Discourses, or, Sermons on several Scriptures

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 ⟨p. 138⟩of Spirits? Yes, he can torture them by his essential Wrath. And that God, who, as the Prophet Nahum speaks, ¹can melt Mountains, and make Hills and Rocks flow down at his Presence, can melt the Souls of the Damned, like lumps of Wax; for in his Displeasure he doth sometimes do it to the best of Men even in this Life, ²Psalm 22.14. My Heart is melted like Wax in the midst of my Bowels.

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 poison'd 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 Oyl, or melted Lead, fall upon the Apple of your Eyes, that should make them boyl 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 inferiour unto God, can make strange Impressions upon the Souls of Men: and shall not the great God much more, who is the Father