Fire and brimstone from heaven, from earth, in hell, or, Three discourses I. Concerning…

The flames and fiery Streams, which were rained down from Heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah formerly, and which issued forth from the Earth in the Eruptions of Mount Aetna lately, are but shadows of the future flames, and like painted fire in comparison, with the streams of Fire and Brimstone, which in Hell shall burn the wicked eternally. For as the Glory of Heaven (whilst we are in the dark Vale of this World) doth far exceed all conception, and therefore cannot be set forth in full by any description; but as one saith, whoever attempts to speak of an Heavenly state, while himself is upon the Earth, his discourse of that must needs be like the dark Dreams and Imaginations of a Child, concerning ⟨p. 88⟩the affairs of this World, while it self is yet swaddled and cradled in the Womb; and the Apostle Paul himself, though he had been rapt up unto the third Heaven, and had such discoveries made unto him there, that he wanted words to utter what they were, as 2 Cor. 12. 2, 3, 4. Yet acknowledgeth that he understood like a Child, and had but dark views of this Glory, even as through a glass, 1 Cor. 13. 11, 12. So also the torment of Hell through that Fire and Brimstone, which shall burn the wicked, is beyond all thought to imagine, or words to express; and when we have strained our conceptions unto the highest pitch, when we have made use of the most dreadful and tremendous things that ever came to our eyes or ears, or any way to our understanding to help us in the forming notions to our selves of the horrible punishment, which the damned shall endure in the unquenchable flames of Hell fire; all doth fall beneath and far short of the thing, all our views hereof by any representations, being like our sight of colours in the night, which if not in whole, yet in the greatest part do fly from our sight and disappear.

THe flames and fiery Streams, which were rained down from Heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah formerly, and which issued forth from the Earth in the Eruptions of Mount Aetna lately, are but shaddows of the future flames, and like painted fire in comparison, with the streams of Fire and Brimstone, which in Hell shall burn the wicked eternally. For as the Glory of Heaven (whilst we are in the dark Vale of this World) doth far exceed all conception, and therefore cannot be set forth in full by any description; but as one saith, whoever attempts to speak of an Heavenly state, while himself is upon the Earth, his discourse of that must needs be like the dark Dreams and Imaginations of a Child, concerning