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

III. That we may yet heighten the dreadfulness of this immediate Hand of God, let us make a third Supposition, beyond the former; that God not only should use his ordinary concurrence with Creatures, but (as sometimes he hath done) arm those Creatures with his own Wrath, over and above the activity of their ordinary Sphere of Workings; heating that Sword of created Powers he strikes with, red hot in the Furnace of his fiery Indignation: And so intending the power of Creatures beyond their Strength; yet still so as to use them as the sole Instruments of that anguish wrought: conveying his Anger with them but as at second hand. And so, as the Man so ⟨p. 122⟩afflicted, is sensible, not of the Stroke of the Creatures only, but of God, and his Wrath accompanying and seconding it, through them. This would be yet more dreadful than the former, and yet still fall short of what the Doctrine hath held forth, that Himself is the Avenger, and strikes immediately.

1. This latter is more dreadful to suppose than the former; yea, is not a bare supposition; for if God conveys his Wrath with the least Affliction, and in his Providences fight against a Man, and the Heart is thereby made sensible of his Wrath therein: this, as it often falls out, so it useth wonderfully to inflame and rage in Man's Spirit: even as a poisoned Arrow useth to do the Flesh, which it self alone would only pierce and wound, (but as it is an Arrow;) but if further dipped in Poison, or as the Apostle's comparison is, Eph. 6. made a fiery Dart, it works a further Anguish and Torment. Now there is no Creature, but if armed with God's Wrath, or if it be but a Messenger, and a Representer of God's Anger, but it is infinitely more dreadful than of it self otherwise it is. What is less than the shaking of a Leaf, which seems it self to tremble? But if ⟨p. 123⟩God send faintness of Heart, and Terror with it, and by it, into a Man's Heart, the very Sound of the shaking of a Leaf chaseth them,