An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

In the first place. What is the reason, that some have embraced that old and unsavoury Doctrine of Origen, That all both men and Devils after so many years in hell, shall be released from those torments? Why is this? But because ⟨p. 154⟩these misericordists conceive of Gods mercy without Scripture-grounds. They think it doth not stand with the pity and compassion of God, to let so many thousands of his creatures lie roaring in hell, and he never deliver them. But is not this against Scripture, which calls it everlasting fire, and that there shall never be any coming out of that prison, That of their torments there shall be no end?

In the first place. What is the reason, that some have imbraced that old and unsavoury Doctrine of Origen, That all both men and Devils after so many years in hell, shall be released from those torments? Why is this? But because ⟨p. 154⟩these misericordists conceive of Gods mercy without Scripture-grounds. They think it doth not stand with the pity and compassion of God, to let so many thousands of his creatures lie roaring in hell, and he never deliver them. But is not this against Scripture, which calls it everlasting fire, and that there shall never be any coming out of that prison, That of their torments there shall be no end?

Again in the second place, There are those that do with open mouth cry ¹down the Calvinists as blasphemous against Gods mercy, and making God to be more unmerciful and cruel, then any Tyrant that ever lived: Because (say they) such do hold, God did by absolute, and irrespective fatal Decrees, appoint the greater part of mankind to sin, and then for their sin to damn them. As Tiberius, desirous to put a vestal Virgin to death, caused her violently to be deflowered, and then because she was deflowered, he put her to death. But