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

And the reason why God thus often takes that season and occasion to put forth his immediate power in the consciences of either, at such a time, is, because his Glory is in no passages of Providence in and upon Earth so highly interested and engaged, as upon such Trials, wherein both his Truth and Children are brought to the Bar at once, and therefore is then pleased to discover something more than ordinary (tho secretly) in the Spirits of Men. Have they no Fear (says the Psalmist) that eat up my People like Bread? One would think so, they look so big, and fall too so heartily to devour them: Yes, says the Psalmist, answering it, there were they in great fear. [There] that is, upon such an occasion, at such a time; and yet the same Psalmist tells us, that there was no cause of fear, (compare for that, Psal. 14. 4. with Psal. 54. 4.) that is, not from Creatures. What was the matter then? or whence comes this great Fear? God is in the Generation of the Righteous, says the Psalmist; thence was their fear: [and that of God]. So the Apostle in ⟨p. 73⟩that very case. God takes part with his Children, and so strikes and terrifies their Adversaries Souls, as he comforts theirs; and this is to them an evident Token, and as the first Baptisms, Washings or Sprinklings of that Perdition, which their Souls will be everlastingly drowned in (as the Apostle's allusion is in Timothy) if they turn not.

The truth and real verification of both these so immediate effects by God, and from God, (he as with a double-edged sword striking contrary ways at once.) Multitudes of Instances of both kinds the Story of the Martyrs doth relate; and particularly in the examples of those persecuting Emperors Galerius and Maximinus, as Eusebius hath Recorded them. Insomuch as that lamentable out-cry in the sixth Seal, Rev. 6. 16. Which the Kings of the Earth, and mighty Men (the Persecutors) are brought in so loudly uttering, in saying to the Mountains, Fall on us, and hide us from the Wrath of the Lamb. Mr. Mede and others have applied (as the Time and Order of the Visions of that Prophecy require) unto those Great Persecutors in the Roman Empire, whom authentic Antiquity hath related to have been terrified and struck with horror, by God and the Lamb, in prodigious