Sighs from hell, or, The groans of a damned soul discovering from the 16th…

Mark, he doth not say it is so, that men by chance may die, which might beget in the hearts of the ungodly, especially some hope to scape the bitterness of it: But he saith, It is a thing most certain, it is appointed. Mark, it is appointed for men once to die, and after that the Judgment. God hath decreed it, that since men have fallen from that happy estate that God at the first did set them in, they shall die, Rom. 6. 23. Now when it is said the Beggar died, and the rich man died; part of the meaning is, they ceased to be any more in this World; I say▪ partly the meaning, but not altogether. Though it be altogether the meaning when some of the Creatures die, yet it is but in part the meaning, when it is said, that Men, Women, or Children die; for there is to them something else to be said more than barely a going out of the World: For if when unregenerate men and women die, there were an end of them, not only in this World, but also in the World to come, they would be happy over they will be now; for when ungodly men & women die, there is that to come after death, that will be very terrible to them; ⟨p. 18⟩namely, to be carried by the Angels of Darkness from their Death-beds to Hell, there to be reserved to the Judgment of the Great Day, when both Body and Soul shall meet, and be united together again, and made capable to undergo the uttermost Vengeance of the Almighty to all Eternity. This is that I say, which doth follow a man (that is not born again) after Death; as is clear from that in 1 Pet. 3. 18, 19. Where before speaking of Christ, being raised again by the power of his Eternal Spirit, he saith By which, that is, by that Spirit he went and preached to the Spirits in Prison: But what is the meaning of this? Why thus much; that those Souls who were once alive in the World, in the time, or days in which Noah lived, being disobedient in their Times to the Calls of God, by his Spirit in Noah, for so I understand it, was according to that which was foretold by that Preacher deprived of Life, and overcome by the Flou•, and are now in Prison. Mark, he preached to the Spirits in Prison; he doth not say, who were in Prison, but to them (in) that is, now in Prison, under Chains of Darkness, reserved, or kept there, in that Prison, in which now they are, (ready, like Villains in the Jail, to be brought before the Judgment Seat of Christ at the Great Day):