A62050:248
Ouranos kai tartaros= heaven and hell epitomized. The true Christian characterized. As also an…
Ouranos kai tartaros= heaven and hell epitomized. The true Christian characterized. As also an exhortation with motives, means and directions to be speedy and serious about the work of conversion. By George Swinnocke M.A. sometime fellow of Balliol College in Oxford, and now preacher of the Gospel at Rickmersworth in Hertfordshire.Ouranos kai tartaros= heaven and hell epitomized. The true Christian characterized. As also an exhortation with motives, means and directions to be speedy and serious about the work of conversion. By George Swinnocke M.A. sometime fellow of Baliol Colledge in Oxford, and now preacher of the Gospel at Rickmersworth in Hertfordshire.
London: printed by E.M. for Tho. Parkhurst, 1659
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
1. In regard of intention; and how great this will be, I am not able to tell thee. When one was desired to paint the Spanish Inquisition, he took a Table and besmeared ⟨p. 106⟩it with blood, implying the torments were so cruel and bloody, that his pencil could not delineate them. Sure I am Phaleris Bull, Low-country wracks, and all out-landish tortures whatsoever, are but plays and bug-bears to the sufferings of the damned; There are no sorrows like to their sorrows, wherewith the Lord afflicteth them in the day of his fierce wrath;1 If the wrath of God be kindled but a little, and a spark thereof light into the conscience of a Saint, what a work doth it make? there is no rest in his flesh, nor quiet in his bones; when the arrows of the Almighty stick within him, the poison thereof soon drinks up his spirits. Psal. 38 3. Job 6.4. what will their condition then be, against whom God shall stir up all his wrath, Psal. 78.39. Hell is said to be prepared for the Devil and his Angels, Matth. 25.41. as if the Almighty and infinite God had sate down, and studied the most exquisite torments that could be, to inflict on them. As when he would glorify the riches of his mercy, on them that love him and keep his commands, he provideth fullness of joy, and greater pleasures than the heart of man can possibly conceive; So when he would ⟨p. 107⟩glorify his Justice in the highest degree on them that hate him, and wilfully break his Laws, he prepareth fullness of sorrow, and greater pain then any, yea, then all the men in the world can possibly comprehend. A melancholy man may fancy (saith one) vast and terrible fears, fire, sword,2 tempests, wracks, furnaces, scalding-lead, boiling pitch, running bell-metal, and being kept alive in all these, to feel their torment: but these come far short of the wrath of God; for first there are bounds set to the hurting power of the creature; the fire can burn, but it cannot drown; the serpent can sting, but not tear in pieces. 2. The fears of the heart are bounded within those narrow apprehensions which it self can frame of the hurts which may be done. But the wrath of God proceeds from an infinite justice, and is executed by an Omnipotent and unbounded power, comprising all the terror of all the creatures, (as the Sun doth all other light) eminently and excessively in it.