possible, in order to escape the actual sensation of them in time to come. Such awful discourses are many times also of excellent use to keep the children of God, and the dis- ciples of Jesus, in a holy and watchful frame, and to affright them from returning to sin and folly, and from the indulgence of any temptation, by setting these terrors of the Lord before their eyes. O may these words of his terror, from the lips of one of the meanest of his ministers, be attended with divine power from the convincing and sanctifying Spirit, that they may answer these happy ends and purposes, that they may excite a solemn reve- rence of the dreadful majesty of God in all our souls, and awaken us to repentance for every sin, and a more watchful course of holiness ! Let us then consider the expression in my text : When our Saviour mentions the word hell, he adds, where their worm dietk
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