DISCOURSE XII. 203 that they scoff at you as eternal fools, who have lost a God, and. a heaven, and immortal happiness, by your own madness and folly in hearkening to their temptations. II. " The mutual upbraidings of fellow- sinners and fellow - sufferers among the children of men, will aggravate your wretch- edness, day and night without end." 'Those who drew each other into foul iniquities, shall fill the ears of each other with loud and sharp reproaches for their mutual influence on both their ruin, and shall charge their damnation, and all their heavy sor- rows, as a heavy load on each other's souls. Some of those who have been joined in the nearest ties of kindred and friend- ship, while they dwelt in flesh and blood, shall be the terrible instruments of their keenest remorse and vexation, and teaze their spirits with endless upbraidings. Here the sons of pride, that most hateful iniquity, shall be overwhelmed with huge mortification and disdain : The mighty sinner shall be insulted by the meanest of the crowd, and princes shall be bearded and affronted by those gay slaves of the court, whom they once em- ployed in flattering and adoring them. They were once vain enough to believe, they were something more than mortal.; but now they are spurned by those very flatterers with a foot of con- tempt, and their eternal pride still swelling, gives their own hearts new stings and twinges at every resentment. None but a proud and haughty creature here in this world, who has some- times met with scorn and insult from his inferiors, can speak feel- ingly of the exquisite sensibility of these torments of soul in hell. But besides this, there are many sinners who lived in malice, and who died with their hearts full of revenge against their fel- low-sinners ; and when they shall meet them in those deplorable regions, how natural is it to suppose they will endeavour to ex- ecute this revenge upon them without end and without mercy ? For it may be easily supposed that malice, revenge and cruelty, which are the proper character of devils, shall not be abated among the children of men, when they are grown so near a -kin in their tempers to those evil spirits, and are now for ever ming- led amongst them. And yet further, who knows what the damned in hell shall endure from the endless brawls and bitter quarrels among themselves ? What new contentions will arise perpetually in such a country, where it is perhaps the practice and custom of the place, and the nature of the inhabitants, for the most part, to make every one of their fellows as uneasy and as miserable as they can? O what mad and furious pride and malice, and every hellish passion, will be raging almost in every bosom against all those who are near them, and this in a dark prison where all are intensely tormented, and where there is no such thing as compassion or sincere love, nothing to sooth each others sorrows, but every thing that may add tò the smart and anguish !
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