ISCOURSE XIII. 235 ment in hell? What I build this computation upon, are some. expressions of St. Peter ; 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20. where Christ is said to preach unto the spirits in prison, which some time were disobedient, when once the long- suffeting of God waited in the days of Noah ; some have supposed, that this text informs us of. Christ's descent into 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 repent- ance and salvation : Whereas others think this text may be bet- ter expounded concerning the Spirit of Christ given to Noah, which made him a preacher of righteousness, when he fore- told and threatened a flood of waters, and called men to re- pentance. 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 hundred years of tor- ment for it ? Yet further, the devils have lain under punishment near six thousand years, viz. four thousand before Christ came, and al- most 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, pro- bably 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 that they are conscious of this terror and this future increase of punishment, for they expostulated with our Saviour ; Mat. viii. 29. Art thou come to torment us be- fore 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 judg- ment 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 hard- ness of heart, or rather what madness is it for men to Continue in their sins, to delay their return to God, and abandon the grace of the gospel under this foolish flattery and wild presump- tion, that above six thousand years hence perhaps a certain day may come when the worm of conscience will die, and the fire of hell will be quenched? Such presumption is madness and dis- traction rather than reasoning. Objection II, The second objection is derived from the
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