THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF '' FREE-WILL^ 747 



:i bright coal. Here is a little image of -what you will be in hell, except you 

 repent and fly to Christ. — Sermon X. 



Do but consider what it is to suffer extreme torment for ever and ever ; to 

 suffer it night and day, from one day to another, from one year to another, from 

 one age to another ; in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking 

 and gnasliing your teeth ; with your bodies and every member full of. racking 

 torture ; without any possibility of getting ease ; without any possibility of 

 moving God to pity by your cries {sic). How dismal will it be under these 

 racking torments to know that you never, never shall be delivered from them ; 

 to have no hope; when after you have worn out the age of the sun, moon, and 

 stars, without any rest day or night, or one minute's ease, yet you shall have no 

 hope of ever being delivered ; you shall know you are not one whit nearer the 

 end of your torments; but the same groans, the same shrieks, the same doleful 

 cries are incessantly to be made by you, and the smoke of your torment shall 

 ascend up for ever and ever ; your bodies, which have been burning and roasting 

 all the while in glowing furnaces, yet shall not have been consumed, hut will 

 remain to roast through an eternity yet. — Seumo^t XI. 



I shall mention several good and important ends which will be obtained by 

 the eternal punishment of the wicked .... 



III. The saints will be made more sensible how great their salvation is. When 

 they shall see how great the misery is from which God has saved them, and how 

 great the difference he hath made between their state and the state of others 

 who were by nature, and perhaps ly practice, no more sinful and ill-deserving 

 than they^ it will give them a sense of the wonderfulness of God's grace. . . . 

 The view of the misery of tlie damned will double the ardor of the love and 

 gratitude of the saints in heaven. 



IV. The sight of hell-torments will excite the happiness of the saints for 

 ever ; it will make them more sensible of their own happiness ; it will give them 

 a more lively relish of it! Oh, it wiU make them sensible how happy they are ! — 

 Sermon XL 



When they shall see how miserable others of their fellow creatures are — 

 when they shall see the smoke of their torment and the raging flames of their 

 burning, and shall hear tiieif shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the 

 mean time are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be in it to all eternity, 

 how they will rejoice! . . . How joyfully they will sing to God and the Lamb 

 when they behold this! — Sermon XIII. 



So long as this remains the orthodox view of the fate reserved for 

 a majority of the human race, so long as to doubt the reality of 

 such a Deity is to incur the suspicion of atheism, it will be difficult 

 for men to yield the intellectual figment of " free-will " for the logic 

 of necessity. True, the doctrine of predestination, which teaches that 

 " by the decree of God, and for the manifestation of his glory, some 

 men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others fore- 

 ordained to everlasting death," still stands in many a creed ; but most 

 men do not suspect its existence ; it is rarely if ever preached at the 

 present day. Otherwise unable to reconcile eternal torture with an 

 ideal of divine justice, probably the faith of ninety-nine out of every 

 hundred persons is that each human being possesses a perfect liberty 

 of choice, and vmdetermined volition. 



