The Greatness of the Soul

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mark 8:37)

I have chosen at this time to handle these words among you, and I have done so for several reasons.

1. Because the soul and its salvation are such great things, such wonderfully great things. Nothing is a matter of such concern as the soul of each one of you is, and ought to be. House and land, trades and honors, positions and promotions: what are they compared with salvation, with the salvation of the soul?

2. Because I perceive that this thing, so great a thing, and one about which people should be so deeply concerned, is neglected to an amazing degree, and that by most people. Yes, who is there among the many thousands who sit daily under the sound of the gospel that is concerned, heartily concerned, about the salvation of their souls? I mean concerned as the nature of the thing requires. If ever a lament was fit to be taken up in this age about, for, or concerning anything, it is about, for, and concerning the horrid neglect of eternal salvation that shows itself everywhere. Where is one man in a thousand? Yes, where are two in ten thousand, who show by their conduct, public and private, that they give thought to the soul, their own souls, and that they are taking such care for their salvation as becomes them, that is, as the weight of the work and the nature of salvation require?

3. I have therefore pitched on this text at this time to see whether perhaps the discourse that God will help me to make on it may awaken you. I want to see whether it will rouse you off your beds of ease, complacency, and pleasure, and bring you down on your knees before him, to beg him for grace to be concerned about the salvation of your souls.

And then, in the last place, I have undertaken this so that I may deliver, if not you, yet myself. I want to be clear of your blood and stand acquitted before God as far as you are concerned, when you are damned for your neglect and wail to think that you have lost your souls. “When I say,” says God, “unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou,” that is, the prophet or preacher, “givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul” (Ezek 3:18-19).

“Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

In handling these words, I shall first speak to the occasion of them, and then to the words themselves.

The occasion of the words was this. The people who were then listening to the Lord Jesus and following him were doing it without the consideration that so great a work deserves. That is, most of those who followed him were not inclined first to weigh for themselves what it was to profess Christ, and what that profession might cost them. “And when he had called the people unto him,” that is, the great multitude that went with him (Luke 14:25), “with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

That is to say: Let him first sit down and count up the cost, and the expense he is likely to be put to, if he follows me. For following me is not like following some other masters. The wind always sits in my face. The foaming rage of the sea of this world, and its proud and lofty waves, beat continually on the sides of the boat or ship that I, my cause, and my followers are in. Therefore whoever will not run risks, and is afraid to risk a drowning, let him not set foot in this vessel. So “whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, he cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Luke 14:27-29).

True, to reason, this kind of language tends to throw cold water on weak and newly begun desires. But to faith it makes the things set before us, with their greatness and their glory, appear all the more excellent and desirable. Reason will say, “Then who will profess Christ, when he meets with such rough treatment at the very beginning?” But faith will say, “Then surely the things at the end of a Christian’s race in this world must be unspeakably glorious. For whoever has had even the knowledge and due consideration of them has not hesitated to run risks, risks of every kind, so that they might embrace and enjoy them.” “Yes,” says faith, “it must be so, since the Son himself, who best knew what they were, even ‘for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God’” (Heb 12:2).

But, I say, not every man has this knowledge of things. And so, as a consequence, not every man has such consideration as can make the cross and self-denial acceptable to him for the sake of Christ, and of the things that are where he now sits at the right hand of God (Col 3:2-4). Therefore our Lord Jesus gives his followers this instruction at the very beginning. And so that none of them should be put off by his words, he sets three things together before them to consider: the cross, the loss of life, and the soul. Then he reasons with them from these, saying: Here is the cross, the life, and the soul. 1. The cross, and that you must take up if you will follow me. 2. The life, and that you may save for a time if you cast me off. 3. And the soul, which will perish everlastingly if you do not come to me and abide with me. Now consider what is best to be done. Will you take up the cross, come after me, and so preserve your souls from perishing? Or will you shun the cross to save your lives, and so run the danger of eternal damnation?

Or, as you have it in John: Will you love your life until you lose it? Or will you hate your life, and save it? “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal” (John 12:25). It is as if he said: Whoever loves this temporal life, and loves it so much that he shuns the profession of Christ to save it, will lose it on a worse account than if he had lost it for Christ and the gospel. But whoever will set little store by it, for the love he has for Christ, will keep it to eternal life.

Christ, having thus spoken with his followers about denying themselves, taking up their cross, and following him, next puts the question to them, and so leaves it upon them forever, saying, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

It is as if he said: I have told you to take heed that you do not enter into a profession of me and of my gospel lightly and without due consideration. For whoever begins to profess Christ without due consideration will also, without it, forsake him, turn from him, and cast him behind his back. And since I have laid the consideration of the cross before you at the very beginning, it is so that you may not be surprised and caught by it unawares. It is also so that you may know that to draw back from me after you have laid your hand to my plow will make you unfit for the kingdom of heaven (Luke 9:62). Now, since this is so, no less than salvation lies at stake; and salvation is worth all the world, yes, worth ten thousand worlds, if there were so many. And since this is also so, it will be your wisdom to begin to profess the gospel expecting the cross and tribulation, for that is what the followers of my gospel in this world are appointed to (Jas 1:12; 1 Thess 3:3).

And if you begin this way, and hold on, the kingdom and the crown will be yours. For as God counts it a righteous thing to repay tribulation to those who trouble you, so he counts it righteous to repay rest among the saints to you who are troubled and endure it (for “we count them happy,” says James, “that endure,” Jas 5:11), when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, to take vengeance on those who do not know God and who do not obey the gospel (2 Thess 1:7-8). And if no less than salvation lies at stake, then a man’s soul and his all are at stake. And if that is so, what will it profit a man if, by forsaking me, he should get the whole world? “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Having thus laid the soul in one side of the balance and the world in the other, and having affirmed that the soul outbids the whole world and is incomparably beyond it in value and worth, he next comes down to a second question. This is the one I have chosen at this time for my text: “Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

In these words we have, first, a supposition, and one that stands on a double foundation. The supposition is this: that the soul can be lost; or, to put it another way, it is possible for a man to lose his soul. The double foundation on which this supposition rests is, first, a man’s ignorance of the worth of his soul and of the danger it is in; and second, the fact that men commonly set a higher price on present ease and enjoyments than they do on eternal salvation. The second of these naturally follows from the first. For if men are ignorant of the value and worth of their souls, as Christ implies in the verse before, what is to stop them from esteeming what their carnal desires are taken with more highly than what they are not concerned about, and whose worth they do not know?

But again, as this is clearly supposed by the text, so something is also implied: namely, that it is impossible to bring some men to grasp the worth of their souls until they are utterly and everlastingly lost. “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” That is, when men’s souls are lost, and shut down under the hatches in the pits and hells, in endless perdition and destruction, then they will see the worth of their souls. Then they will consider what they have lost, and truly not until then. This is plain not only to sense but from the natural scope of the words, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Or, what would they not give, those who are now made, for their sin, to see themselves lost by the light of hellfire? For some will never be convinced that they are lost until, with rich Dives, they see it in the light of hell’s flames (Luke 16:22-23). I say, what would such people not give, if they had it, in exchange for their immortal souls, or to recover them again from that place and torment?

I shall observe two truths in the words.

The first is that the loss of the soul is the highest, the greatest loss: a loss that can never be repaired or made up. “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” That is, to recover or redeem his lost soul to liberty.

The second truth is this: that however unconcerned and careless some may now be about the loss or salvation of their souls, yet the day is coming (though it will then be too late) when men will be willing, however much they had, to give it all in exchange for their souls. For so the question implies: “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” What would he not give? What would he not part with, if he had it, in exchange for his soul at that day, the day in which he shall see himself damned?

The first observation, or truth, drawn from the words is made clear by the text, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” That is, there is nothing, not even all the things under heaven, were they all in one man’s hand and all at his disposal, that would go in exchange for the soul. Nothing would be of value enough to fetch back one lost soul, or would certainly recover it from the confines of hell. “The redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever” (Ps 49:8). And what do the words before the text say but the same? “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” What shall profit a man who has lost his soul? Nothing at all, though by that loss he has gained the whole world. For all the world is not worth a soul, not worth a soul in the eye of God and in the judgment of the law.

And it is from this consideration that good Elihu cautions Job to take heed. “Because there is wrath,” he says, “beware lest he take thee away with his stroke: then a great ransom cannot deliver thee. Will he esteem thy riches? no, not gold, nor all the forces of strength” (Job 36:18-19). Riches and power: what more is there in the world? For “money answereth all things” (Eccl 10:19), that is, all but the concerns of the soul. Money can neither be a price for souls while they are here, nor can it, with all the forces of strength, recover one soul out of hellfire.

So then, the first truth drawn from the words stands firm, namely, that the loss of the soul is the highest, the greatest loss; a loss that can never be repaired or made up.

In my discourse on this subject, I shall follow this method.

First, I shall show you what the soul is.

Second, I shall show you its greatness.

Third, I shall show you what it is to lose the soul.

Fourth, I shall show you the cause for which men lose their souls. And by that time the greatness of the loss will be plain.

First, then, I shall show you what the soul is, both by the various names it goes under and by describing it by its powers and properties. In all of this, though, I shall be brief, for I intend no long discourse.

The Names of the Soul

1. The soul is often called the heart of man, that is, the thing in which and by which things either good or evil have their rise. Thus desires are of the heart, or soul. Yes, before there are desires, the first conception of good or evil is in the soul, the heart. The heart understands, wills, feels, reasons, and judges; but these are the faculties of the soul. Therefore heart and soul are often taken for one and the same. “My son, give me thine heart” (Prov 23:26). “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts…” (Matt 15:19; 1 Pet 3:15; Ps 26:2).

2. The soul of man is often called the spirit of a man, because it gives not only being but life to all things and actions in him and done by him. Hence soul and spirit are put together for the same action: “With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early” (Isa 26:9). When he says, “Yea, with my spirit… will I seek thee,” he explains not only what kind of desires he desired God with, but out of what principal matter his desires were brought forth. It was with my soul, he says; that is, with my spirit within me.

So it is with Mary too. “My soul,” she says, “doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47). Not that soul and spirit are to be taken in this place for two superior powers in man. Rather, the same great soul is here put under two names, or terms, to show that it was the principal part in Mary, her soul, that magnified God, the very part that could put spirit and life into her whole self to do it.

Indeed, sometimes spirit is not taken so broadly, but is confined to some one power or faculty of the soul, as in “the spirit of my understanding” (Job 20:3) and “be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph 4:23). And sometimes by spirit we are to understand other things. But many times by spirit we must understand the soul, and also by soul the spirit.

3. Therefore, by the soul we understand the spiritual, the best, and the most noble part of man, as distinct from the body. It is that by which we understand, imagine, reason, and discourse. And indeed, as I shall show you further in a moment, the body is nothing but a poor, empty vessel without this great thing called the soul. “The body without the spirit,” or soul, “is dead” (Jas 2:26). It is nothing but a clod of dust (her soul departed from her, for she died). The soul, therefore, is the chief and most noble part of man.

4. The soul is often called the life of man. This is not a life of the same stamp and nature as the life of a brute beast. For the life of man, that is, of the rational creature as such, is that in which his understanding and conscience and the rest consist and abide. Therefore, when the soul departs, the man dies, and the body ceases to act or to live in the exercise of the thoughts that used to be in him. It is as I hinted just now: her soul departed from her, for she died. And, as another good man says, “in that very day his thoughts perish” (Ps 146:4). The first text puts it more forcefully: “Her soul was in departing (for she died)” (Gen 35:18).

There is a soul of a beast, of a bird, and so on; but the soul of a man is another thing. It is his understanding, his reason, his conscience, and the rest. And when this soul departs, the man dies. Nor is this life annihilated when it has gone out of the body, as the life of a beast is. No, this life is in itself immortal, and it still has a place and a being when it has gone out of the body it lived in. Yes, it is as quick and as lively in its senses as it was when it was in the body, if not far more so. But I call it the life because, as long as it remains in the body, the body is not dead.

And it is in this sense that we are to take the word where Christ says, “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it” (Matt 10:39), that is, find it to life eternal. And this is the soul that is meant in the text, not the breath, as is meant in some other places. This is evident because the man still has a being, a conscious and feeling being, after he has lost his soul. By the man I do not mean a man in this world, nor yet in the body or in the grave. By man we must understand either the soul in hell, or body and soul there after the judgment is over. And the text is plain on this point too, for in it we are shown a man who feels the damage he has suffered by losing his soul: “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

5. Again, the whole man goes under this name. Man, though he consists of body and soul, is still called by that part of himself that is chief and principal. “Let every soul,” that is, let every man, “be subject unto the higher powers” (Rom 13:1). “Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls” (Acts 7:14). By both these places, and by several others, the whole man is meant. And so the word is also to be taken in the text. For where it says here, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” it is said elsewhere, “For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself?” (Luke 9:25). And so, by consequence, the question is, “What shall a man give in exchange (for himself) for his soul?” That is, for his soul when he dies, and for body and soul in and after the judgment.

6. The soul is called the good man’s darling. “Deliver,” Lord, says David, “my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog” (Ps 22:20). So again in another place he says, “Lord, how long wilt thou look on? rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions” (Ps 35:17).

My darling. This saying must not be applied to everyone, but only to those in whose eyes their souls, and the redemption of their souls, are precious. My darling! Most men, by their actions, say of their soul, “My drudge, my slave; no, you slave to the devil and sin!” For what sin, what lust, what sensual and beastly lust is there in the world that some do not make their souls bow down before and give in to?

But David here, as you see, calls it his darling, that is, his choice and most excellent thing. For indeed the soul is a choice thing in itself, and, if all men were wise, it would be every man’s darling, or chief treasure. And so that it might be so with us, our Lord Jesus has expressed the worth of the soul in this way, saying, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

But if this is true, one may already see what misery he is likely to suffer who has lost his soul, or who shall lose it. He has lost his heart, his spirit, his best part, his life, his darling, himself, his whole self, and so, in every sense, his all. And now, “what shall a man,” what would a man, indeed what can a man who has thus lost his soul, himself, and his all, “give in exchange for his soul?” Yes, what shall the man who has suffered this loss do to recover it all again? For this man, the man this question is put about, must be a man who is gone from this world, a man who has been condemned at the judgment, and one who has gone down the throat of hell.

But to pass over this, and to proceed.

The Powers and Properties of the Soul

I come next to describe the soul to you by the things by which it is set out in the holy Scriptures. In general, they are three: first, the powers of the soul; second, the senses, the spiritual senses, of the soul; third, the passions of the soul.

First, we will discourse of the powers. I may call them the members of the soul. For as the members of the body, which are many, all go to make up the body, so these go to complete the soul.

1. There is the understanding, which may be called the head, because in it is placed the eye of the soul. This is that which, or by which, the soul discerns the things that are presented to it, whether they are presented by God or by Satan. This is that by which a man conceives and grasps things so deep and great that they cannot be expressed by mouth, or tongue, or pen.

