Discourses, or, Sermons on several Scriptures

And if this be so sore and smart that their Fears could never think of any thing more dreadful than what they now suffer: O what will it be then when he shall overwhelm them with ⟨p. 136⟩a whole deluge of his Wrath, and cause all his Waves to go over them? Fear him, says our Saviour, who is able to destroy both Soul and Body in Hell; yea, I say unto you, ¹fear him. And yet when we have feared according to the utmost extent of our narrow Hearts, yet still his infinite Power and Wrath is infinitely more fearful than we can fear it.

1. 1Mat. 10.28.

Thirdly, Consider the principal and immediate Subject of this Wrath of God, and that is the Soul, and this adds much to the dreadfulness of it. The acutest Torments that the Body is capable of, are but dull and flat things in comparison of what the Soul can feel. Now when God shall immediately with his own Hand lash the Soul, that refined and spiritual ⟨p. 137⟩Part of Man, the principle of all Life and Sensation, and shall draw Blood from it every Stripe, how intolerable may we conceive those Pains and Tortures to be? To shoot poisoned Darts into a Man's Marrow, to rip up his Bowels with a Sword red hot; all this is as nothing to it. Think what it is to have a drop of scalding Oil, or melted Lead, fall upon the Apple of your Eyes, that should make them boil and burn till they fall out of your Heads; such Torment, nay infinitely more than such, is it to have the burning Wrath of God to fall upon the Soul. We find that Spirits which are infinitely inferior unto God, can make strange Impressions upon the Souls of Men: and shall not the great God much more, who is the Father