Wesley Corpus

Concerning future punishments, we learn from revelation only: (1) That they are both for soul and body, which are distinguished in Scripture by ‘the worm that dieth not’ and ‘the fire which never shall be quenched’; and accordingly we are bid to ‘fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.’ Upon which I shall only remark, that whereas we find by experience the body and soul in this life are not capable of suffering the extremity of pain and anguish at the same time, insomuch that the greatest anguish of mind is lost and diverted by acute and pungent pain of body; yet we learn from Scripture that in hell the wicked will be subject to extreme torments of both together. (2) That the chief cause of their eternal misery will be an eternal exclusion from the beatific vision of God. This exclusion seems to be the only punishment to which we can now conceive a pure spirit liable. And according as all intelligent beings are at a less or greater distance from this fountain of all happiness, so they are necessarily more or less miserable or happy. (3) That one part of those punishments will be by fire, than which we have not any revelation more express and positive. And as it is an instance of great goodness in God that the joys of heaven are represented to us under the figurative images of light and glory and a kingdom, and that the substance shall exceed the utmost of our conception; so it is an argument of His strict justice that future punishments are more literally threatened and foretold. (4) The eternity of these punishments is revealed as plainly as words can express it. And the difficulty of that question, ‘What proportion endless torments can bear to momentary sins,’ is quite removed by considering that the punishments denounced are not sanctions entirely arbitrary, but are withal so many previous warnings or declarations of the natural tendency of sin itself. So that an unrepenting sinner must be miserable in another life by a necessity of nature. Therefore he is not capable of mercy; since there never can be an alteration of his condition, without such a change of the whole man as would put the natural and settled order of the creation out of course.