2. There is also the conscience, which belongs to the soul, and in which, I may say, the Seat of Judgment is placed. For as things are let into the soul by the understanding, so the evil or good of those things is tried by the conscience, especially when the judgment has passed its verdict on them.

3. In the third place, there is the judgment, which is another part of this noble creature. By the light of the understanding it passes its verdict on what is let into the soul.

4. There is also the fancy, or imagination, another part of this great thing, the soul. And a most intricate thing this fancy is. It is what presents to a man the idea, form, or figure of any of those things by which a man is either frightened or captivated, pleased or displeased.

5. And then there is the mind, another part of the soul. It is that to which the fancy presents its things to be considered; for without the mind nothing is entertained in the soul.

6. There is the memory too, another part of the soul, and that may be called the register of the soul. For it is the memory that receives and keeps in remembrance what has passed, whether it is what the man has done or what has been attempted to be done to him. And in this part of the soul, or from it, “the worm that dieth not” (Mark 9:48) will be fed when men are cast into hell. Also, from this memory will flow the peace that saints shall have at the day of judgment in their service for Christ in the world.

7. There are the affections too, which are, as I may call them, the hands and arms of the soul. For they are the parts that take hold of, receive, and embrace what the soul likes; and it is a hard thing to make the soul of a man cast away what its affections cling to and have embraced. That is why the affections are called on when the apostle bids men “seek the things above; set your affections upon them,” as he says (Col 3). Or, as you have it in another place, “Lay hold” of them. For the affections are like hands to the soul, and they are what it fastens on things with.

8. There is the will, which may be called the foot of the soul, because by it the soul, yes, the whole man, is carried this way and that, or else held back and kept from moving.

These are the golden things of the soul, although in carnal men every one of them is used in the service of sin and Satan. For the unbelieving are impure through and through, as is plain, because their “mind and conscience (two of the masterpieces of the soul) is defiled” (Titus 1:15). And if the most powerful parts of the soul are engaged in that service, what, do you think, are the lower ones doing? But, I say, so it is, and the more is the pity; nor can anyone help it. “This work ceaseth for ever,” unless the great God who is over all, and who can save souls, shall himself undertake to sanctify the soul, to recover it, and to persuade it to fall in love with another master.

But, I say, what is man without this soul? Or where does this preeminence of his over a beast lie (Eccl 3:19-21)? Nowhere that I know of. For as to man’s body, both go to one place. Only the spirit, or soul, of a man goes upward, that is, to God who gave it, to be disposed of by him with respect to the things to come, according to what they have been and what they have done in this life.

But, second, I come in the next place to describe the soul by its senses, its spiritual senses, for that is what I call them. For as the body has senses belonging to it, and as it can see, hear, smell, feel, and taste, so can the soul. Therefore I call these the senses of the soul, as distinct from the senses of the body, and because the soul is the seat of all spiritual sense, where supernatural things are known and enjoyed. I do not mean that the soul of a natural man is spiritual in the apostle’s sense, for none are so but those who are born from above (1 Cor 3:1-3), and they are not always so either. But to go forward.

1. Can the body see? Does it have eyes? So does the soul. “The eyes of your understanding being enlightened” (Eph 1:18). As, then, the body can see beasts, trees, men, and all visible things, so the soul can see God, Christ, angels, heaven, devils, hell, and other things that are invisible. Nor does this property belong only to the souls that are enlightened by the Holy Spirit. For the most carnal soul in the world shall have a time to see these things; but not to its comfort, not to its joy, but to its endless woe and misery, if it dies in that condition. Therefore, sinner, do not say, “I shall not see him”; for “judgment is before him” (Job 35:14), and he will make you see him.

2. Can the body hear? Does it have ears? So does the soul (see Job 4:12-13). It is the soul, not the body, that hears the language of things invisible. It is the soul that hears God when he speaks in and by his Word and Spirit; and it is the soul that hears the devil when he speaks by his illusions and temptations. True, there is such a union between the soul and the body that often, if not always, what is heard by the ears of the body influences the soul, and what is heard by the soul influences the body too. But as to the organ of hearing, the body has one of its own, distinct from that of the soul. And the soul can hear and take notice even when the body does not and cannot, as in times of sleep, deep sleep, and trances, when the body lies by like a useless thing.

“For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man (as to his body) perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction” (Job 33:14-16). This must be meant of the ears of the soul, not of the body, for the body at this time is said to be in deep sleep. Moreover, this hearing is a hearing of dreams and of the visions of the night. Jeremiah also tells us that he had rare and blessed visions of God in his sleep (Jer 31:26). And so does Daniel too; and by these visions they were greatly comforted and refreshed. But that could not have been, if the soul were not also capable of hearing. “I heard the voice of his words,” said Daniel, “and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground” (Dan 10:8-9).

3. As the soul can see and hear, so it can taste and relish, just as really as the palate belonging to the body does. But then the things it tastes must be suited to the temper and palate of the soul. The soul’s taste does not lie in food, nor is it exercised on food, the food that is for the body. Yet the soul of a saint can taste and relish God’s Word (Heb 6:5), and often finds it sweeter than honey (Ps 19:10), nourishing like milk (1 Pet 2:2), and strengthening like strong meat (Heb 5:12-14).

The souls of sinners too, and of those who are unsanctified, can taste and relish. They do not relish the things just mentioned, but things that agree with their fleshly minds and with their polluted, defiled, and vile affections. They can relish and taste what delights them. Yes, they can find soul-delight in an alehouse, a whorehouse, a playhouse. Indeed, they find pleasure in the vilest things, in the things most offensive to God and most destructive to themselves. This is evident to the senses, and it is proved by the daily practice of sinners. Nor is the Word barren on this point. They “feed on ashes” (Isa 44:20). They “spend their money for that which is not bread” (Isa 55:2). Yes, they eat and suck sweetness out of sin. “They eat up the sin of my people” as they eat bread (Hos 4:8).

4. As the soul can see, hear, and taste, so it can smell, and bring refreshment to itself that way. Hence the church says, “My fingers dropped with sweet-smelling myrrh”; and again she says of her beloved that “his lips dropped sweet-smelling myrrh” (Song 5:5, 13). But how did the church come to understand this, except that her soul smelled in it what was to be smelled in it, even in his word and gracious visits? The poor world, indeed, cannot smell or savor anything of the good and fragrant scent and sweetness that is in Christ. But to those who believe, “Thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee” (Song 1:3).

5. As the soul can see, taste, hear, and smell, so it has the sense of feeling, as quick and as sensitive as the body’s. Whoever does not know this knows nothing. The one whose soul is “past feeling” (Eph 4:18-19) has his “conscience seared with a hot iron” (1 Tim 4:2). Nothing is so sensitive as the soul, and nothing feels so quickly the love and mercy, or the anger and wrath, of God. Ask the awakened man, or the man who is under the convictions of the law, whether he does not feel. He will quickly tell you that he faints and dies away because of God’s hand and the wrath that lies upon him. If you know nothing by experience of what I have told you, read Ps 38:1-8. There you will hear the complaints of one whose soul lay at that time under the burden of guilt, and who cried out that without help from heaven he could by no means bear it. Those also who know what the peace of God means, and what an eternal weight there is in glory, know well that the soul has the sense of feeling, as well as the senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling. But so much for the senses of the soul.

Third, I come next to describe the soul by its passions. The passions of the soul, as I reckon them, are these and others like them: love, hatred, joy, fear, grief, anger, and so on. These passions of the soul are not good simply because they are passions of the soul, nor evil for that reason either. They are made good or evil by two things: principle and object. By the principle I mean the source from which they flow, and by the object, the thing on which they are set. To explain myself:

1. Take love first. This is a strong passion; the Holy Spirit says “it is strong as death, and cruel as the grave” (Song 8:6-7). Love is good when it flows from faith and fixes itself on God in Christ as its object, and when it extends itself to all that is good, whether the good Word, the good work of grace, or the good men who have it, and also to their good lives. But not all the soul’s love flows from this principle, nor does all of it have these things for its object. How many there are who make the vilest of men and the basest of things the object of their love, because their love flows from vile affections and from the lusts of the flesh! God and Christ, good laws and good men and their holy lives, they cannot stand, because their love lacks a principle that should sanctify it in its first motion and steer it toward a good object. But that is the first.

2. There is hatred, which I count another passion of the soul. Like love, it is good or evil according to the principle from which it flows and the object it is set on. “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil” (Ps 97:10). This passion is good, then, when out of the many thousands of things in the world it singles out that one filthy thing called sin, and when it sets itself, the soul, and the whole man against it, and engages all the powers of the soul to seek and devise its ruin. But alas, where shall this hatred be found? What man is there whose soul is filled with this passion, sanctified in this way by the love of God, so that it makes sin, God’s enemy, the only object of its indignation? How many there are, I say, whose hatred is turned another way because of the malignity of their minds!

They hate knowledge (Prov 1:22). They hate God (Deut 7:10; Job 21:14). They hate the righteous (2 Chr 19:2; Ps 34:21; Prov 29:10). They hate God’s ways (Mal 3:14; Prov 8:12). And it is all because the grace of filial fear is not the root and principle from which their hatred flows. For “the fear of the Lord is to hate evil” (Prov 8:13). Therefore, where this grace is lacking as a root in the soul, the soul must of necessity swerve in letting out this passion. For where grace is lacking, the soul is not free to act simply; it is biased by the power of sin, which is present in the soul while grace is absent. And this is why this passion, which is a virtue when it is acted well, is so abused, and made to exert its force against things for which God never ordained it, nor gave it license to act.

3. Another passion of the soul is joy. When the soul rejoices virtuously, it does not rejoice in iniquity, “but rejoiceth in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). This joy is a very strong passion and will carry a man through a world of difficulties. It is a passion that bears up, supports, and strengthens a man, let the object of his joy be what it will. It is this that makes the soul fat in goodness, if its object is fitting; and it is this that makes the soul bold in wickedness, if it does indeed rejoice in iniquity.

4. Another passion of the soul is fear, natural fear. (For that is how you must understand me concerning all the passions of the soul: as they are considered simply and in their own nature.) And as it is with the other passions, so it is with this one: it is made good or evil in its acts according to its principle and objects. When this passion of the soul is good, it springs from a sense of the greatness, goodness, and majesty of God, and God himself is the object of this fear. “I will forewarn you,” says Christ, “whom ye shall fear. Fear him that can destroy both body and soul in hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him” (Matt 10:28; Luke 12:5). But this passion is not regulated and governed in all men by these principles and objects. Through the cunning of Satan it is abused and turned into quite another channel. It is made to fear men (Num 14:9), to fear idols (2 Kgs 17:7, 38), to fear devils and witches. Yes, it is made to fear all the foolish, ridiculous, and apish fables that every old woman or atheistic fortune-teller has the nerve to drop before the soul. But fear is another passion of the soul.

5. Another passion of the soul is grief, and it, like those named before, acts according to how it is governed. When holiness is lovely and beautiful to the soul, and when the name of Christ is more precious than life, then the soul will sit down and be afflicted because men do not keep God’s law. “I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved; because they kept not thy word” (Ps 119:158). So it was with Christ: he looked round about with anger, “being grieved for the hardness of their hearts” (Mark 3:5). But it is rarely seen that this passion of the soul is exercised in this way. Almost everybody has other things to spend the heat of this passion on. Men are grieved that they do not thrive more in the world; grieved that they do not have more carnal, sensual, and worldly honor; grieved that they are not allowed to range further in the lusts and vanities of this life. But all this is because the soul is unacquainted with God and sees no beauty in holiness, but is sensual, and wrapped up in clouds and thick darkness.

6. And lastly, there is anger, which is another passion of the soul. Like the rest, the soul puts it forth according to the nature of the principle by which it is moved and from which it flows. In a word, to say nothing of the fierceness and power of this passion, it is cursed when it breaks out beyond the bounds that God has set it. And it certainly does that when, by its fierceness or irregular motion, it runs the soul into sin. “Be ye angry, and sin not” (Eph 4:26) is the limit with which God has bounded this passion, and whatever goes beyond this is giving place to the devil. One reason among others why the Lord sets this bound and these limits to anger so strictly is that it is such a furious passion, and that it will so quickly swell the soul up with sin, as they say a toad swells with its poison. Yes, in a moment it will so carry away a man’s spirit that he will quickly forget himself, his God, his friend, and all good rule. But my business now is not to make a commentary on the passions of the soul, only to show you that there are such passions, and which they are.

And now, what follows from this description of the soul, but to remind you what a noble, powerful, lively, sensitive thing the soul is, which the text supposes may be lost through the heedlessness, or carelessness, or slavish fear of the one whose soul it is? And also to stir you up to such care for the salvation of your soul, and such labor after it, as befits the weight of the matter. If the soul were a trivial thing, or if a man might still be happy himself though he lost it, it would be another matter. But the loss of the soul is no small loss. The man who has lost his soul can be in nothing but a most fearful and miserable condition, even if he had all the world, yes, the whole kingdom of heaven, in his own power. But more of these things in their place.

Second, having given you this description of the soul, what it is, I shall next show you its greatness.

First, the first thing by which I shall make this plain will be to show you the disproportion between the soul and the body. I shall do it in the following particulars.

1. The body is called the house of the soul, a house for the soul to live in. Now everybody knows that the house is much inferior to the one who, by God’s ordinance, is appointed to live in it. That the body is called the house of the soul, you find in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “For we know,” he says, “that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor 5:1). We have, then, a house for our soul in this world, and this house is the body, for the apostle can mean nothing else; that is why he calls it an earthly house. “If our earthly house”: our house. But in whose person does he speak, if he says that this is a house for the soul? For the body is part of the one who says “our house.”

In this manner of speaking he speaks in the person of his soul, together with the souls of the rest who are saved. The apostles commonly do this, as those who give attention to reading will easily discern. Our bodies are our earthly houses, or, as Job says, “houses of clay” (Job 4:19), for our bodies are bodies of clay: “Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay” (Job 13:12). Indeed, Paul afterward mentions a house in heaven, but that is not what he is speaking about now. Now he speaks of this earthly house which we (that is, our souls) have to live in while on this side of glory, where the other house stands ready prepared for us, for when we shall move from this house to that one, or in case this one should sooner or later be dissolved.

But that is the first: the body is compared to the house, but the soul to the one who lives in the house. Therefore, as the man is more noble than the house he lives in, so the soul is more noble than the body. And yet, alas, with grief be it spoken, how common it is for men to spend all their care, all their time, all their strength, all their wit and abilities on the body and on its honor and advancement, just as if the soul were some poor, pitiful, sorry, insignificant, and inferior thing, not worth thinking of, or not worth caring for!

