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

I confess that I do not judge these answers to be fully satisfactory▪ for however the souls of wicked men and women may by sympathy with the body be tormented by real Fire, yet God having made Devils to be wholly Spirits which are wholly incorporeal, I don't apprehend how any fire or bodily substance can have any impression upon them, but that Fire, Air, Earth, or Water, are all the same things to them, and that they are incapable of suffering by any of them, that as Water cannot drown them, so neither can fire burn them, that as Air cannot refresh them, so neither can Fire afflict them. Indeed were the opinion of some Ancients true that Devils have bodies, but more pure and refined, such as cannot be seen any more than the Air, a real Fire might be made so pure by God as to torment the Devils; but I am altogether of the Judgement that Devils are wholly Spirits, the Scripture asserting it, and many reasons I might give of it, but that it would be too large a digression; moreover the fire of Hell I believe will be such as immediately to afflict the souls of the wicked, and ⟨p. 98⟩not only by Sympathy with the body, because otherwise the torture of the body would be greater from it's immediate object, than the anguish of the soul by Sympathy▪ when the Souls desert of punishment is greater, being more highly guilty of Sin than the body which is made use of only as an instrument.

I confesse that I do not judge these answers to be fully satisfactory▪ for however the souls of wicked men and women may by sympathy with the body be tormented by real Fire, yet God having made Devils to be wholly Spirits which are wholly incorporeal, I don't apprehend how any fire or bodyly substance can have any impression upon them, but that Fire, Air, Earth, or Water, are all the same things to them, and that they are incapable of suffering by any of them, that as Water cannot drown them, so neither can fire burn them, that as Air cannot refresh them, so neither can Fire afflict them. Indeed were the opinion of some Ancients true that Devils have bodies, but more pure and resined, such as cannot be seen any more than the Air, a real Fire might be made so pure by God as to torment the Devils; but I am altogether of the Judgement that Devils are wholly Spirits, the Scripture asserting it, and many reasons I might give of it, but that it would be too large a digression; moreover the fire of Hell I believe will be such as immediately to afflict the souls of the wicked, and