The fourth (and last) volume of discourses, or sermons, on several scriptures

Methinks the dreadful Thoughts of this eternally consuming Fire, should make the stoutest Heart to quake, or at least to cause a cold Fit of Fear, before this burning and scorching Torment begins.

¹Fourthly, God is such a consuming Fire as will prey upon the Soul, that tender and spiritual part of Man. The more gross the Subject is, the more dull are ⟨p. 297⟩the Pains that it suffers; but where the Subject is spiritual, there the Anguish must needs be extreme; the sharpest Torments that the Body is capable of, is but a dull Thing in comparison of what the Soul can feel; when God himself shall lash the Soul, that more refined part, drawing Blood at every stroke, all comparisons falls short of expressing of the Anguish of it: To shoot poisoned Darts inflamed into a Man's Marrow, to rip up his Bowels with a Sword red hot, is as nothing to this. Think what it is to have a drop of boiling, scalding Oil, or melting Lead fall into your Eyes, and make it boil and burn till at last it falls out of your Heads; such Torments, yea, infinitely more than this, is it to have the Wrath of God fall upon your Souls. The Soul it is the Principle of all Seats, the Body is a kind of Fence to it, it damps and deadens the Smart, as a Blow upon a clothed Man is not so painful as upon one that is stark Naked; why now if the Soul sometimes feels such Smart and Pain through the Body, what shall it feel when God shall pour his Wrath upon it stark Naked?

¹Fourthly, God is such a consuming Fire as will prey upon the Soul, that tender and spiritual part of Man. The more gross the Subject is, the more dull are ⟨p. 297⟩the Pains that it suffers; but where the Subject is spiritual, there the Anguish must needs be extream; the sharpest Torments that the Body is capable of, is but a dull Thing in comparison of what the Soul can feel; when God himself shall lash the Soul, that more refined part, drawing Blood at every stroke, all comparisons falls short of expressing of the Anguish of it: To shoot poison'd Darts inflamed into a Man's Marrow, to rip up his Bowels with a Sword red hot, is as nothing to this. Think what it is to have a drop of boiling, scalding Oil, or melting Lead fall into your Eyes, and make it boil and burn till at last it falls out of your Heads; such Torments, yea, infinitely more than this, is it to have the Wrath of God fall upon your Souls. The Soul it is the Principle of all Seats, the Body is a kind of Fence to it, it damps and deadens the Smart, as a Blow upon a cloathed Man is not so painful as upon one that is stark Naked; why now if the Soul sometimes feels such Smart and Pain through the Body, what shall it feel when God shall pour his Wrath upon it stark Naked?