2. The body is called the clothing, and the soul is what is clothed with it. Now everybody knows that “the body is more than raiment” (Luke 12:23); even carnal sense will teach us this. But read that pregnant passage: “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened” (that is, with mortal flesh), “not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life” (2 Cor 5:4). Thus the greatness of the soul appears in the preference it has above the body: the body is its raiment. We see that man, above all creatures, because he is the most noble of all the visible ones, has that more abundant comeliness for the adorning of his body. It is the body of man, not of beast, that is clothed with the richest ornaments. But now, what a thing the soul is, that the body itself must be its clothing! God thinks no suit of clothes good enough for the soul except the one God himself has made, and that is that finely made thing, the body.

But oh, how little this is considered, namely, the greatness of the soul! It is the body, the clothes, the suit of apparel, that our foolish fancies are taken with, without considering at all the richness and excellence of that great and more noble part, the soul, for which the body is made a mantle to wrap it up in, a garment to clothe it with. If a man gets a tear in his clothes, it is little compared with a tear in his flesh. Yes, he comforts himself when he looks at that tear, saying, “Thank God, it is not a tear in my flesh.” But ah, on the contrary, how many there are in the world who are more troubled that they have a tear, a wound, or a disease in the body than that they have souls that will be lost and cast away! A little tear in the body dejects them and casts them down, but they are not at all concerned, though their soul is now, and will yet further be, torn in pieces. “Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver” (Ps 50:22). But this is the second thing by which the greatness of the soul appears: that the body, that excellent piece of God’s workmanship, is only a garment or clothing for the soul.

3. The body is called a vessel, or a case, for the soul to be put and kept in. “That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour” (1 Thess 4:4). The apostle here exhorts the people to abstain from fornication, which, he says in another place, is a sin against the body (1 Cor 6:18). And here again he says, “This is the will of God, your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication” (1 Thess 4:3), so that the body is not defiled, “that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour.” His vessel, his earthen vessel, as he calls it in another place, for “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor 4:7). Thus, then, the body is called a vessel; yes, every man’s body is his vessel.

But what has God prepared this vessel for, and what has he put into it? Why, this body is to be a vessel for many things, but for the present God has put into it that finely made thing, the soul. Cabinets that are very rich and costly things in themselves are not made or designed to be vessels stuffed or filled with trash and things of no value. No, they are prepared for rings and jewels, for pearls, for rubies, and for things that are choice. And if so, what shall we think of the soul, for which the richest and most excellent vessel in the world is prepared, and prepared by God? Surely it must be a thing of worth, yes, of more worth than the whole world besides. But alas, who believes this talk? Do not even most men so set their minds on, and so admire, the glory of this case or vessel, that they forget even once to think seriously? And so they must of necessity be a great way off from the fitting esteem they ought to have of their souls. But oh, since this vessel, this cabinet, this body, is so finely made, and made to receive and contain something, what thing is that for which God has made this vessel, and what is that soul which he has put into it? So, in the third place, the greatness of the soul is made plain by the excellence of the vessel, the body, that God has made to put it in.

4. The body is called a tabernacle for the soul. “Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle” (2 Pet 1:14), that is, my body, by death (John 21:18-19). So again, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God…” (2 Cor 5:1). In both these places nothing can be meant by “tabernacle” but the body. Therefore both apostles, in these sentences, speak in the person of their souls, and speak as if the soul were the all of a man. Yes, they plainly tell us that the body is only the house, clothes, vessel, and tabernacle for the soul. What a remarkable thing, then, the soul must be!

The tabernacle of old was a place set up for worship, but the worshipers were far more excellent than the place. So our body is a tabernacle for the soul to worship God in, but it must be counted much inferior to the soul, since the worshipers are always of more honor than the place they worship in, just as he who lives in the tabernacle has more honor than the tabernacle. “I serve,” says Paul, God and Christ Jesus “with my spirit” (or soul) “in the gospel” (Rom 1:9); yet not with his spirit out of this tabernacle, but in it. The tabernacle had instruments of worship for the worshipers; so has the body for the soul, and we are told to “yield our members as instruments of righteousness unto God” (Rom 6:13). The hands, feet, ears, eyes, and tongue (the last of which is our glory when rightly used) are all instruments of this tabernacle, to be used by the soul, the inhabitant of this tabernacle, for its performance of the service of God.

I discourse in this way to show you the greatness of the soul. And in my opinion there is something, if not very much, in what I say. For all men admire the body, both for the way it is built and for the intricate way it is fitted together. Yes, the further men, wise men, pry into the wonderful work of God that is put forth in framing the body, the more they are still made to admire it. And yet, as I said, this body is only a house, a mantle, a vessel, a tabernacle for the soul. What, then, is the soul itself? But so much for the first particular.

Second, we will now come to other things that show us the greatness of the soul. And:

1. It is called God’s breath of life. “And the Lord God formed man,” that is, the body, “of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7). Just compare these two together, the body and the soul: the body is made of dust, the soul is the breath of God. Now, if God has made this body so famous (as indeed he has), and yet it is made only of the dust of the ground, and we all know what inferior matter that is, what is the soul? The body is its house and garment, and more than that, the soul itself is made of the breath of God!

But further, Scripture does not only say that the soul is of the breath of the Lord. It says that the Lord breathed into him the breath of life, that is, a living spirit (for so the next words imply), and “man became a living soul.” Man here means the more excellent part of him, which, because it is the principal part, is called man, bearing the name of the whole. Or man here means the spirit and natural power by which, as a reasonable creature, the whole of him is set in motion; this “became a living soul.” But I am not standing here on definition, but on demonstration.

The body, that noble part of man, had its origin from the dust; for so says the Word, “Dust thou art” (as to your body), “and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen 3:19). But as to your more noble part, you are from the breath of God. God put forth in that a mighty work of creating power, and man “was made a living soul” (1 Cor 15:45). Mark my reason. There is as great a difference between the body and the soul as there is between the dust of the ground and what is here called the breath of life of the Lord. And note further that, as the dust of the ground did not lose but gained glory by being formed into the body of a man, so this breath of the Lord lost nothing either by being made a living soul. O man! Do you know what you are?

2. As the soul is said to be of the breath of God, so it is said to be made after God’s own image, even after the likeness of God. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Gen 1:26-27). Mark it: “in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” Or, as James has it, it is “made after the similitude of God” (Jas 3:9), like him, having in it something that bears a resemblance to him. I do not read of anything in heaven, or earth, or under the earth, that is said to be made in this way, or that is called so at all, except only the Son of God himself.

The angels are noble creatures, and for their present service are made a little higher than man himself (Heb 2). But that any of them is said to be made “after God’s image,” after his own image, even after the likeness of God, that I do not find. The Holy Spirit, in the Scriptures of truth, gives this description only of man, of the soul of man; for it must not be thought that the body is meant here, in whole or in part. For though it is said that Christ was made in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom 8:3), it is not said that sinful flesh is made after the likeness of God.

But I will not dispute. I only bring these things to show how great a thing, how noble a thing the soul is, in that at its creation God thought it worthy to be made not like the earth, or the heavens, or the angels, seraphim, cherubim, or archangels, but like himself, his very self, saying, Let us make man in our own likeness. So he made man in his own image. This, I say, is a description above all angels. For as the apostle said, “To which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son?” (Heb 1:5). So, of which of them has he at any time said, This is, or shall be, made in or after my image, my own image? O what a thing is the soul of man, that above all the creatures in heaven or earth, it is made in the image and likeness of God!

3. Another thing by which the greatness of the soul is made plain is this: it is the soul, and the soul only, that the great God desires communion with. (And to say this is more than to say that it is the soul above all the creatures.) He “hath set apart him that is godly for himself” (Ps 4:3), that is, for communion with his soul. Therefore the spouse says concerning him, “His desire is toward me” (Song 7:10). And therefore he says again, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them” (2 Cor 6:16). To “dwell in” and “walk in” are terms that suggest communion and fellowship. As John says, “Our fellowship, truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). That is, our soul-fellowship; for it must not be understood of the body, though I believe that the body is much affected when the soul has communion with God. But it is the soul, and the soul only, that at present is capable of having and maintaining this blessed communion.

But, I say, what a thing is this, that God, the great God, should choose to have fellowship and communion with the soul above all! We read, indeed, of the greatness of the angels, and of how near they are to God. Yet there are no terms that speak of such familiar dealings between God and angels as to show that they have such communion with God as the soul has, or as the souls of his people may have. Where has he called them his love, his dove, his fair one? And where, when he speaks of them, does he describe a communion they have with him by the likeness of married love? I speak of what is revealed; the secret things belong to the Lord our God.

Now by all this the greatness of the soul is plain. Men of greatness and honor, if they have any regard for their own glory, will not choose the base and rascally crew of this world for their close companions. They will single out for their fellows, their fellowship, and their communion those who are most like themselves. True, the King has no equal; yet he chooses to be familiar only with the nobles of the land. So with God: none can compare with him. Yet since the soul is singled out by him as his walking-mate and companion, it is a sign that it is the highest born, and that the blessed Majesty looks on it as the fittest of all to be singled out for communion with himself.

If we saw a man on familiar terms with the King, we would conclude, even of ourselves, that he is one of the nobles of the land. But this is not the lot of every soul. Some have fellowship with devils. Yet this is not because they have a baser origin than those who lie in God’s bosom; it is because they have degenerated through sin, and have chosen to be great with his enemy. But all these things show the greatness of the soul.

4. The souls of men are such as God counts worthy to be the vessels that hold his grace, the graces of the Spirit. The graces of the Spirit! What is like them, or where are they to be found here, except in the souls of men only? “Of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16). Received into what? Into “the hidden part,” as David calls it (Ps 51:6). Hence the king’s daughter is said to be “all glorious within” (Ps 45:13), because she is adorned and beautified with the graces of the Spirit. For what David calls the hidden part is the inmost part of the soul. And it is called the hidden part because the soul is invisible, and no one living can know infallibly what is in the soul but God himself.

But, I say, the soul is the vessel into which this golden oil is poured. It is what holds it, and what is counted worthy to exercise it and put it to use. Therefore it is the soul that is said to love God: “Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?” (Song 3:3). And therefore it is the soul that exercises the spirit of prayer: “With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early” (Isa 26:9). With the soul also men are said to believe, and into the soul God is said to put his fear. This is the vessel into which the wise virgins got oil, and out of which their lamps were supplied with it. But what a thing, what a great thing, then, is the soul, that it, above all the things God has created, should be the chosen vessel to put his grace in! The body is the vessel for the soul, and the soul is the vessel for the grace of God.

5. Moreover, the greatness of the soul is plain from the greatness of the price that Christ paid for it, to make it an heir of glory; and that was his precious blood (1 Cor 6:20; 1 Pet 1:18-19). We are used to valuing things according to the price that is paid for them, especially when we are convinced that the purchase was not made on a fool’s judgment. Now the soul is purchased at a price that the Son, the wisdom of God, thought fit to pay for its redemption. What a thing, then, is the soul? Judge the soul by the price that is paid for it, and you must confess, unless you count the blood that bought it an unholy thing, that it cannot be anything but of great worth and value.

Suppose a prince, or some great man, should suddenly come down from his throne or chair of state to pick up something he had spotted lying trampled under the feet of the bystanders, so that he might put it in his bosom. Would you think he would do this for an old horseshoe, or for so trivial a thing as a pin or a lace tag? No; would you not conclude, even of yourselves, that the thing for which the prince, so great a man, would make such a stoop must be a thing of very great worth? Why, this is the case of Christ and the soul. Christ is the prince. His throne was in heaven, and as he sat there he spotted the souls of sinners trampled under the foot of the law and of death for sin. Now what does he do but come down from his throne and stoop down to the earth? And there, since he could not have the trodden-down souls without a price, he lays down his life and blood for them (2 Cor 8:9). But would he have done this for things of no account? No, nor for the souls of sinners either, had he not valued them higher than he valued heaven and earth besides. This, therefore, is another thing by which the greatness of the soul is known.

6. The soul is immortal; it will have a feeling being forever. No one can kill the soul (Luke 12:4; Matt 10:28). If all the angels in heaven and all the men on earth should put all their strength together, they could not kill or annihilate one soul. No, I will speak without fear: if it may be said that God cannot do what he will not do, then he cannot annihilate the soul. In spite of all his wrath, and the vengeance he will inflict on sinful souls, they shall still abide as feeling beings, still to endure, still to bear punishment.

If anything could kill the soul, it would be death; but death cannot do it, neither the first death nor the second. The first cannot, for when Dives was slain by death as to his body, his soul was found alive in hell: “He lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment” (Luke 16:23). The second death cannot do it, because it is said that their worm never dies, but is always torturing them with its gnawing (Mark 9:44). But that could not be if time, or lying in hellfire forever, could annihilate the soul. Now this also shows the greatness of the soul: it is a thing that has an endless life, and that will therefore have a being endlessly. O what a thing is the soul!

The soul, then, is immortal, though not eternal. That is eternal which has neither beginning nor end, and therefore “eternal” properly applies to none but God. Hence he is called the “eternal God” (Deut 33:27). Immortal is that which, though it has a beginning, yet has no end; it cannot die or cease to be. And this is the state of the soul. Once it is created, it cannot cease to have a being; I mean, a living, feeling being. For by living I mean only such a being as distinguishes it from annihilation, or from being incapable of sense and feeling.

Hence, as the rich man after death is said to “lift up his eyes in hell,” so the beggar, when he died, is said to be “carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22-23). And both these sayings must refer to the souls of these men; for as for their bodies, we know it is otherwise with them at present. The grave is their house, and so it must be till the trumpet sounds and the heavens pass away like a scroll. Now, I say, the immortality of the soul shows its greatness, as the eternity of God shows the greatness of God. Nothing more can be said of any angel than that he is immortal; and so it is, and ought to be, said of the soul. This, therefore, shows the greatness of the soul, in that it is so like him in its abiding.

7. But a word or two more, and so to conclude this head. The soul! Why, it is the soul that drives the body in all these things, good or bad, whether they seem good and reasonable or amazingly wicked. True, the acts and motions of the soul are only seen and heard in and by the members and motions of the body. But the body is only a poor instrument; the soul is the great mover and actor. “The body without the spirit is dead” (Jas 2:26). All those famous arts, and works, and inventions of works that are done by men under heaven are all the inventions of the soul. And the body, as it acts and labors in them, does so only as a tool that the soul makes use of to bring its invention to maturity (Eccl 7:29).

How many things men have found out, to the amazement of one another, to the wonder of one another, to the stirring up of endless praise of one another in the world! Meanwhile the soul, which is indeed the true inventor of all, is overlooked and disregarded. It is dragged up and down by every lust, laid prostrate, and made a slave to every silly and beastly thing. O the amazing darkness that has covered the face of the hearts of the children of men, so that they cannot deliver their soul, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isa 44:20), though they are so clever in all other matters! Take man in matters that are abroad and far from home, and he is the marvel of all the world. But take him at home, and set him to things that are near him (I mean, things that concern his soul), and then you will find him the greatest fool that God ever made.

