Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

After having evinced that there shall be a resurrection of the body, and a general judgment, I think it not needful to insist to prove the truth of future punishments. The same conscience there is in men of a future judgment, bears witness also of the truth of future punishment. (And that the punishment of the damned shall not be annihilation, or a reducing them to nothing, will be clear in the progress of our discourse.) In treating of this awful subject, I shall inquire into these four things. (1.) The curse under which the damned shall be shut up. (2) Their misery under that curse. (3.) Their society with devils in this miserable state. (4.) The eternity of the whole.

I. As to the curse under which the damned shall be shut up in hell; it is the terrible sentence of the law, by which they are bound over to the wrath of God, as transgressors. This curse does not first seize them, when, standing before the tribunal, they receive their sentence: but they were born under it, they led their life under it in this world, they died under it, rose with it out of their graves; and the Judge finding it upon them, sends them away with it, into the pit; where it shall lie on them through all the ages of eternity. By nature all men are under the curse; but it is removed from the elect, by virtue of their union with Christ. It abides on the rest of sinful mankind, and by it they are devoted to destruction, separated to evil, as one may describe the curse from Deut. xxix. 21. And the Lord shall separate him unto evil. Thus shall the damned, for ever, be persons devoted to destruction: separate and set apart from among the rest of mankind, unto evil, as vessels of wrath, set up for marks to the arrows of divine •••th; and made the common receptacle and shore of vengeance.

I. As to the curse under which the damned shall be shut up in hell; it is the terrible sentence of the law, by which they are bound over to the wrath of God, as transgressors. This curse does not first seize them, when, standing before the tribunal, they receive their sentence: but they were born under it, they led their life under it in this world, they died under it, rose with it out of their graves; and the Judge finding it upon them, sends them away with it, into the pit; where it shall ly on them through all the ages of eternity. By nature all men are under the curse; but it is removed from the elect, by virtue of their union with Christ. It abides on the rest of sinful mankind, and by it they are devoted to destruction, separated to evil, as one may describe the curse from