Quote 4609
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There are many in hell, who would be glad to change conditions with you, as bad as you think yours to be.
Hell will be filled with people who didn't drink, didn't cuss, and may have even been baptized. Why? Because not one of those things make someone a Christian.
Hell is full of hard hearts; there is not one soft heart there. There is weeping there, but no softness.
The damned in hell are under easeless and endless sufferings because they would have sinned always if they could have lived always. Wicked men would have no end of their lives here; they would live forever that they might sin forever. Therefore the Lord giveth them a life, not such a one as they would have but such a one as they deserve to have, which is indeed a death forever; wicked men shall die eternally for sin because they would have lived eternally in sin.
They say smelling of the earth is healthful for the body and taking in the scent of this sulphurous pit, by frequent meditation, cannot but be as wholesome for the soul. O Christian, be sometimes walking in the company of those scriptures which set out the state of the damned in hell and their exquisite torments. This is the true house of mourning, and the going into it by serious meditation is a sovereign means to make the living lay it to heart; and laying it to heart, there is the less fear that thou wilt throw thyself by thy impenitency into this uncomfortable place who art offered so fair a mansion in heaven through faith and repentance.
Many among us, I think, would be content if there were such a law that might tie up ministers' mouths from scaring them with their sins and the miseries that attend their unreconciled state. The most are more careful to run from the discourse of their misery than to get out of the danger of it, are more offended with the talk of hell than troubled for that sinful state that shall bring them thither.
Satan labors to put off the sinner with delays. Floating, flitting thoughts of repenting he fears not; he can give sinners leave to talk what they will do so he can beg time and by his art keep such thoughts from coming to a head and ripening into a perfect resolution. Few are in hell but thought of repenting.
Could the damned forget the way they went into hell, how oft the Spirit of God was wooing, and how far they were overcome by the conviction of it—in a word, how many turns and returns there were in their journey forward and backward, what possibilities—yea, probabilities—they had for heaven when on earth. Were but some hand so kind as to blot these tormenting passages out of their memories, it would ease them wonderfully.
Many have declared that all the torments in the world are nothing to the wrath of God upon the conscience. What is the worm that never dies but the efficacy of a guilty conscience? This worm feeds upon and gnaws the very inwards, the tender and most sensible part of man, and is the principal part of hell's horror.
God never yet sent any man to hell for sin to whom sin has commonly been the greatest hell in this world. God has but one hell, and that is for those to whom sin has been commonly a heaven in this world. That man that hates sin and that daily enters his protest against sin—that man shall never be made miserable by sin hereafter.
To think often of hell is the way to be preserved from falling into hell. Oh, that you would often consider the bitterness of the damneds' torments and of the pitilessness of their torments and of the diversity, the easelessness, the remedilessness of their torments! The sinner's delight here is momentary; that which torments hereafter is perpetual. When as sinners in hell, dost thou think, O young man, that another Christ shall be found to die for them or that the same Christ shall be crucified again for them or that another gospel shall be preached to them? Surely not.
The best way to prevent this hell of hells is to give God the cream and flower of your youth, your strength, your time, your talent. Death may suddenly and unexpectedly seize on you; you have no lease of your lives. Youth is as fickle as old age; the young man may find graves enough of his length in burial places. As green wood and old logs meet in one fire, so young sinners and old sinners meet in one hell and burn together.
What if God will that His people should have a taste of hell in this life, that so they may be sensible of and very thankful for their deliverance from hell and the wrath to come? There are three things in hell: torment of body, horror of conscience, loss of God. By our pains and torments, gouts and stone, we think of the torments of hell, or may think. By the horror of conscience that we meet withal, we may think of the horror of conscience there. And by God's withdrawing and God's departing from us here, we may think of the loss of God forever there.
We have toiled all day, all the days of our lives, and have caught nothing. The net of the gospel hath been always spread out, and not scarce one soul taken in it. We read Acts 2:40 that at a sermon of St. Peter's, three thousand souls were converted to the Lord, but now we may hear three thousand sermons preached, and scarce one soul brought to heaven. Men are altogether of Gallio's mind (Acts 18:17). They care not for these things. Never was there since the days of Adam so much means of grace and salvation as now. Have we not line upon line, precept upon precept, sermon upon sermon, mercy upon mercy, and yet all will not do; men stop their ears.
Hell is truth known too late.
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1. Thomas Watson (164)
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2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
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4. John Calvin (107)
5. J.I. Packer (93)
6. John Piper (87)
7. George Swinnock (80)
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12. Louis Berkhof (63)
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15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
16. B.B. Warfield (58)
17. R.C. Sproul (55)
18. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
19. Matthew Henry (51)
20. Gerald Bray (50)
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