But this must not be applied to the soul simply as it is God’s creature. It must be applied to the soul as sinful, as it has willingly fallen away from God and so allowed itself to be darkened, and that with such thick and stupefying darkness that it is bound up and helpless. It has a napkin of sin bound so close over its eyes that it is not able, of itself, to look to and after the things that should be its chief concern, and without which it will be most miserable forever.

8. Further, as the soul is so curious about arts and sciences, and about every excellent thing of this life, so it is capable of having to do with invisible beings: with angels, good or bad; yes, with the highest and Supreme Being, even with the holy God of heaven. I told you before that God sought the soul of man to have it for his companion; and now I tell you that the soul is capable of communion with him, once the darkness that sin has spread over its face is removed. The soul is an intelligent power. It can be made to know and understand depths, and heights, and lengths, and breadths in those high, sublime, and spiritual mysteries that only God can reveal and teach. Yes, it is capable of diving into them beyond all words. And in this God, the God of glory, is much delighted and pleased: that he has made himself a creature that is capable of hearing, of knowing, and of understanding his mind when it is opened and revealed to it.

I think I may say, without offense to God or man, that one reason why God made the world was that he might show himself not only by, but to, the works that he made. But (I speak with reverence) how could that be, if he did not also make some of his creatures capable of grasping him in those most high mysteries and methods in which he purposed to reveal himself? But then, what are those creatures he has made that, when these things are shown to them, are able to take them in and understand them, and so to improve them to God’s glory, as he has ordained and purposed they should, but souls? For nothing else in the visible world is capable of doing this but they. And this is why it is to them, and them only, that he begins to reveal himself in this world.

And this is why they, and they only, are gathered up to him where he is; for they are the ones called “the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb 12:23). The spirit of a beast goes downward to the earth; it is the spirit of a man that goes upward to God who gave it (Eccl 3:21; Eccl 12:7). For that, and that only, is capable of beholding and understanding the glorious visions of heaven. As Christ said, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). And so the greatness of the soul is made plain.

True, the body is also gathered up into glory, but not simply for its own sake, or because it is capable of itself of knowing and understanding the glories of its Maker. Rather, it is because it has been the soul’s companion in this world. It has also been its house, its mantle, its cabinet and tabernacle here. It has also been the thing by which the soul has acted, in which it has worked, and by which its excellent workings have been shown. And there it shall also be its copartner and sharer in its glory. Therefore, as the body here partook of the soul’s excellencies, and was also conformed to its spiritual and regenerate principles, so hereafter it shall be a partaker of the glory with which the soul shall be filled. And it shall also be made fit by that glory to become a partaker and copartner with the soul in the eternal excellencies that heaven will put upon it.

In this world it is a gracious soul (I speak now of the regenerate), and in that world it shall be a glorious one. In this world the body was conformed to the soul as it was gracious, and in that world it shall be conformed to it as it is glorious; conformed, I say, by partaking of that glory which the soul shall then partake of. Yes, the body shall also have an additional glory to adorn it, and to make it still more able to serve the soul, and to serve with it, in its great acts before God in eternal glory. Oh, what great things are the souls of the sons of men!

9. But again, as the soul is capable of enjoying God in glory, and of searching into the mysteries that are in him, so it is capable of diving with great profundity into the mysterious depths of hell. Hell is a place and state utterly unknown to anyone in this visible world except the souls of men; nor shall any ever be capable of understanding its miseries except souls and fallen angels. Now I think that, as the joys of heaven consist not only in contemplation, or in beholding glory, but in the felt enjoyment and unspeakable pleasure that these glories will yield to the soul (Ps 16:11), so the torments of hell will not consist in the present lashes and strokes with which God will scourge the ungodly by the flames of eternal fire. Rather, the torments of hell consist much, if not for the greatest part, in the deep thoughts and apprehensions that souls in the next world will have: of the nature and occasions of sin; of God, and of separation from him; of the eternity of those miseries; and of the utter impossibility of their help, ease, or deliverance forever.

O! Damned souls will have thoughts that will clash with glory, clash with justice, clash with law, clash with themselves, clash with hell, and with the everlastingness of misery. But the point, the edge, and the poison of all these thoughts will still be galling, and dripping, and spewing out their stings into the sore, grieved, wounded, and fretted place, which is the conscience, though not the conscience only. For I may say of the souls in hell that all over they are nothing but one wound, one sore! Miseries as well as mercies sharpen and quicken the apprehensions of the soul. Look at Spira in the book about him, Cain in his guilt, and Saul with the witch of Endor, and you will see men ripened, men enlarged and made greater in their fancies, imaginations, and apprehensions; though not about God, and heaven, and glory, yet about their loss, their misery, their woe, and their hells (Isa 33:14; Ps 50:3; Rev 14:10; Mark 9:44, 46).

10. Their ability to bear (if it is proper to say they bear) the pains they shall endure there forever demonstrates their greatness in no small way. Everlasting burning, devouring fire, perpetual pains, gnawing worms, utter darkness, and the wrathful words, face, and strokes of divine and infinite justice will not, cannot, make this soul extinct, as I said before. I think it is not so proper to say that the soul damned for sin bears these things as to say that it is ever sinking under them. And therefore their place of torment is called the bottomless pit, because they are ever sinking, and shall never come to where they will find any resting place. Yet they live under wrath, but only so as to feel it, to smart and be in perpetual anguish because their burden is intolerable. But does not their living, abiding, and retaining a being in this way (or whatever you will call it) demonstrate the greatness and might of the soul? Alas! Heaven and earth fall short of this greatness; for these, though under far less judgment, fade and grow old like a moth-eaten garment, and in their time will vanish away to nothing (Heb 1).

Also, we see how quickly the body, when the soul is under a fear of the rebukes of justice, how soon, I say, it wastes, molders away, and crumbles into the grave. But the soul is still strong, and abides, able to feel, to be dealt with for sin by everlasting burnings.

11. By God’s ordinance, while this world lasts, the soul has a time appointed for it to forsake and leave the body, so that the body may be turned again to the dust as it was; and this separation is made by death (Heb 9:27). Therefore the body must for a time cease to have sense, or life, or motion; and in this life a little thing brings it into this state. But in the next world the wicked shall have no share in any of this. For when the body and the soul are joined again at the resurrection, this death that once tore them apart is forever overcome and extinct, so that these two, which lived in sin, must be yoked together in hell forever. Now there, the soul being joined to the body, and death, which before separated them, being utterly taken away, the soul not only retains its own being but also keeps the body in being, and keeps it suffering the pains of hell with full feeling, without the decays it used to undergo.

And the reason why this death shall then be taken away is so that justice, in handing out its rewards for transgressions, may not be interrupted, but that body and soul, as they lived and acted in sin together, might be destroyed for sin in hell together (Matt 10:28; Luke 12:5). Destroyed, I say, but with such a destruction as, though it is everlasting, will not put an end to their feeling the vengeance of eternal fire (2 Thess 1:8-9).

This death, therefore, though it too is the wages of sin, would now, if it were allowed to continue, be a hindrance to making known the wrath of God, and also the created power and might of the soul.

(1) It would hinder the making known of the wrath of God, for it would take the body out of the way and make it incapable of feeling any suffering for sin. And so, by removing one of the objects of vengeance, the power of God’s wrath would to that extent go undiscovered.

(2) It would also hinder the display of the power and might of the soul. This is revealed much by the soul’s continuing to retain its own being while the wrath of God is grappling with it, and still more by its continuing to give the body a feeling being along with itself.

Death, therefore, must now be removed, so that the soul may be made the object of wrath without hindrance or interruption. The soul, did I say? Yes, so that soul and body both might be. Though death was once the fruit of sin, and its wages too, it would now be a favor if it might be allowed to continue, because it would ease the soul of some of its burden. For a tormented body cannot help being a burden to a spirit; and the wise man implies as much when he says, “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity”: that is, bear up under it, but still in such a way that it feels it as a burden. We see how, because of the sympathy between body and soul, one is burdened if the other is grieved. A sick body is a burden to the soul, and a wounded spirit is a burden to the body: “a wounded spirit who can bear?” (Prov 18:14). But death must not remove this burden. The soul must have the body for a burden, and the body must have the soul for a burden, and both must have the wrath of God for a burden. Oh, therefore, here will be burden upon burden, and all upon the soul, for the soul will be the chief seat of this burden! But this is enough to show you the greatness of the soul.

Third, I now come to the third thing I proposed to speak to, and that is, to show you what we are to understand by losing the soul, or what the loss of the soul is: “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:37).

1. The loss of the soul is, in its very nature, a loss peculiar to itself. As to the nature of loss, there is no loss like the loss of the soul, for he who has lost his soul has lost himself. In all other losses a man may still save himself, but he who loses his soul loses himself: “For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself?” So Luke has it (Luke 9:25). Therefore the loss of the soul is a loss that cannot be matched. He who loses himself loses his all, his lasting all; for himself is his all, his all in the fullest sense. What does it matter what a man gets, if by getting it he loses himself?

Suppose a man goes to the Indies for gold and loads his ship with it, but on his way home the same sea that carried him there swallows him up. Now what has he gained? But this is a thin comparison for the matter in hand, that is, for setting forth the loss of the soul. Suppose a man who has been to the Indies for gold should, on his return, be taken himself by the men of Algiers, and there be made a slave, and be starved, and be beaten till his bones are broken. What has he gained? What has his rich venture done for him? Perhaps you will say, “He has gold enough to buy his ransom.” Indeed, that may be. And therefore no comparison can be found that fully sets out the matter, “for what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

It is a loss that stands by itself. There is no other like it, nor any to which it may be compared. It is like only itself. It is singular; it is the chief of all losses, the highest, the greatest loss. “For what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” A man may lose his wife, his children, his estate, his liberty and his life, and have all made up to him again, and have all restored with advantage; and so, despite all these losses, he may be far enough from losing himself (Luke 14:26; Mark 8:35). For he may lose his life and save it; indeed, sometimes the only way to save it is to lose it. But when a man has lost himself, his soul, then all is gone, to all intents and purposes. No word says, “He that loses his soul shall save it.” On the contrary, the text supposes that a man has lost his soul, and then asks whether anyone can answer it: “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

All, then, that the man gains who loses his soul is only this: he has gained a loss. He has purchased the loss of losses. He has nothing left to him now but his loss, the loss of himself, of his whole self. He who loses his life for Christ shall save it; but he who loses himself for sin and for the world shall lose himself to the perfection of loss. He has lost himself, and there is the full stop.

Several things fall under this first head, and I would touch on them a little.

(1) He who has lost his soul has lost himself. Now he who has lost himself is no longer at his own disposal, and never will be again. While a man possesses himself, he is at his own disposal. A single man, a free man, a rich man, a poor man, any man who possesses himself, is at his own disposal; I speak after the manner of men. But he who has lost himself is not at his own disposal. He is, as I may say, now out of his own hands. He has lost himself, his soul-self, his own self, his whole self, by sin, and wrath and hell have found him. He is therefore no longer at his own disposal, but at the disposal of justice, of wrath and of hell. He is committed to prison, to hell’s prison, there to stay, not at his pleasure, not for as long or as short a time as he likes, but for the term appointed by his judge. Nor may he choose his own affliction there, whether in its manner, its measure or its duration.

It is God who will spread the fire and brimstone under him; it is God who will pile up wrath upon him; and it is God himself who will blow the fire. And “the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it” (Isa 30:33). And so it is plain that he who has lost himself, his soul, is no longer at his own disposal, but at the disposal of those who have found him.

(2) Again, as he who has lost himself is not at his own disposal, so neither is he free to dispose of what he has; for the man who has lost himself still has something of his own. The text implies that his soul is his when lost, yes, even when it and his all, himself, are lost. But as he cannot dispose of himself, so he cannot dispose of what he has. Let me take the liberty of explaining what I mean. If he who is lost, who has lost himself, does not still have something that in some sense may be called his own, then he who is lost is nothing. The man who is in hell still has the powers, the senses, and the passions of his soul. Neither he nor his soul must be thought to be stripped of these, for then he would be lower than the brute beast. Yet all these, since he is there, are turned by God against himself. Or, if you like, the point of this man’s sword is turned against his own heart and made to pierce his own liver.

By being in hell the soul loses nothing of its aptness to think, its quickness to pierce, to pry and to understand. No, hell has ripened it in all these things. But, I say, the soul, with its improvements in these or in anything else, is not in the hand of him who has lost himself, for him to manage to his own advantage. It is in the hand and in the power of him into whose avenging hand he has delivered himself by sin, namely, the hand of God, to be disposed of as God sees fit. So then, God now has the victory, and disposes of all the powers, senses and passions of the soul for the chastising of him who has lost himself.

Now the understanding is employed and sharpened only in grasping such things as will be like daggers at the heart, namely, justice, sin, hell and eternity, to grieve and break the spirit of the damned; yes, to break, to wound and to tear the soul in pieces. The depths of sin that the man has loved, the good nature of God whom the man has hated, the blessings of eternity that the soul has despised, will now be understood by him more than ever. Yet they will be understood only in such a way as to increase grief and sorrow, as the good and the evil of the things understood are pressed home, to the greater wounding of the spirit. Therefore every touch that the understanding now gives to the memory will be like the touch of a red-hot iron, or like a draught of scalding lead poured down the throat. The memory, too, lets these things down upon the conscience with no less terror and perplexity.

And now the fancy, or imagination, starts and stares like a man driven out of his wits by fear. It exercises itself, or rather is exercised by the hand of avenging justice, upon the breadth and depth of present and future punishments in such a way as to lay the soul as on a burning rack. Now also the judgment, as with a mighty maul, drives the soul down, in the sense and pangs of everlasting misery, into the pit that has no bottom. Yes, it turns again and, as with a hammer, rivets every fearful thought and apprehension of the soul so fast that it can never be loosed again, for ever and ever.

Alas! Now the conscience can no longer sleep, be dull, be misled or flatter. No, it must now cry out: understanding will make it, memory will make it, fancy or imagination will make it. Now, I say, it will cry out against sin, against justice, and against the terribleness of the punishment that has swallowed up him who has lost himself. Here there will be no forgetfulness, and yet nothing will be thought of but what will wound and kill. Here there will be no time, cause or means for diversion; everything will stick and gnaw like a viper. Now the memory will go back to where sin was committed in times past; it will also go out to the word that forbade it. The understanding also, and the judgment too, will now consider the necessity the man pretended he had for breaking the commandments of God, and how timely were the cautions and the convictions given him to hold back. By all this, more load will be laid on him who has lost himself.

