Two discourses I. of the punishment of sin in hell, demonstrating the wrath of…

And the Argument is strong every way, from the one of these unto the other. For as Heaven and Hell are Parallel in a way of contraries, as out of Rom. 9. 22, 23. hath been shown: So those unspeakable glorious Joys, and these contrary extraordinary Horrors and Anguishes, on the other hand, do hold Parallel also, in being (in their several kinds) Prelibations and Tastes of what is to come in the other World. And in this very posture and tendency doth the ⟨p. 69⟩Apostle set these two Dispensations together in this Life, in a Parallel way, (as in Rom. 9. he doth the other) whilst in the same Scripture, 2 Cor. 2. 15, 16. He compares those Joys (common in those times) in them that are saved, to the breakings forth (at the opening of the Gospel, as of a Box of Spikenard) of a sweet Odour or Savour of Life unto Life, (namely of the Life to come) afore-hand, sensing their Souls with some of those Perfumes that are fetched from that Country, and only grow there: and on the contrary, such also he declares those precursory Savours or Odours of Death in their kind to be, which do arise from the threatenings of the same Word in Horrors upon many that perish, which he pronounceth to be the very Evaporations of that Lake of Fire and Brimstone, ¹which is the second Death, in stilling them the Odour or [Savour of] Death [unto Death] so speaks he. These Men often smell the scent of Hell in their Consciences, and the Spirits of it do strike up into their Souls. The very Ashes and Smoke of that Vesuvius or Aetna of Hell, (I allude unto the last Words of Deut. 32. 22.) do fall upon them, which lighting upon Men in this Life, do, as those Ashes of the Furnace (Exod. 9. 8, 9, 10.) miraculously ⟨p. 70⟩did, they cause sores and blains upon Mens Consciences. And however if the Apostle did therewithal intend the more common Dispensations by the Word, and so both the ordinary and extraordinary, of which we now speak. Yet still take and compare those extraordinary Joys in the one, as a Savour of Life, with the extraordinary Horrors, that are the Savour of Death, unto the other; and in their Proportion there is still the like reason of both, as to the matter in hand; and an alike persignificancy in either of those two eternal Estates.