The sovereign and final happiness of man with the effectual means to obtain itThe soveraign and final happiness of man with the effectual means to obtain it

4. The Eternity of their Misery makes it above all other Considerations intolerable. Our Saviour repeats it thrice in the space of a few Verses, to terrify those who spare some favourite Corruption, that in Hell their Worm dies not, and the Fire is never quenched. God will never reverse his Sentence, and they shall never change their State. How willingly would carnal Men raze the Word Eternal out of the Scriptures, but to their grief they find it joined with the Felicity of Heaven, and the Torments of Hell. The second Death has all the terrible qualities of the first, but not the ease and end it brings to Misery. All the Tears of those forlorn Wretches, shall never quench one spark of the Fire. Where are the delicious Fair, the Music, the Purple, and all the carnal Delights of the rich Man? they are all changed into a contrary state of Misery, and that state is sixth for ever. From his vanishing Paradise he ⟨p. 258⟩descended into an everlasting Hell. In this the Vengeance of God is infinitely more heavy than the most terrible execution from Men. Human Justice and Power can inflict but one Death (that will be soon dispatched) upon a Malefactor worthy to suffer a hundred Deaths; if he be condemned to the Fire, they cannot make him live and die together, to burn and not be consumed: But God will so far support the Damned in their Torments, that they shall always have Strength to feel, though no Strength to endure them. Those extreme Torments which would extinguish the present Life in a Moment, shall be suffered for ever. This Consideration infinitely aggravates the Misery. For the lost Soul racked with the fearful Contemplation of what it must suffer for ever, feels as it were at once all the Evils that shall torment it in its whole duration. The perpetuity of the Misery is always felt by prevision. This is as the cruel breaking of the Bones upon the Wheel, when the Soul is tormented by the foresight of Misery that without allays shall continue in the circulation of Eternal Ages. To make this more sensible, let us consider, that pain makes the Mind ⟨p. 259⟩observant of the passing of the hours. In Pleasures, Time with a quick and silent motion insensibly slides away: but in Troubles the Hours are tedious, in violent pains we reckon the minutes as long. 'Tis observable how passionately the afflicted Psalmist complains,¹ Will the Lord cast off for ever?