For here all the powers, senses and passions of the soul must be made self-burners, self-tormentors and self-executioners by the just judgment of God. Also, all that the will does in this place will be only to wish for ease. But the wish will be such as only seems to lift him up, for the cable rope of despair will pull him down again with violence. The will indeed will wish for ease, and so will the mind, and the rest. But all these wishers will gain nothing more by their wishing than to make despair, which is the most stinging lash of hell, cut still deeper into the whole soul of him who has lost himself. Therefore, after all that can be wished for, they return again to their burning chair, where they sit and bewail their misery.

Thus all the powers, senses and passions of the soul of him who has lost himself will be out of his own power to dispose of for his advantage, and will be only in the hand and under the management of the avenging justice of God. And in this the state of the damned will be worse than it now is with the fallen angels. For though the fallen angels are now cast down to hell, in chains, and sure in themselves that at last they will share in eternal judgment, yet at present they are not so bound up as the damned sinners will be. Despite their chains, and their being prisoners of the horrible hells, they have a kind of liberty granted them, and that liberty will last until the appointed time: liberty to tempt, to plot, to contrive and to invent their mischiefs against the Son of God and those who are his (Job 1:7; Job 2:2).

And though Satan knows that this will at last work toward his future condemnation, yet for now he finds it some diversion for his trembling mind. By so busily employing himself against the gospel and those who profess it, he obtains something to amuse and refresh himself with. Yes, and he gains for himself some small crumbs of minutes in which he forgets his own present misery and the judgment that is yet to pass upon him. But this privilege will then be denied to him who has lost himself. There will be no cause or matter for diversion. There, as in the old world, it will rain fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven upon them, day and night (Rev 14:10-11). Misery is fixed. The worm will always be sucking at and gnawing their soul. Also, as I said before, all the powers, senses and passions of the soul will throw their darts inward; yes, they will be made by God to do it, to the utter, unspeakable and endless torment of him who has lost himself.

(3) Again, all, therefore, that he who has lost himself can do is to sit down quietly under the loss. Did I say he can do this? Oh, if that could be, it would be a mercy to such people! I must therefore correct myself here: that they cannot do. For to sit down quietly under the loss implies a patient enduring, but there will be no such grace as patience in hell with him who has lost himself. Here, too, a foundation for patience will be lacking, namely, the providence of God. For a providence of God, however dismal, is a foundation for patience to the afflicted; but men do not go to hell by providence, but by sin. Now, sin being the cause, other effects are produced. For those who go to hell, and perish miserably there, will never say that it was God who brought them there by his providence; and so they will have nothing on which to lean and steady themselves.

They will justify God and lay the fault on themselves, concluding that it was sin, which their souls willingly worked with, yes, which their souls sucked in like sweet milk, that is the cause of this torment of theirs. Now this will work in another way, and will produce something quite other than patience, or a patient enduring of their torment. They will see that they are not only lost, but have lost themselves, and that in spite of the ordinary means God provided to prevent that loss. Yes, they will see what a base thing sin is: that it is the very worst of things, and the thing that also makes all things bad, and that for its sake they have lost themselves. This will make them fret, and gnash, and gnaw themselves with anger. This will set all the passions of the soul (except love, for that, I think, will be stark dead) all in a rage, all in a self-tormenting fire.

You know there is nothing that will sooner drive a man into a rage against himself, and keep that rage going, than a full conviction in his conscience that by his own folly alone, and that against caution and counsel and reason to the contrary, he has brought himself into extreme distress and misery. But how much more will it make this fire burn when he sees that all this has come upon him for a toy, for a bauble, for a thing that is worse than nothing!

Why, this is the case with him who has lost himself; and therefore he cannot sit down quietly under the loss, and cannot be at peace under the sense of his loss. For as he considers, sharply and with wonderful piercing, the loss of himself and its cause, which is sin, he falls to tearing himself in pieces with thoughts as hot as the coals of juniper, and to gnashing upon himself for this. Also, the divine wisdom and justice of God help this self-tormentor on in his self-tormenting work, by holding continually before his face the justice of the law against which he has offended, and the unreasonableness of such an offense. For if, in an enlightened man who stands in the door of hope, the sight of all his past evil practices works “vexation of spirit” (Eccl 1:14) to see what fools we were, how can it be to those who go to hell anything but “a vexation only to understand the report” (Isa 28:19), the report that God gave them of sin, of his grace, of hell and of everlasting damnation, when they were yet such fools as to go there? But to pursue this head no further, I will now come to the next thing.

2. As the loss of the soul is, in the nature of the loss, a loss peculiar to itself, so the loss of the soul is a double loss. It is, I say, a loss that is double, lost both by man and by God. Man has lost it, and by that loss has lost himself; God has lost it, and by that loss it is cast away. To make this a little plainer to you: I suppose it will readily be granted that men lose their souls. But now, how does God lose it? The soul is God’s as well as man’s: man’s because it is part of men themselves, God’s because it is his creature. God has made us this soul, and that is why all souls are his (Jer 38:16; Ezek 18:4).

Now the loss of the soul does not stand only in the sin of man, but also in the justice of God. Hence Christ says, “What is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away” (Luke 9:25). Now this last clause, “or be cast away,” is not spoken to show what he who has lost his soul has done (though a man may also be said to cast himself away), but to show what God will do to those who have lost themselves, what God will add to that loss. God will not cast away a righteous man, but God will cast away the wicked, such a wicked one as the text puts before us (Job 8:20; Matt 13:50). This, then, is what God will add, and so make the sad state of those who lose themselves double. The man has lost himself for sin, and God by justice will cast him away. So Abigail said to David: “The soul of my lord,” said she, “shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God; and the souls of thine enemies, them shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a sling” (1 Sam 25:29).

So here is God’s hand as well as man’s: man’s by sin, and God’s by justice. God shall cast them away. Therefore, in the text mentioned above, Christ does not say that the man casts himself away, as though meaning the act of the man whose soul is lost, but “or be cast away” (Luke 9:25). This supposes a second person joining with the man himself in making up the greatness of the loss of the soul, namely, God himself, who will surely cast away the man who has lost himself.

God shall cast them away: that is, he will shut them out of his favor or protection, and deliver them up to the due reward of their deeds! He will shut them out of his heaven and deliver them up to their hell. He will deny them a share in his glory and leave them to their own shame. He will deny them a portion in his peace and deliver them up to the torments of the devil and of their own guilty consciences. He will cast them out of his affection, pity and compassion, and leave them to the flames that they have kindled by sin, and to the worm, or biting cockatrice, that they themselves have hatched, nursed and nourished in their bosoms.

And this will make their loss double, and so a loss that is loss to the uttermost, a loss above every loss. A man may cast himself away and not be cast away by God. A man may be cast away by others and not be cast away by God. Yes, whatever way a man is cast away, if he is not cast away for sin, he is safe; he is still found, and in a sure hand. But for a man so to lose himself as by that loss to provoke God to cast him away too, this is fearful.

The casting away mentioned in Luke, then, is a casting away by the hand of God, by the avenging hand of God. And it implies two things: first, God’s abhorrence of such a soul; second, God’s just repaying of it for its wickedness by way of retaliation.

(1) It implies God’s abhorrence of the soul. What we abhor, we cast from us and put out of our favor and respect, with disdain and loathing. So when God teaches Israel to loathe and abhor their idols, he bids them to cast away their very covering as a stinking and menstruous cloth, and to say unto it, Get you hence (Isa 30:22). “He shall gather the good into vessels, and cast the bad away” (Matt 13:48). Cast them out of my presence! Well, but where must they go? The answer is: into hell, into utter darkness, into the fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41). Therefore, to be cast away, to be cast away by God, shows us God’s abhorrence of such souls, and how vile and loathsome such souls are in his divine eyes.

And the image of Abigail’s sling, mentioned before, shows us still further the greatness of this abhorrence: “The souls of thine enemies,” said she, “God shall sling out as out of the middle of a sling.” When a man casts a stone away with a sling, he casts it farthest from him, for with a sling he can throw a stone farther than with his hand. “And he,” says the text, “shall cast them away as with a sling.” But that is not all, either. For it is not only said that he shall sling away their souls, but that he shall sling them away as “out of the middle of a sling.” When a stone that is to be cast away is placed just in the middle of a sling, then the slinger casts it farthest of all. Now God is the slinger, abhorrence is his sling, the lost soul is the stone, and it is placed in the very middle of the sling and from there cast away. And therefore it is said again that such shall go into utter, outer darkness, that is, farthest off of all. This, therefore, shows us how God abhors the man who has lost himself for sin.

And well he may. For such a one has not only polluted and defiled himself with sin, which is the most offensive thing to God under heaven, but he has also abused the handiwork of God. The soul, as I said before, is the workmanship of God, yes, the crowning piece of all that he has made in the visible world. He also made it so that he might delight in it, and admit it into communion with himself. Now for man to abuse God like this, for a man to take his soul, which is God’s, and prostrate it to sin, to the world, to the devil and to every beastly lust, flat against the command of God, even though the soul was God’s as well: this is horrible. It calls aloud upon the God whose soul this is to abhor such a one, and to show his abhorrence of him by every possible means.

(2) As this casting of them away implies God’s abhorrence of them, so it implies God’s just repaying them for their wickedness by way of retaliation.

All through the time that God exercised his long-suffering and forbearance toward them, he called on them, waited on them, and sent his messengers after them to turn them from their evil ways (Hos 11:2). But they scoffed at the messengers of the Lord and mocked them. They also shut their eyes and would not see; they stopped their ears and would not understand; and they hardened themselves against the pleading of their God. Yes, all day long he stretched out his hand toward them, but they chose to be a rebellious and contrary people. Yes, they said to God, “Depart from us”; and, “What is the Almighty,” that we should pray to him? (Rev 16:21; Job 21:14-15; Mal 3:14).

And God takes notice of all these things. He writes them down and seals them up for the time to come, and he will bring them out and spread them before them, saying: “I called, and you refused; I stretched out my hand, and no one took any notice; I exercised patience and gentleness and long-suffering toward you, and in all that time you despised me and threw me behind your back. And now the time is at an end, the time when I exercised my patience, when I waited on you, put up with your ways, and bore your contempt and scorn. So now I will arise and come out to the judgment I have appointed.”

“But, Lord,” says the sinner, “we turn now.”

“But now,” says God, “turning is out of season; the day of my patience is over.”

“But, Lord,” says the sinner, “look on our cries.”

“But you did not look on my cries,” says God, “or pay them any regard.”

“But, Lord,” says the sinner, “let our pleading find a place in your compassion.”

“But I also pleaded,” says God, “and I was not heard.”

“But, Lord,” says the sinner, “our sins lie heavy on us.”

“But I offered you pardon when there was time,” says God, “and then you utterly rejected it.”

“But, Lord,” says the sinner, “then let us have it now.”

“But now the door is shut,” says God.

And what then? Why, then God will serve them by way of retaliation as they have served him. And so the wind-up of the whole will be this: they shall have like for like. Time was when they would have none of him, and now God will have none of them. Time was when they threw God behind their back, and now he will throw away their soul. Time was when they would not heed his calls, and now he will not heed their cries. Time was when they abhorred him, and now his soul also loathes them (Zech 11:8). This is now by way of retaliation: like for like, scorn for scorn, rebuff for rebuff, contempt for contempt, according to what is written, “Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the Lord” (Zech 7:13). And so I have also shown you that the loss of the soul is double: lost by man, and lost by God.

But oh, who thinks of this? Who, I say, of all those who now make light of God, of his Word, his servants and his ways, ever once dreams of such retaliation? And yet God, to warn them, has even, in the day of his patience, threatened to do it in the day of his wrath, saying, “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me” (Prov 1:24-28). “I will do to them as they have done to me,” says God; and what unrighteousness is there in all this?

But third, as the loss of the soul is a loss peculiar to itself, and a double loss, so it is a most fearful loss, because it is a loss accompanied by the heaviest curse of God. This is plain both in the giving of the rule of life and also in the execution of judgment for breaking that rule, at the time it is carried out. It is plain at the giving of the rule: “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen” (Deut 27:26; Gal 3:10). It is also plain that it shall be so at the time of execution: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt 25:41).

What this curse is, no one knows so well as God who gives it, and the fallen angels and the spirits of damned men who are now shut up in the prison of hell and bear it. But certainly it is the chief and highest of all kinds of curses. To be cursed in the basket and in the storehouse, in the womb and in the barn, in my cattle and in my body, are only flea bites compared with this, though they too are unbearable in themselves. Only, in general terms, it may be described like this. To touch on this curse, then: it lies in being deprived of all good, and in being swallowed up by all the most fearful miseries that a holy and just and eternal God can righteously inflict on, or lay upon, the soul of a sinful man.

Now let Reason come in here and exercise itself in the most painstaking way. Yes, let it now count up all the curses and torments, of every kind, that a rational and immortal soul is capable of, or can be made capable of, and able to suffer under. And when it has done, it will come infinitely short of this great anathema, this master curse which God has stored up among his treasures and intends to bring out in that day of battle and war which he means to wage against damned souls on that day. And God will do this partly as a retaliation, as with the former, and partly by way of revenge.

1. By way of retaliation: “As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.” And again, “As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones; let it be unto him as a garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually” (Ps 109:17-19). “Let this,” says Christ, “be the reward of mine adversaries from the Lord” (Ps 109:20).

2. As this curse comes by way of retaliation, so it comes by way of revenge. God will right the wrongs that sinners have done him. He will repay vengeance for the spite and reproach with which they have insulted him, and he will avenge the quarrel of his covenant. And the beginning of revenges is terrible (Deut 32:41-42). What, then, will the whole execution be, when he shall come in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ (2 Thess 1:7-9)? And therefore this curse is carried out in wrath, in jealousy, in anger, in fury. Yes, the heavens and the earth shall be burned up with the fire of that jealousy in which the great God will come, when he comes to curse the souls of sinners and to defy the ungodly.

Little as it is thought of, the manner in which God comes to judge the world declares what the souls of impenitent sinners must look for then. It is common among us that when we see the form of a man’s face changed, when we see fire sparkling out of his eyes, when we read rage and fury in every turn of his face, we conclude, even before he says or does anything, that some fearful thing is about to be done (Dan 3:19, 23). Why, it is said of Christ, when he comes to judgment, that the heavens and the earth flee away, as not being able to endure his looks (Rev 20:11-12); that his angels are clothed in flaming fire; and that the elements melt with fervent heat. And all this is so that the perdition of ungodly men might be completed, from the presence of the Lord, in the heat of his anger, from the glory of his power (2 Pet 3:7; 2 Thess 1:8-9). Therefore God will now be avenged, and so ease himself of his enemies, when he makes curses like millstones fall as thick as hail on “the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his trespasses” (Ps 68:21).

But fourth, as the loss of the soul is a loss peculiar to itself, a double loss, and a most fearful loss, so it is an everlasting loss. The soul that is lost is never to be found again, never to be recovered again, never to be redeemed again. Its banishment from God is everlasting. The fire in which it burns, and by which it must be tormented, is a fire that lasts forever: everlasting fire, everlasting burnings. The adder, the snake, the stinging worm does not die, nor is the fire quenched, and this is a fearful thing. A man may bear to touch the fire with a quick touch and pull away; but to dwell with everlasting burnings, that is fearful. Oh, then, what will it be to dwell with them, and in them, forever and ever!

