The saints everlasting rest

2. The loss of heaven will more torment them then, because, as the understanding will be cleared, so it will be more enlarged, and made more capacious, to conceive of the worth of that glory which they have lost. The strength of their apprehensions, as well as the truth of them, will then be increased. What deep apprehensions of the wrath of GOD, of the madness of sinning, of the misery of sinners, have these souls that now endure this misery, in comparison of those on earth that do but hear of it? What sensible apprehensions of the worth of life, hath the condemned, man that is going to be executed, in comparison of what he was wont to have in the time of his prosperity? Much more will the actual deprivation of eternal blessedness make the damned exceeding apprehensive of the greatness of their loss: and as a large vessel will hold more water than a shell, so will their more enlarged understandings contain more matter to feed their torment, than now their shallow capacity can do.

3. And as the damned will have deeper apprehensions of the happiness they have lost, so will they have a closer application of this doctrine to themselves, which will exceedingly tend to increase their torment. It will then be no hard matter to them to say, this is my loss, and this is my everlasting misery. The want of this is the main cause why they are now so little troubled at their condition; they are hardly brought to believe that there is such a state of misery, but more hardly to believe that it is like to be their own. This makes so many sermons to be lost, and all threatenings and warnings prove in vain. Let a minister of Christ show them their misery never so plainly, they will not be persuaded that they are so miserable. Let him tell them of the glory they must lose, and the sufferings they must feel, and they think it is not they whom he means. We find in all our preaching, by sad experience, that it is one of the hardest things in the world to bring a wicked man to know that he is wicked; a man who is in the way to hell, to know that he is in that way; or to make a man see himself in a state of wrath and condemnation: how seldom do we hear men, after the plainest discovery of their condemned state, cry out, I am the man! or to acknowledge, that if they die in their present condition, they are undone for-ever.