Wesley Corpus

x. 26-31.) And let not any who live and die in their sins, vainly hope to escape his vengeance. “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; the Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.” (2 Peter ii. 4--9.) In that day, peculiarly styled, “the day of the Lord,” they “that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt.” (Dan. xii. 2.) Among the latter will all those be found, who are now, by their obstinate impenitence, “treasuring up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righ teous judgment of God; who will” then render “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil.” (Rom. ii. 5-9.) He hath declared the very sentence which he will then pronounce on all the workers of iniquity: “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matt. xxv. 41.) And in that hour it will be executed; being “cast into outer darkness, where is wailing and gnashing of teeth,” (verse 30,) they “will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.” (2 Thess. i. 9.) A punishment not only without end, but likewise without intermission. For when once “they are cast into that furnace of fire,” that “lake of fire burning with brimstone, the worm,” gnawing their soul, “ dieth not, and the fire,” tormenting their body, “is not quenched.” So that “they have no rest day or night; but the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.” Now, thus much cannot be denied, that these texts speak as if there were really such a place as hell, as if there were a real fire there, and as if it would remain for ever. I would then ask but one plain question : If the case is not so, why did God speak as if it was? Say you, “To affright men from sin?” What, by guile, by dissimulation, by hanging out false colours? Can you possibly ascribe this to the God of truth? Can you believe it of Him?