We have a saying that light burdens carried far grow heavy. What, then, will it be to bear that burden, that guilt, which the law and the justice and the wrath of God will lay on the lost soul forever? Now count the stars, now count the drops of the sea, and now count the blades of grass spread over the face of all the earth, if you can; and yet you could sooner do this than count the thousands of millions of thousands of years that a damned soul shall lie in hell. Suppose every star now in the sky were to burn by itself, one by one, a thousand years apiece: would it not be a long while before the last of them burned out? And yet that could sooner be done than the damned soul could come to the end of its punishment.

There are three things wrapped up in this last head that will fill up the punishment of a sinner. The first is that it is everlasting. The second is that it will therefore be impossible for the souls in hell ever to say, “Now we have got halfway through our sorrows.” The third is that, even so, every moment they shall endure eternal punishment.

1. I have touched on the first already, and therefore I will not enlarge on it. Only I would ask the careless or unthinking sinner whether twenty, or thirty, or forty years of the deceitful pleasures of sin is so rich a prize that a man may well risk the ruin that everlasting burnings will make of his soul in order to obtain them and live a few moments in them. Sinner, consider this before I go any further, or before you read one more line. If you have a soul, it concerns you. If there is a hell, it concerns you. And if there is a God who can and will punish the soul for sin everlastingly in hell, it concerns you, because

2. in the second place, it will be impossible for the damned soul ever to say, “I have now got halfway through my sorrows.” What has no end has no middle. Sinner, make a round circle, or ring, on the ground, as big as you like. When that is done, set off along that circle, or ring, and keep going until you come to the end of it. “But that,” you say, “I can never do, because it has no end.” I answer: you may as soon do that as wade halfway through the lake of fire that is prepared for impenitent souls. Sinner, what would you take to make a mountain of sand that would reach as high as the sun at noon? I know you will not take on such a work, because it is impossible that you should ever finish it. But I dare say the task is greater when the sinner has hired himself out to sin as a servant, because the wages are everlasting burnings. I know you may finish your term of service; but the wages, the judgment, the punishment is so endless that when you have been in it more millions of years than can be numbered, you are not able, nor ever yet shall be able, to say, “I am halfway through it.” And yet

3. that soul shall share, every moment, in that punishment which is eternal. “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 7).

(1) They shall endure eternal punishment in the nature of the punishment itself. There is no punishment here with which one man can chastise another that deserves any greater title than that of passing, or temporary, punishment. But the punishment there is eternal, even in every stripe that is given and in every moment that it grapples with the soul. Yes, every twinge, every gripe and every stroke that justice inflicts leaves behind it an anguish that is, in the nature of punishment, eternal. It is eternal because it comes from God and lasts forever and ever. The justice that inflicts it has no beginning, and it is this justice, in its workings, that is always dealing with the soul.

(2) All the workings of the soul under this punishment are such that they make it, in its sufferings, endure what is eternal. It can have no thought of the punishment ending without being immediately called back by the decreed gulf that binds them under perpetual punishment. They know that the great fixed gulf will keep them in their present place and not allow them to go to heaven (Luke 16:26). And now there is no other place to be in but heaven or hell, for then the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Read the text: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up” (2 Pet 3:10). If, then, there will be no third place, it stands fixed in their minds, as well as in God’s decree, that their punishments will be eternal. So, then, sorrow, anguish, tribulation, grief, woe and pain will, in every moment that they rest on the soul, flow not only from thoughts of what has been and what is, but also from what will be, and that forever and ever. In this way every thought that is truly grounded in the cause and nature of their state will roll them, toss them and tumble them up and down in their brooding and fearful dread of how long their damnation will last. For, I say, their minds, their memories, their understandings and their consciences will all, and always, be swallowed up with “forever.” Yes, by means of these things they will be their own tormentors forever.

(3) There will not be spans of time, such as days, months, years and the like, as there are now, though we make bold to speak that way, the better to put our thoughts within reach of one another’s understanding. For then there shall be time no longer; also, day and night shall then have come to an end. “He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end” (Job 26:10). Or, “until the end of light with darkness.” Now when time, and day, and night have come to an end, then eternity comes in, as it was before day and night, or time, was created. And when this has come, neither punishment nor glory must be measured by days, or months, or years, but by eternity itself. Nor shall those concerned, whether in misery or in glory, reckon their now new state as they used to reckon things in this world. Rather, they shall be fitted in their capacities, in their understandings and apprehensions, to judge and count their condition according to what best suits their state in eternity.

If only we could come to understand things done in heaven and hell as we understand how things are done in this world, we would be strangely amazed to see how the change of places and of conditions has made a change in men’s understandings, and in the way they experience things. But this we must leave alone till the next world, until we launch into it. And then, whether we are among those on the right hand or on the left (Matt 25:33), we shall know well the state and condition of both kingdoms. In the meantime, let us give ourselves to believing the Scriptures of truth, for in them is revealed the way to eternal life, and how to escape the damnation of the soul. But so much for the loss of the soul. To this, by way of conclusion, let me add the following verses:

These cry, alas! but all in vain;
They stick fast in the mire;
They would be rid of present pain,
Yet set themselves on fire.

Darkness is their perplexity,
Yet do they hate the light;
They always see their misery,
Yet are themselves all night.

They are all dead, yet live they do,
Yet neither live nor die;
They die to weal, and live to woe:
This is their misery.

Now will confusion so possess
These monuments of ire,
And so confound them with distress,
And trouble their desire,

That what to think, or what to do,
Or where to lay their head,
They know not: it’s the damned’s woe
To live, and yet be dead.

These castaways long to have life,
But know they never shall;
They would forget their dreadful plight,
But that sticks fastest of all.

God, Christ, and heaven, they know, are best,
Yet dare not on them think;
They know the saints enjoy their rest,
While they their tears do drink.

And now I have come to the fourth thing, that is, to show you the cause of the loss of the soul. That men have souls, that souls are great things, that souls may be lost: all this I have already shown you. So I now go on to show you the cause of this loss. The cause is set down in the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, in these words: “Behold, all souls,” says God, “are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek 18:4).

First. It is sin, then, or sinning against God, that is the cause of dying, that is, of damning in hell fire. That must be what dying means here. Otherwise, the soul is not capable of dying in our ordinary sense of the word, since it is indeed immortal, as I have already asserted. So, then, the soul that sins (that is, and goes on in it), that soul shall die, be cast away, or be damned. Yes, and to assure us of the undoubted truth of this, the Holy Spirit repeats it, and that in this very chapter, saying, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek 18:20). Now, the soul may be said to sin against God in various ways, as follows.

1. By receiving sin into its bosom, and by retaining and entertaining it there. Sin must first be received before it can act in the soul, or be acted by the soul. Our first parents first received it in the suggestion or motion, and then acted it out. Now, the question here is not so much when sin was received by the soul as whether the soul ever received sin at all. For if the soul has indeed received sin into itself, then it has sinned, and by doing so it has made itself an object of the wrath of God and a firebrand of hell.

I say, I will not here dispute when sin was received by the soul. But it is plain enough that the soul received it early, because in old times every child that was brought to the Lord had to be redeemed, and that at a month old (Exod 13:13; Exod 34:20; Num 18:15-16). That, to be sure, was very early, and it implied that then, even then, the soul stood before God, in his judgment, as defiled and polluted with sin. But although I said I will not dispute at what time the soul may be said to receive sin, yet it is evident that it received it before the redemption I have just mentioned, and so before the person redeemed had reached the age of a month.

And so that God might, in the language of Moses, let us see the reason why this redemption was necessary, he first makes a distinction and says that “the firstling of a cow, or the firstling of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat” (Num 18:17) did not need this redemption, for they were clean, or holy. But as for the firstborn of men, who was taken in place of the rest of the children, and “the firstling of unclean beasts, thou shalt surely redeem,” he says. But why was the firstborn of men coupled with unclean beasts, if not because they were both unclean? But how were they unclean? I answer: the beast was unclean by God’s appointment, but the firstborn of men was unclean by sin.

Now, then, someone will ask how a soul, before it was a month old, could receive sin so as to make itself unclean. I answer: there are two ways of receiving, one active, the other passive. This last is the way by which the soul at first receives sin, and by receiving it in this way it becomes guilty, because it is polluted and defiled by it. And this passive way of receiving is often mentioned in Scripture. In this way the pans received the ashes (Exod 27:3); in this way the molten sea received three thousand baths (2 Chr 4:5); in this way the ground receives the seed (Matt 13:20-23). And this receiving is like that of the wool that receives the dye, whether black, white, or red; or like the fire that receives the water until it is entirely quenched by it; or like the water that receives such stinking and poisonous matter into it that, because of it, the water is poured out and spilled on the ground.

But where should the soul receive sin from in this way? I answer, from the body, while it is in the mother’s womb. The body comes from polluted man, and therefore it is polluted (Ps 51:5). “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” (Job 14:4). The soul comes from God’s hand, and so, as it comes from there, it is pure and clean. But once it is put into this body, it is tainted, polluted, and defiled with the taint, stench, and filth of sin. Nor can any man purge out this stench and filth once it has got from the body into the soul. The Ethiopian may sooner change his skin, or the leopard his spots, than the soul, even if it were willing, could purge itself of this pollution. “Though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord God” (Jer 2:22).

2. But, as I said, the soul has not only received sin, but retains it, holds it, and shows no kind of resistance. It is enough that the soul is polluted and defiled, for that is enough to provoke God to cast it away. For which of you would take a cloth fouled with stinking, ulcerous sores to wipe your mouth with, or to tuck into your bosom? And the soul is polluted with far worse pollution than any such cloth can be. But this is not all. It retains sin as the wool retains the dye, or as the infected water receives the stench or poisonous smell. I say, it retains it willingly. For all the power of the soul is not only taken captive by sin’s seizing on the soul; it also willingly, heartily, unanimously, and universally falls in with the natural filth and pollution that is in sin, so estranging itself from God and gaining an intimacy and agreement with the devil.

Now, since this is the state and condition of the soul from the womb, yes, from before it sees the light of this world, what can we conclude but that God is offended with it? For how can it be otherwise, since there is holiness and justice in God? Hence those who are born of a woman, whose origin is by carnal conception with man, are said to be like serpents as soon as they are born. “The wicked” (and all are so at first) “go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder, that stoppeth her ear” (Ps 58:3-4). They go astray from the womb; but they would not do that if any of the powers of their soul were unpolluted.

“Their poison is like the poison of a serpent.” Their poison: what is that? Their pollution, their original pollution, which is like the poison of a serpent; that is, not only deadly (for so poison is), but also hereditary. It comes from the old one, from the sire and the dam. Yes, it has also now become part of their very nature, and is as old as the child born into the world. The serpent does not get her poison, in its origin, either from imitation or from other infectious things around her, though such things may help it forward and increase it. No, she brings it with her in her bowels, in her nature, and it suits her present condition as well as what is sweetest and most wholesome suits other creatures.

So, then, every soul comes into the world poisoned with sin; more than that, as souls that have poison bred into their very nature. For the soul has not only received sin as the wool has received the dye, but it retains it. The infection has gone so deep, and it has taken the black so thoroughly, that the fire, the very fire of hell, can never purge the soul of it.

And that the soul has received this infection so early, and retains it so surely, is shown not only by children coming into the world smeared in their mother’s blood (Ezek 16), and by the firstborn being redeemed at a month old, but also by the first inclinations and actions of children once they have come into the world. Who does not see that lying, pride, disobedience to parents, and hypocrisy show themselves in children before they know whether they do well or ill in doing so, or before they are capable of learning any of these arts by imitation, or by seeing and understanding the same things done first by others? Whoever does not see that they do these things naturally, from a principle, from an inborn principle, is either blinded, and has kept his darkness through the same sin as they, or has allowed himself to be swayed by a delusion from him who at first planted this spawn of sin in man’s nature.

And children’s aversion to morality demonstrates what has been said in no small way. For as it would make a serpent sick if someone gave it a strong antidote against its poison, so children are disturbed in their minds then, and never more than then, when a strict hand and a stiff rein of moral discipline are kept over them. True, restraining grace sometimes corrects them, but that does not come from themselves. More often, hypocrisy is the great and first moving wheel behind all their seeming compliance with admonitions, which indulgent parents are apt to overlook, yes, and sometimes, through lack of thought, to count as the principles of grace. I am speaking now of what comes before conversion. But, as I said before, I would not dispute now. I have only thought it good to press these things in this way to make my assertion plain, and to show what is the cause of the damnation of the soul.

3. Again, as the soul receives sin and retains it, so it also entertains it; that is, it favors it, smiles on it, and likes its look and nature well. A man may detain (that is, hold fast) a thing that he still does not care for; but when he entertains it, then he favors it, likes it, and delights in its company. Sin, then, is first received by the soul, as I explained before, and by that reception the soul is polluted and defiled. This makes it hateful in the eyes of justice; it is now polluted. Then, second, this sin is not only received but retained; that is, it sticks so fast and stays so fixed in the soul that it cannot be got out. This is the cause of the continuing abhorrence. For if God abhors the soul because sin has a being there, it must follow that he continues to abhor it, since sin continues to have a being there.

But then, in the third place, sin is not only received and detained, but entertained by the now defiled and polluted soul. So this must be a cause of the continuing anger, and that with aggravation. When I say entertained, I do not mean as men entertain their enemies, with small and great shot, but as they entertain those they like, and those who have got into their affections. And therefore the wrath of God must certainly be let loose upon the soul, to its everlasting damnation.

Now, that the soul entertains sin in this way is plain from these several particulars.

(1) It has admitted sin with satisfaction and delight into every chamber of the soul. I mean, sin has been delightfully admitted and entertained by all the powers or faculties of the soul. The soul has chosen sin rather than God. At God’s command, it also refuses to let it go. Yes, since it must have a doctrine, it chooses and loves best the doctrine that has the most sin and baseness in it (Isa 65:12; Isa 66:3). They “say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits” (Isa 30:10). These are signs that the soul has entertained sin with liking. And if at any time there is (as indeed there is) a warrant issued from the mouth of God to arrest, to condemn, and to put sin to death, why then:

(2) These are the shifts that the souls of sinners at once make to save sin from the things that the Word commands men to do to it.

(a) They will hide it if they can, and not allow it to be discovered. “He that hideth his sins shall not prosper” (Prov 28:13). And again, they hide it and refuse to let it go (Job 20:12-13). This is a clear sign that the soul has a fondness for sin, and entertains it with liking.

