Eighteen sermons preached in Oxford 1640 of conversion, unto God. Of redemption, & justification,…

1. Look on thy companions. If a man were to be kept close prisoner, it were a great punishment, but go ye cursed, saith God, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his Angels. To be among such companions is most infinitely miserable, there is nothing but Devils and damned howling ghosts, woeful companions! If there be an house possessed with an evil spirit, a man will scarce be hired to live in it; but here the damned spirits, the filthy and cursed host must be thy yoke-fellows: Suppose there were no torment to suffer, yet to be banished from heaven, and to be tied and yoked to wicked spirits, were a torment sufficient to make the stoutest that ever was tremble, and quake, and be soon weary of it.

1. Look on thy companions. If a man were to be kept close prisoner, it were a great punishment, but goe ye cursed, saith God, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his Angels. To be among such companions is most infinitely miserable, there is nothing but Devils and damned howling ghosts, woful companions! If there be an house possessed with an evil spirit, a man will scarce be hired to live in it; but here the damned spirits, the filthy and cursed host must be thy yoke-fellows: Suppose there were no torment to suffer, yet to be banished from heaven, and to be tied and yoked to wicked spirits, were a torment sufficient to make the stoutest that ever was tremble, and quake, and be soon weary of it.

2. But it's a place of torment too, a prison where there is a rack, to which thou must be put, and on which thou must be tormented: I am tormented in this flame, saith Dives. To speak of the torments there, will be matter enough for another ⟨p. 151⟩hour, but I delight not to dwell on so sad a subject: only this is that which prepares the way to the glad tidings of salvation, therefore I shall a little longer insist upon it. The body and soul, the whole man, shall be there tormented; not the soul only, but even the body too after judgment. Do you think the members of the body, which have been the instruments, shall escape? be raised, and cast into hell to no purpose? Why should God quicken it at the last day, but to break it on the anvil of his wrath, and to make it accompany the soul, as well in torments as in sinning. 'Tis true, the soul is the fountain of all sense, and the body without it hath no sense at all: take away the soul, and you may burn the body, and it will not feel it. Now the soul being the fountain of sense, and the body being united to it, when God shall lay his axe at this root, at this fountain, how dreadful shall it be? how shall the body choose but suffer too? Should any of us be cast into a fire, what a terrible torment would we account it? Fire and water, we say, have no mercy; but alas, this fire is nothing to the fire of hell, 'tis but as painted fire to that which burns for ever and ever. The furnace wherein Nebuchadnezzar commanded those to be thrown that fell not down to the graven Image which he had set up, was doubtless at every time a terrible place. Hell is compared to such a furnace; but what shall we think of it, when the King in his wrath shall command the furnace to be heated seven times hotter then usual? Nay, what shall