Armatura Dei, or, A preparation for suffering in an evil day showing how Christians…Armatura Dei, or, A preparation for suffering in an evil day shewing how Christians…

2. Holy Fear looks at the sufferings which God inflicts in Hell, as incomparably greater then those which man doth or can inflict upon Earth. Our Saviour directing our fear to its right Object, takes notice of the vast difference between them, Fear not them, which kill the body, but are not able to kill he soul; but rather fear him, which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell, Math. 10.28. Mans killing is one thing, but Gods destroying another: Man may kill the Body, and it may be in a tormenting manner; but there is no death like the second; no torments on Earth are comparable to those in Hell; no finite arm can strike so hard as the infinite One; no Culinary or Elementary Fire can burn so hot as the Infernal doth. God bid Moses take and sprinkle the ashes of the Furnace, and they should become boils and blains, Exod. 9.8, 9. A Great Doctor of ours glosses on the words thus; The sufferings here on Earth are but the ashes of the Furnace, small things in comparison of the Furnace itself; ⟨p. 97⟩an Hell of unquenchable fire; man may kill the body, but he is not always a killing of it; he may torment, but he cannot bear up the Patient in long suffering; the torments in a little time will cease, and the Martyr Sleep in Jesus; but God kills the damned, and is still a killing them, power supports them, and Justice punishes them; the fire of Hell, kindled by eternal breath, never goes out, and the smoke of their torment ascends for ever and ever: After thousands, and ten thousand of years, still there will be wrath to come, such as no time can measure: Man may kill the body, but after that he can do no more, his Engines of Cruelty cannot reach the Soul, or touch the inward man, which is a Sanctuary for God; but God kills the soul, his wrath is in a peculiar manner poured out there where the chief seat of sin was; the never dying Worm is ever growing upon conscience: The spirit of the damned furiously reflects upon itself over the eternal misery that it lies under: All the horrors of a Spira or a Judas are far short of that desperate rage and anguish which tortures the lost souls in Hell. He that hath this holy fear in him will choose any sufferings on Earth rather then those in Hell. One of the sons of Solomona told the Tyrant Antiochus, that his fire was cold, and indeed it was so ⟨p. 98⟩