(b) As the soul will hide sin, so it will excuse it, and plead that this or that piece of wickedness is no such evil thing. Men need not be so particular, it says, and make such a fuss about it; and it calls those who cry out so hotly against it men more particular than wise. Hence the prophets of old used to be called madmen, and the world would talk back against their doctrine, asking how they themselves had been so wearisome to God, and what they themselves had spoken so much against him (Mal 1:6-7; Mal 3:8, 13).

(c) As the soul will do this, so, to save sin, it will cover it with names of virtue, either moral or civil. God greatly complains of this, yes, breaks out in anger over it, saying, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; and put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa 5:20).

(d) If the convictions and discovery of sin are so strong and so plain that the soul cannot deny that it is sin, and that God is offended by it, then it will give God flattering promises that it will indeed put it away. Yet it will set a time that is a long way off, if it even keeps its promise then at all, saying, “A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of sin in my arms, until I am older, until I am richer, until I have had more of the sweetness and the delights of sin.” Thus “their soul delighteth in their abominations” (Isa 66:3).

(e) If God still pursues, and will see whether the soul keeps this promise to put sin out of doors, why then, it will be partial in God’s law. It will put away some sins and keep some; put away the grossest and keep the finest; put away those that can best be spared, and keep the most profitable as a help in a pinch (Mal 2:9).

(f) Yes, if all sin must be abandoned or the soul will have no rest, why then, the soul and sin will part (such a parting as it is), just as Paltiel parted with David’s wife, with an ill will and a sorrowful mind (2 Sam 3:16); or as Orpah left her mother-in-law, with a kiss (Ruth 1:14).

(g) And if at any time they can, or do, meet each other again, with nobody any the wiser, oh, what courting there will be between sin and the soul! And this is called doing things in the dark (Ezek 8:12).

By all these things, and many more that might be named, it is plain that sin has a friendly entertainment from the soul, and that therefore the soul is guilty of damnation. For what do all these things prove, but that God, his Word, his ways, and his graces are out of favor with the soul, and that sin and Satan are its only pleasant companions?

Second. But, to show you still further what a great thing sin is with the soul that is to be damned, I will show how sin, with the help of the soul, is managed from the motion of sin all the way to the very act. For sin cannot come to an act without the help of the soul. The body does little here, as I will show you further shortly.

There is, then, a motion (that is, a stirring) of sin presented to the soul; and whether it is presented by sin itself or by the devil, we will not dispute at this time. There are motions of sin and motions to sin, and the aim of the motions of sin is always to prevail with the soul to help that motion into an act. But, I say, there is a motion to sin moved to the soul; or, as James calls it, a conception (Jas 1:15). Now see how the soul deals with this motion in order to finish the sin, so that death may follow (Rom 7:5).

1. The soul takes notice of this motion, but does not resist it or strive against it. The soul only lifts up its eyes on it, and sees that a motion to sin is present, a motion of sin presented to the soul, so that the soul might midwife it from conception into the world.

2. Well, once notice is taken that a motion to sin is present, what follows but that the fancy or imagination of the soul takes it home, and not only looks at it and studies it more closely, but begins to dress and trim up the sin to please itself and all the powers of the soul? That this is true is evident, because God finds fault with the imagination as the thing that lends sin the first hand, and that gives it the first lift toward being helped forward into action. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth” (Gen 6:5, 12-13). That is, many abominable actions were done, for all flesh had corrupted God’s way on the earth. But how did this come about? Why, every imagination of the thoughts, or of the motions to sin that were in the heart, was evil, only evil, and that continually. The imagination of the thoughts was evil; that is, it was such as tended not to deaden or stifle the motions or thoughts of sin, but to animate them and push them forward into action. “Every imagination of the thoughts”: what is here called a thought, Paul in Romans calls a motion.

Now the imagination should have, and would have, had it been on God’s side, so conceived of this motion of and to sins as to present it to the soul in all its features as so ugly, so unsightly, and so unreasonable a thing that the soul would immediately have let down the sluice gate and pulled up the drawbridge, putting a stop, with the greatest defiance, to the motion now under consideration. But because the imagination was defiled, at the very first sight or sound of the motion of sin it acted at once to help bring that motion or thought into act. So, then, the thought of sin, or the motion toward it, is first of all entertained by the imagination and fancy of the soul, and from there conveyed to the rest of the powers of the soul: to be condemned, if the imagination is good; but to be helped forward to the act, if the imagination is evil.

And so the evil imagination helps the motion of and to sin toward the act, by dressing it up in the guise and costume that may best deceive the understanding, judgment, and conscience. And this is done in the following way. Suppose a motion of sin, to commit fornication, to swear, to steal, to act covetously, or the like, is put before the fancy and imagination. The imagination, if it is evil, immediately dresses up this motion in the outfit that best suits the nature of the sin. If it is the lust of uncleanness, then the motion to sin is dressed up in all the imaginable pleasure of that sin. If it is covetousness, then the sin is dressed up in the profits and honors that come with that sin; and so with theft and the like. But if the motion is to swear, bluster, or the like, then that motion is dressed up with valor and manliness. And you may reckon the rest of sinful motions the same way. And so, trimmed up like a Bartholomew Fair doll, it is presented to all the rest of the powers of the soul, where with joint consent it is admired and embraced, firing and inflaming all the powers of the soul.

And hence it is that men are said to inflame themselves with their idols under every green tree (Isa 57:5), and to be as fed horses, neighing after their neighbor’s wife (Jer 5:8). For the imagination is so forceful a power that if it exerts itself to dress up and present a thing to the soul, whether that thing is evil or good, the rest of the faculties cannot withstand it. Therefore, when David prayed for the children of Israel, he said, “I have seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee”; that is, for the preparations to build the temple. “O Lord God,” he says, “keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee” (1 Chr 29:17-18). He knew that as the imagination was prepared, so the soul would be moved, whether by evil or by good. Therefore, as to this, he prays that their imagination might always be engaged with thoughts of the beauty of the temple, so that they might always, as now, offer willingly for its building.

But, as I said, when the imagination has set sin out like this before the rest of the faculties of the soul, they are immediately entangled, and fall into a flame of love for it. Once this is done, it follows that the next thing resolved on is a purpose to pursue this motion until it is brought into act. So Esau, after he had conceived of the profit that would come to him by murdering his brother, fell straight into a resolve to spill Jacob’s blood. And Rebekah sent for Jacob and said to him, “Behold, thy brother Esau, as touching thee, doth comfort himself, purposing to kill thee” (Gen 27:42; see also Jer 49:30). Nor is this purpose to do evil without its fruit, for he comforted himself in his evil purpose: “Esau, as touching thee, doth comfort himself, purposing to kill thee.”

So, the purpose being settled, the invention, the soul’s power of contriving, is next set diligently to work to find out what means, methods and ways will be thought best to bring this purpose into practice, and this motion to sin into action. Esau devised his brother’s death for the time when his father would be carried to his grave (Gen 27:41). David purposed to make Uriah the father of his illegitimate child by making him drunk (2 Sam 11:13). Amnon purposed to rape Tamar, and the means he devised to do it was to pretend to be sick. Absalom purposed to kill Amnon, and devised to do it at a feast (2 Sam 13:32). Judas purposed to sell Christ, and devised to betray him in the absence of the people (Luke 22:3-6). The Jews purposed to kill Paul, and devised to entreat the judge with flattering words to send for him, so that they might murder him on the way (Acts 23:12-15).

So you see how sin, in its motion, is handed through the soul. First, it comes into the fancy or imagination, by which it is presented to the soul in such a way as to inflame it with desire to bring it into act. From this desire the soul proceeds to a purpose of enjoying it, and from a purpose of enjoying it to devising how, or by what means, it had best attempt to accomplish it.

But further, when the soul has by its wickedness pursued the motion of sin this far to bring it into action, then it comes to the last thing, namely, to endeavors, to take the opportunity that the invention judges most convenient. So to endeavors it goes, until it has finished the sin, and in finishing that, has finished its own fearful damnation. “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (Jas 1:15).

And who but God and the soul knows how many checks, hindrances, convictions, fears, frights, misgivings and thoughts of the judgment of God are passing and repassing, turning and returning, over the face of the soul all this while? Who knows how many times the soul is made to start, look back and tremble, while it is pursuing the pleasure, profit, applause or promotion that sin, when finished, promises to yield to the soul? For God is such a lover of the soul that he seldom lets it go on in sin without crying to it, by his Word and providences, “Oh! do not this abominable thing that I hate!” (Jer 44:4). He does this especially at first, until it has hardened itself, and so provoked him to give it up, in sin-revenging judgment, to its own ways and doings, which is the most terrible judgment under heaven. And this brings me to the third thing, which I will now speak to.

3. As the soul receives, holds, entertains and craftily works to bring sin from the motion into act, so it hates to be controlled and taken off this work. “My soul loathed them,” says God, “and their soul also abhorred me” (Zech 11:8). My soul loathed them because they were so bad; and their souls abhorred me because I am so good. Sin, then, is the cause of the loss of the soul, because it has set the soul against God; or rather, because the soul, out of love for sin, has set itself against God. “Woe unto their soul, for they have rewarded evil unto themselves” (Isa 3:9).

Third. So that you may better see that the soul, through sin, has set itself against God, I will put forward two things and speak briefly to them: first, the law; and second, the gospel.

1. As for the law. God has given it as a rule of life, whether as written in their natures or as set down in the holy Scriptures; I say, as a rule of life to all the children of men. But what have men done, or how have they behaved toward this law of their Creator? Let us see, and that from the mouth of God himself. First, “They have not hearkened unto my words” (Jer 6:19). Second, “They have forsaken my law” (Jer 9:13). Third, they “have forsaken me, and have not kept my law” (Jer 16:11). Fourth, they have not “walked in my law, nor in my statutes” (Jer 44:10). Fifth, “Her priests have violated my law” (Ezek 22:26). Sixth, God says, “I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing” (Hos 8:12).

Now, where could all this disobedience come from? Not from any unreasonableness in the commandment, but from the opposition that is lodged in the soul against God, and the enmity that it harbors against goodness. That is why the apostle speaks of this enmity, and says that men are enemies in their minds, that is, their souls, as is plain by their wicked works (Col 1:21). If men went no further than this, it must still be highly provoking to a just and holy God. Indeed, it is so highly offensive to him that, to show the heat of his anger, he says, “Indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil,” and that with a vengeance, “of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile,” who does evil (Rom 2:8-9); that is, who breaks the law, for that is the evil he is crying out against here.

2. But now, to speak of the gospel, and of how sinful souls behave toward God under that dispensation.

The gospel is the revelation of a sovereign remedy, provided by God through Christ, for the health and salvation of those who have made themselves objects of wrath by breaking the law of works; this is plain throughout all the Scripture. But how does the soul behave toward God when he offers to deal with it under and by this dispensation of grace? Why, just as it behaved under the law of works. They oppose, they contradict, they blaspheme, and they forbid that this gospel be mentioned (Acts 13:45; Acts 17:6). What higher affront or contempt can be offered to God, and what greater disdain can be shown against the gospel (2 Tim 2:25; 1 Thess 2:14-16)? Yet the poor soul, to its own wrong, offers all this against the way of its own salvation; as it is said in the Word of truth, “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death” (Prov 8:36).

But further, the soul despises not only the gospel in its revelation, but also its great and chief Bringer, and the manner in which he brings it as well. The Bringer, the great Bringer of the gospel, is the good Lord Jesus Christ himself. He came and preached peace to those the law proclaimed war against; he “came and preached peace to them that were afar off, and to them that were nigh” (Eph 2:17). And it is worth your while to take notice of how he came. That was, and still is, as he is set forth in the word of the gospel: first, as making peace with God for us himself, in and by the blood of his cross; and then as bearing (as the gospel sets him out) the very marks of his sufferings before our faces in every offer of the gospel of his grace to us.

And now let me touch a little on the dress in which Christ, by the gospel, presents himself to us while he offers his peace to sinful souls by holding it out to them.

(1) He is set forth as born for us, to save our souls (Isa 9:6; Luke 2:9-12).

(2) He is set forth before us as bearing our sins for us, and suffering God’s wrath for us (1 Cor 15:3; Gal 3:13).

(3) He is set forth before us as fulfilling the law for us, and as bringing everlasting righteousness to us for our covering (Rom 10:4; Dan 9:24).

Again, as to the manner in which he worked out the salvation of sinners for them, so that they might have peace and joy, and heaven and glory, forever:

[1] He is set forth as sweating blood while he was in his agony, wrestling with the thoughts of the death he was to suffer for our sins, so that he might save the soul (Luke 22:44).

[2] He is set forth as crying, weeping and mourning under the lashes of justice, which he put himself under and was willing to bear for our sins (Heb 5:7).

[3] He is set forth as betrayed, arrested, condemned, spit on, scourged, buffeted, mocked, crowned with thorns, crucified, and pierced with nails and a spear: to save the soul from being betrayed by the devil and sin; to save it from being arrested by justice and condemned by the law; to save it from being spit on in contempt by holiness; to save it from being scourged with the guilt of sins, as with scorpions; to save it from being continually buffeted by its own conscience; to save it from being mocked by God; to save it from being crowned with disgrace and shame forever; to save it from dying the second death; to save it from wounds and grief forever.

Do you understand me, sinful soul? He wrestled with justice so that you might have rest; he wept and mourned so that you might laugh and rejoice; he was betrayed so that you might go free; he was arrested so that you might escape; he was condemned so that you might be justified; and he was killed so that you might live. He wore a crown of thorns so that you might wear a crown of glory; and he was nailed to the cross with his arms wide open, to show how freely all his merits shall be bestowed on the soul that comes to him, and how heartily he will receive it into his bosom!

Further, all this he did out of pure good will, and he offers you its benefit freely. Yes, he comes to you in the word of the gospel with the blood running down from his head over his face, with his tears still lying on his cheeks, with the holes as fresh in his hands and his feet, and, as it were, with the blood still bubbling out of his side, to beg you to accept the benefit and to be reconciled to God by it (2 Cor 5). But what does the sinful soul say to this? I do not ask what he says with his lips, for he will certainly flatter God with his mouth. But what do his actions and conduct declare about his acceptance of this incomparable benefit? For “a wicked man speaketh with his feet, and teacheth with his fingers” (Prov 6:12-13). With his feet, that is, by the way he goes; and with his fingers, that is, by his acts and doings. So then, what does he say by his goings, by his acts and doings, to this incomparable benefit, brought to him in this way from the Father by his only Son, Jesus Christ? What does he say? Why, he says that he does not regard this Christ at all, nor value the grace offered to him in this way in the gospel.

