Meditations of the misery of man after death, which is the fulness of Cursedness.

THe fulness of cursedness (when it falls upon a Creature, not able to bear the brunt thereof) presseth him down to that bottomlessa deep of the endless b wrath of Almighty God; which is called thecdamnation of Hell. This fulness of cursedness is either particular or general.

Particular, is that which in a less mea∣sure of fulness lighteth upon thed Soul immediately as soon as she is separated from the Body. For, in the very instant of dissolution, she is in the sight and presence of God. For when she ceaseth to see with the organ of fleshly eyes, she seeth after a spiritual manner, like Stephen, whoe saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at his right hand: Or as a Man, who being born blind, and miraculously restored to his sight should see the Sun, which he never saw before. And thereby the testimony of her own Page  56Conscience, Christ the righteous Judge, who knoweth all things, makes her by his om∣nipresent Power, to understand the doom and judgment that is due unto her sins, and what must be her eternala state. And in this manner standing in the sight of Hea∣ven, not fit for her uncleanness to come into Heaven, she is said to stand before the Throne of God. And so forthwith she is b carried by the evil angels, how came to fetch her with violence into Hell, where she is kept as in a Prison, in everlasting pains and chains, under darkness, unto the Judgment of the great Day: But not in that extremity of torments which she shall fi∣nally receive at the last Day.

The general fulness of cursedness is in acgreater measure of fulness, which shall be inflicted upon both thyd soul and body, when (by the mighty power of Christ the supreme Judge of heaven and earth) the one shall be brought out of Hell, and the other out of the Grave, as Prisoners to receive their dreadful doom, according to their evil deeds. How shall the reprobate by the roaring of the Sea, the quaking of the earth, the trembling of theePowers of hea∣ven, and terrours of heavenly signs, be dri∣ven at the worlds end, to their wits end! Oh, what a woful salutation will there be, betwixt the damned Soul and Body, at their re-uniting at that terrible Day!

O sink of Sin, O lump of Filthiness, (will the Soul say unto her Body) how am I compelled to re-enter into thee, not as Page  57 into an habitation to rest, but as a Prison to be tormented together!* how dost thou ap∣pear in my sight like Jephthah's Daughter to my greater torment! Would GOD thou hadst perpetually rotted in the grave, that I might never have seen thee again! How shall we be confounded together, to hear before God, Angels, and Men, laid open all those secret sins, which we committed to∣gether! Have I lost Heaven for the love of such a stinking Carrion? Art thou the flesh, for whose pleasures I have yielded to commit so many fornications? O filthy Belly, how became I such a Fool as to make thee my God! How mad was I for mo∣mentany joys, to incur these torments of eternal pains! Ye rocks and mountains, why skip ye so like rams, Psalm 144. 4. and will not fall upon me, to hide me from the face of him that comes to sit on yonder throne; for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand? Rev. 6. 16, 17. Why tremblest thou thus, Earth, at the presence of the Lord, and wilt not o∣pen thy Mouth and swallow me up, as thou didst Korah, that I be seen no more?

O damned furies! I would ye might with∣out delay tear me in pieces, on condition that you would tear me into nothing! But whilst thou art thus in vain bewail∣ing thy misery, the Angels hale thee vio∣lently away from the brink of the Grave, to some place near the Tribunal Seat of Christ,* where being as a cursed Goat sepa∣rated Page  58 to stand beneath on Earth, as on *the left-hand of the Judge; Christ shall rip up all the benefits he bestowed on thee, and the torments he suffered for thee, and all the good deeds which thou hast omitted, and all the ungrateful villainies which thou didst commit against him and his holy Laws.

Within thee, thine own Conscience (more than a Thousand Witnesses) shall accuse thee; the Devils who tempted thee to all thy lewdness, shall on the one side testi∣fie with thy Conscience against thee; and on the other side, shall stand the holy Saints and Angels, approving Christ's Justice, and detesting so filthy a Creature; behind thee an hideous noise of innumerable fellow-damned Reprobates tarrying for thy com∣pany. Before thee† all the World burning in flaming fire; above thee an ireful Judge of deserved Vengeance, ready to pro∣nounce his Sentence upon thee; beneath thee, the fiery and sulphureous mouth of the bottomless pit, gaping to receive thee. In this woful estate, to hide thy self will be impossible; (for on that condition, thou wouldst wish that the greatest Rock might fall upon thee) to appear will be in∣tolerable, and yet thou must stand forth, to receive, with other Reprobates, this thy Sentence,*Depart from me ye cursed, into e∣verlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

Depart from me] There is a separation from all joy and happiness.

Page  59Ye cursed] There is a black and direful Excommunication.

Into fire] There is the cruelty of Fain.

Everlasting] There is the perpetuity of punishment.

Prepared for the Devil and his Angels.] Here are thy infernal tormenting and tor∣mented Companions.

