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.
If you allow your love of creature comforts — or even your pleasure in family and loved ones — to outrun your love for the Lord, you cannot be a victorious soldier for Christ.The Christian in Complete Armour, 1:72
The layman has a large field in which he may minister to his fellow man, even if he is not called to full time ministry.Christian in Complete Armour 1:300
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.
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.
O sinners, consider when you are sinning, you are dancing about the mouth of hell. If the Lord should but snap in sunder the slender thread of your lives, you would presently fall into hell. Men think the pleasures of sin very sweet; the Lord knows they are bitterness in the latter end.
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.
The saints in heaven shall be like the angels in their alacrity, love, and constancy to serve God; and the damned, like the devils in sin as well as punishment.
David had sat many months under the lectures of the law, unhumbled for his complicated sin, but Nathan is sent to preach a rehearsal sermon to him of the many mercies that God had graced him with, and while those coals are pouring on his head, his heart dissolves presently (2 Sam. 12:13). The frost is seldom quite out of the earth till the sun hath gotten some power in the spring to dissolve its bands. Neither will hardness of heart be removed until the soul be thoroughly warmed with the sense of God's mercies.
A sincere heart is like a clear stream in a brook: you may see to the bottom of his plots in his words and take the measure of his heart by his tongue.
Grace is of a stirring nature and not such a dead thing, like an image, which you may lock up in a chest, and none shall know what God you worship. No, grace will show itself; it will walk with you in all places and companies; it will buy with you and sell for you; it will have a hand in all your enterprises; it will comfort you when you are sincere and faithful for God, and it will complain and chide you when you are otherwise. Go to, stop its mouth and heaven shall hear its voice; it will groan, mourn, and strive even as a living man when you would smother him. I will as soon believe the man to be alive that lies peaceably as he is nailed up in his coffin, without strife or bustle, as that thou hast grace and never exercise it in any act of spiritual life.
The gospel presents us with the articles of peace, which God graciously offers to treat, and conclude an inviolable peace upon with rebellious man. In it we have the whole method which God laid in His own thoughts from eternity of reconciling poor sinners to Himself. The gospel, what is it but God's heart in print? The precious promises of the gospel, what are they but heaven's court rolls translated into the creature's language? Complete Armour