A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude

Secondly, These chains are eternal chains, because the wicked Angels stand guilty for ever, without hope of recovery or redemption. Every natural man is in chains, but there is hope to many of the prisoners: Christ saith, go forth, but those chains upon the evil▪ Angels are for ever and ever, now ad custodium, •o keep them and hold them in their lost estate; hereafter ad poenam, they are continued upon them as a part of their final punishment, when much of the liberty which now they have, shall be abridged▪

Secondly, These chains are eternal chains, because the wicked Angels stand guilty for ever, without hope of recovery or redemption. Every natural man is in chains, but there is hope to many of the prisoners: Christ saith, go forth, but those chains upon the evill▪ Angels are for ever and ever, now ad custodium, •o keep them and hold them in their lost estate; hereafter ad poenam, they are continued upon them as a part of their final punishment, when much of the liberty which now they have, shall be abridged▪

From hence observe these practical Inferences.

1. That sins are as it were bonds and chains: a wicked^* man is in bondage here and hereafter; now in snares, and then in chains, here taken captive by Satan in his snares, 2 Tim. 2. 26. and hereafter bound up with him in chains. Sin it self is a bondage, and Hell a prison: were there nothing in sin but the prison slavery; 'tis enough to dissuade us; but alas this is not all, there are not only snares, but chains; in the fall of the Angels, how many notions are there offered to us to discover the evil of sin? they left their beginning, and lost their habitation, and then chains of darkness: he that hath a mind to be a beast, or a devil, let him be a sinner. If you mean to quench your reason, to eclipse the glory of your Creation, to disturb the quiet of your spirits, and instead of calmness and serenity of conscience, to bring in horror and confusion; if you mean to enthral and captivate your souls to every base affection, and to be at the command of every corrupt desire, then go on freely, as you do in sinning against God; but alas the present thraldom is nothing to what is future, all the sins that you commit will be as so many Chains, binding you over to an eternal and just damnation. The good Angels are at liberty to serve God, when the evil Angels are shut up in the prison of their own obstinacy and wickedness: remember this when you are convinced of a sin which you cannot leave, and fear lest it prove a chain of everlasting darkness.