O terrible Sentence! from which the condemned cannot escape; which being pro∣nounced, cannot possibly be withstood: a∣gainst which a Man cannot except, and from which a Man can no where appeal: so that to the damned nothing remains but hel∣lish torments, which know neither ease of pain, nor end of time. From this Judg∣ment-seat thou must be thrust by Angels (together with all the damned Devils and*Reprobates) into the bottomless lake of utter darkness, that perpetually burneth with fire and brimstone. Whereunto as thou shalt be thrust, there shall be such weeping woes and wailing, that the cry of the company of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, when the earth swallowed them up, was nothing comparable to this howling; nay, it will seem unto thee an Hell before thou goest into Hell, but to hear it. Into which bottomless lake after that thou art once plunged, thou shalt ever be falling down, and never meet a bot∣tom; and in it thou shalt ever lament, and none shall pity thee; thou shalt always weep for pain of the Fire, and yet gnash thy Teeth, for the extremity of Cold; thou shalt weep to think that thy miseries are pastPage  60 remedy: thou shalt weep to think, that to repent is to no purpose: thou shalt weep to think, how for the shadows of short pleasures thou hast incurred these sorrows of eternal pains: thou shalt weep to see how that weeping it self can nothing prevail; yea,* in weeping, thou shalt weep more tears than there is water in the Sea, for the water of the Sea is finite, but the weeping of a Reprobate shall be infinite.

There thy lascivious Eyes shall be affli∣cted with sights of ghastly Spirits, thy cu∣rious Ears shall be affrighted with hideous noise of howling Devils, and the gnashing Teeth of damned Reprobates; thy dainty Nose shall be cloyed with noisom stench of Sulphur; thy delicate Taste shall be pined with intolerable hunger; thy drunken Throat shall be parched with unquenchable thirst; thy Mind shall be tormented to think how for the love of abortive pleasures, which perished ere they budded, thou so foolishly lost Heaven's Joys, and incurredst Hellish Pains, which last beyond Eternity. Thy Conscience shall ever sting thee like an Ad∣der, when thou thinkest how often Christ by his Preachers offered the Remission of Sins, and the Kingdom of Heaven freely unto thee, if thou wouldest but Believe and Repent; and how easily thou might∣est have obtained mercy in those days; how near thou wast many times to have repented, and yet didst suffer the De∣vil and the World to keep thee still in impenitency, and how the day of mer∣cy Page  61 is now past, and will never dawn again.

How shall thy understanding be racked to consider, how for momentany Riches thou hast lost eternal Treasure, and changed Heaven's felicity for Hell's misery; where every part of thy Body, without inter∣mission of pain, shall be continually tor∣mented alike!

In these Hellish Torments, thou shalt be for ever deprived of the beatifical sight of GOD, wherein consisteth the sovereign good and life of the Soul. Thou shalt never see Light, nor the least sight of Joy, but lie in a perpetual Prison of utter Dark∣ness, where shall be no Order, but Hor∣rour; no Voice, but of Blasphemers and Howlers; no Noise but of Torturers and tortured; no Society, but of the Devil and his Angels, who being tormented themselves, shall have no other ease, but to wreak their Fury in tormenting thee: Where shall be punishment without Pity; misery, without mercy; sorrow, with∣out succour; crying, without comfort; mis∣chief, without measure; torment, without ease; where the Worm dieth not, and the Fire is never quenched; where the Wrath of God shall seize upon the Soul and Bo∣dy,* as the flame of fire doth on the lump of Pitch or Brimstone. In which flame thou shalt ever be burning, and never consumed; ever dying, and never dead; ever roaring in the pangs of Death, and never rid of those pangs, nor knowing end ofPage  62 thy pains. So that after thou hast endu∣red them so many thousand years as there are Grass on the Earth, or Sands on the Sea∣shore, thou art no nearer to have an end of thy torments, than thou wast the first day that thou wast cast into them; yea, so far are they from ending, that they are ever but beginning. But if after a thousand times so many thousand years, thy damned Soul could but conceive a hope that those her torments should have an end, this would be some Comfort, to think that at length an end will come: But as oft as the Mind thinketh of this word Never, it is as another Hell in the midst of Hell.

This thought shall force the damned to cry 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, as much as if they should say 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, O Lord, not ever, not ever, torment us thus. But their Consciences shall answer them as an Echo,〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, ever, ever. Hence shall arise their doleful 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, wo and alas for evermore.

This is that second Death, the general per∣fect fulness of all cursedness, and misery, which every damned Reprobate must suf∣fer, so long as GOD and his Saints shall enjoy bliss and felicity in Heaven for ever∣more.

Thus far of the misery of Man in his state of corruption, unless he be renewed by Grace in Christ.

Now followeth the knowledge of Man's self, in respect of his state of Regenerati∣on by Christ.