(1) He says that he does not regard this Christ, that he sees nothing in him that should make him admit Christ into his affections. Therefore the prophet, speaking in the person of sinners, says, “He (Christ) hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him”; and then, to show what he means by speaking this way, he adds, “he is despised and rejected of men” (Isa 53:2-3). All this is spoken with reference to his person. It was eminently fulfilled on him in the days of his flesh, when he was hated, maligned and persecuted to death by sinners; and it is still fulfilled in the souls of sinners, in that they cannot bear to think of him with any thoughts that tend to part them from their lusts, to make them embrace him as their darling, and to make them take up their cross and follow him. Sinners speak all this out with loud voices, in that they stop their ears and shut their eyes as to him, but open them wide and listen diligently to anything that pleases the flesh and is a nursery for sin.

(2) But as they despise and reject his person and do not regard it, so they do not value the grace that he offers them by the gospel. This is plain from the indifference of spirit that always comes over them whenever they hear of it, or when it is presented to them.

I may safely say that most men who are engaged in a trade will be more attentive in dealing with a customer who has twelve pence to spend than they will be with Christ when he comes by the gospel to offer them the incomparable grace of God. That is why they are called fools: a price is put into their hands to get wisdom, and they have no heart for it (Prov 17:16). And that, again, is why that bitter complaint is made: “But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me” (Ps 81:11). Now, when these things are found practiced by the souls of sinners, they must be astonishingly provoking. So it is no wonder that the heavens are told to be astonished at this, and that damnation shall seize upon the soul for this (Jer 2).

And indeed, the soul that behaves this way in practice, though he shows much love with his mouth (as who does not?), does in effect say these things:

[1] That he loves sin better than grace, and darkness better than light, just as our Lord Jesus Christ has shown: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness more than light (as is manifest), because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

[2] By rejecting Christ and grace in this way, they also say that they do not care what the law can do to them. They do not regard its thundering threats, and they will not shrink when they come to endure the carrying out of them. Therefore God, to deter them from such bold and desperate ways, which in effect fully declare that they have come to such desperate conclusions, gives them to understand that the burden of the law’s curse is unbearable, saying, “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I, the Lord, have spoken it, and will do it” (Ezek 22:14).

[3] Yes, by doing this they as good as say that they will risk a sentence of death at the day of judgment, and that in the meantime they will take up the case against the great and terrible God and stand trial with him on that day. What else does their not listening to him mean, their despising of his Son, and their rejecting of his grace? Yes, I say again, what else does their slighting of the curse of the law mean, and their choosing to remain in their sins until the day of death and judgment? And so I have shown you the causes of the loss of the soul; and, assuredly, these things are no fables.

Objection. But some may object and say, “But you denounce everything against the soul, the soul, as if the body were not at fault at all, or as if there were no punishment assigned for the body.”

Answer 1. The soul must be the part punished, because the soul is what sins. “Every sin that a man doeth is without the body,” fornication or adultery excepted (1 Cor 6:18). “Is without the body”; that is, as to the crafty inventing, contriving and finding out of ways to bring the motions of sin into action. For alas! what can the body do as to these? It is in a manner wholly passive; indeed, it is altogether passive as to lusting after and purposing to do the wickedness, except for the sin already excepted. Yes, and not excepting even that, as to the rise of that sin; for even that, with all the rest, arises and proceeds out of the heart, the soul: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man” (Mark 7:21-23). That is, the outward man. But a difference must always be made between defiling and being defiled, and the one that defiles is the worse. This is not to say that the body will escape its share of judgment, for body and soul must be destroyed in hell (Luke 12:4-5; Matt 10:28). The body is the instrument, the soul the actor. But oh, the soul, the soul, the soul is the sinner! And therefore the soul, as the principal, must be punished.

And that God’s indignation burns most against the soul appears in this: death has already seized every soul. For the Scripture says that every natural or unconverted man is dead (Eph 2:1-3). Dead! How? Is his body dead? No, truly; his body lives, but his soul is dead (1 Tim 5:6). Dead! But with what death? Dead to God, and to all things that are good according to the gospel, because of that numbing, stupefying senselessness which, by God’s just judgment for sin and by sin, has swallowed up the soul.

Yes, if you observe, you will see that the soul goes first, or before, in punishment. This shows not only in what has already been said, that the soul is first made a partaker of death, but also in that God first deals with the soul by convictions, yes, and perhaps by terrors, while the body is well. Or again, he gives the soul up to judicial hardness and further blindness while he leaves the body to do its work in the world. Yes, and also when the day of death and dissolution comes, the body is spared while the soul is tormented with unutterable torment in hell. And so, I say, the body will be spared, and the clods of the valley will be sweet to it, while the soul mourns in hell for sin.

It is true that at the day of judgment, because that is God’s last and final judgment on men, the body and soul will be reunited, or joined together again, and will then together partake of the recompense for their wickedness that is fitting. When I say that the body is spared and the soul tormented, I do not mean that the body is not then, at death, made to partake of the wages of sin, “for the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). But I mean that the body then partakes only of temporal death, which, as to sense and feeling, is sometimes over at once; and then it rests in the grave while the soul is being tormented in hell.

Yes, and why is death allowed to slay the body? I dare say it is not chiefly because the indignation of God burns most against the body. Rather, since the body is the house of the soul in this world, God pulls down this body so that the soul may be stripped naked, and, being stripped, may be carried to prison, to the place where damned souls are. There it begins to suffer that punishment which will be endless.

Answer 2. The soul must be the part most severely punished for this reason also: justice must be distributed with equity. God is a God of knowledge and judgment; by him actions are weighed, weighed in order to judgment (1 Sam 2:3). Now, since by weighing actions he finds that the soul has the deepest hand in sin, and he says that it has, in equity the soul must bear the burden of punishment. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right” (Gen 18:25) in his famous distribution of judgment? “He will not lay upon man more than right, that he should enter into judgment with God” (Job 34:23). The soul, since it is deepest in sin, will also be deepest in punishment.

“Shall one man sin,” said Moses, “and wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation?” (Num 16:22). Here he pleads for equity in God’s distribution of judgment. Yes, and God is so exact in distributing it that he will not punish heathens as he will punish Jews. That is why he says, “Of the Jew first” (or chiefly), “and also of the Gentile” (Rom 2:9). Yes, in hell he has prepared different degrees of punishment for the different sorts or degrees of offenders, and some “shall receive greater damnation” (Luke 20:47). And since God is so exact in all he does, would it not be unfitting for us to think that he will give soul and body their punishments without his weights and measures, carelessly, as I may say, and not separately, according to the desert and merit of each?

Answer 3. The punishment of the soul in hell must certainly differ in degree from the punishment of the body there. When I say differ, I mean it must be greater, whether the body is punished with the same fire as the soul or with fire of another nature. If it is punished with the same fire, still it is not punished in the same way. For the fire of guilt, with the apprehension of indignation and wrath, is most properly felt and apprehended by the soul, and by the body through its union with the soul. And so it is felt by the body, if not only, yet, I think, mostly, by way of sympathy with the soul. And the cause, we say, is worse than the disease. If the wrath of God, and the apprehension of it as it discharges itself against sin and the breach of the law, is what the soul is punished with, as surely it is, then the body is punished by the effects, that is, by the influences that the soul in its torments has upon the body, by virtue of the great oneness and union between them.

But if there is a punishment prepared for the body that is distinct in kind from what is prepared for the soul, still it must be a punishment inferior to what is prepared for the soul. I do not mean that soul and body will be separated; but since they are made of distinct things, each will be punished by what is most suitable to it. I say it must be inferior, because nothing can be so hot, so tormenting, so intolerably unbearable, as the keenest apprehension of, and the immediate sinking under, that guilt and indignation which is proportioned to the offense.

Should all the wood and brimstone and combustible matter on earth be gathered together to torment one body, it still could not produce a torment equal to what the sense of guilt and the burning-hot application of the mighty indignation of God will do to the soul. Yes, suppose the fire with which the body is tormented in hell were seven times hotter than any fire of ours. Yes, suppose it again to be seven times hotter than that which is seven times hotter than ours. Even so, supposing it is only created fire, it must fall infinitely short in its tormenting power of the unspeakable wrath of God, when in its heat he applies that wrath to the soul and punishes the soul with it in hell for sin. So then, whether the body is tormented with the same fire as the soul or the fire is of another kind, it is not possible that the body should bear the same punishment in degree, because of the reasons, or for the causes, that I have shown. Nor indeed is it fitting that it should, because the body has not sinned so, so grievously, as the soul has; and God proportions the punishment to suit the offense.

Answer 4. The quickest and most fitting apprehensions of God and his wrath belong to the soul by itself; therefore the soul must be made to partake of the severest punishment in hell. It is the soul that is now most subtle at discerning, and it is the soul that will be so. Then conscience, memory, understanding and mind will be the seat of torment. The understanding will let wrath in immediately upon these, from what it apprehends of that wrath. Conscience will let the wrath of God in immediately upon these, from what it fearfully feels of that wrath. Then the memory, like a vessel, will receive this wrath and hold it up to the brim, even as it receives through the understanding and conscience the cause of this wrath, and considers how lasting it is. So then the soul is the seat and receiver of wrath, just as it was the receiver and seat of sin. Here, then, is sin and wrath upon the soul, the soul in the body, and so soul and body tormented in hell fire.

Answer 5. The soul will be most tormented because it is strongest. The biggest burden must lie on the strongest part, especially since its sin has also made it liable to that burden. The soul must bear its own punishment and a great part of the body’s too, since, as far as apprehension goes, the soul will be quicker at that work than the body. The body’s punishment will lie mostly in feeling, but the soul’s in both feeling and apprehending. True, the body, with the help of the soul, will see too, but the soul will see much further still. And there is good reason that the soul should bear part of the body’s punishment, because it was through the soul’s enticements that the body gave in and helped the soul to sin. The devil presented sin, the soul took it by means of the body, and now the devil and soul and body and all must be lost, cast away, that is, damned in hell for sin. But the soul must be the burden bearer.

Objection. But you may say, “Does this not encourage sinners to let the body be loose and vain and wicked in all its members, as instruments of sin?”

Answer. No, because the body will also have its share of punishment. For though I have said that the soul will have more punishment than the body, I have not said that the body will be eased at all by that. No, the body will have its due. And to make my answer still clearer, consider the following particulars.

(1) The body will be the vessel that holds a tormented soul, and this will be something. That is why man, damned man, is called a vessel of wrath, a vessel, and that in both body and soul (Rom 9:22). The soul receives wrath into itself, and the body holds that soul which has thus received this wrath of God and is tormented with it. Now the body, being a vessel to hold this soul that is so possessed with the wrath of God, must itself be afflicted and tormented with that torment, because of the soul’s union with the body. Therefore the Holy Spirit says, “His flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn” (Job 14:22).

Both will have their torment and misery, because both joined hand in hand in sin: the soul to bring it to the birth, and the body to midwife it into the world. Therefore it says again, with reference to the body, “Let the curse come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones”; “Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle…” (Ps 109:17-19). The body, then, will be tormented as well as the soul, by being a vessel to hold that soul which is now possessed and distressed with the unspeakable wrath and indignation of Almighty God. And this will be a great deal, if you consider the next point.

(2) The body, as a body, will through its union with the soul be as sensitive, and so as capable in its kind of receiving correction and torment, as ever; no, I think more so. For if the quickness of the soul gives quickness of sense to the body, as in some cases at least I am inclined to think it does, then, since the soul will now be most quick and most sharp in apprehension, the body too, through union and sympathy with the soul, will be most quick and most sharp in sense.

Indeed, if the body did not receive and retain sense, yes, all its senses, through being a vessel to hold the soul, the torment of the soul could no more be ministered to the body as torment than the fire tormented the king of Babylon’s furnace (Dan 3), or than the king of Moab’s lime kiln was afflicted because the king of Edom’s bones were burned to lime in it (Amos 2:1). But now the body has received its senses again, and therefore it must, yes, it cannot help but feel that wrath of God which is let out, yes, poured out like floods of water, into the soul.

Remember also that besides what the body receives from the soul through its union and sympathy with it, there is a punishment, and instruments of punishment, prepared for the body, to punish it for joining with the soul in sin, though I will not pretend to tell you exactly what it is. It is a punishment, I say, that will fall immediately on the body, and one that will most fitly suit the nature of the body, as wrath and guilt most fitly suit the nature of the soul.

(3) Add to these the lasting condition that the body is now in with the soul in this state. There was a time when the soul died and the body lived, and when the soul was tormented while the body slept and rested in the dust. But now those things are past. For at the day of judgment, as I said, these two will be reunited, and what once separated them will be destroyed. Then of necessity they must remain together, and, being together, endure the punishment prepared for them; and this will increase the torment of the body.

Death was once the wages of sin, and a grievous curse. But if the damned could meet with it in hell, they would count it a mercy, because it would separate soul and body. And not only so; it would take away all sense from the body and make it incapable of suffering torment. Yes, I will add, it would by that means give the soul some ease. For without doubt, as the torments of the soul extend themselves to the body, so the torments of the body extend themselves to the soul; nor can it be otherwise, because of their union and sympathy. But death, natural death, will be destroyed, and there will be no more natural death, no, not in hell (1 Cor 15:26).

And now it will happen to men as it has in lesser and inferior judgments: they will seek death and desire to die, and death will not be found by them (Job 3:21; Rev 9:6). So they must remain together. Death, which used to part them, is now slain: first, because it was an enemy in keeping Christ’s body in the grave; and second, because it was a friend to carnal men. For though it was a punishment in itself, yet while it lasted and had dominion over the bodies of the wicked, it kept from them that great and just judgment which was due to them for sin. And this is the third discovery of the manner and way of the body’s punishment.

(4) But there will then be such things to be seen and heard, things which the eye and the ear (to say no more than has been said of the sense of feeling) will see and hear, as will greatly aggravate the punishment of the body in hell. For though the eye is the window and the ear a door for the soul to look out at and also to take things in by, yet whatever goes in at the ear or the eye leaves its influence on the body, whether it is something the soul delights in or something the soul abhors. For as the eye affects the heart, or soul (Lam 3:51), so the eye and ear, by hearing and beholding, often afflict the body. “When I heard, my belly trembled… rottenness entered into my bones” (Hab 3:16).

Now, I say, as the body after its resurrection to damnation, to everlasting shame and contempt (Dan 12:2; John 5:29), will receive all its senses again, so it will have matter to exercise them on. The senses will have such matter not only for letting into the soul those aggravations which they are able to let in by hearing, feeling and seeing; but, I say, they will also have matter and things to exercise themselves on that will help forward the torment of the body. Under the temporal judgments of old, the body as well as the soul had no ease, day or night, and that not only because of what was felt, but because of what was heard and seen. “In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning!” (Deut 28:67). And this was, first, “For the fear of thine heart, wherewith thou shalt fear”; and second, “And for the sight of thine eyes, which thou shalt see.” No, he tells them a little before that they would be mad for the sight of their eyes which they would see (Deut 28:34).

See! Why, what will they see? Why, themselves in hell, with others like them; and this will be a torment to their body. There is bodily torment, as I said, ministered to the body by the senses of the body. What do you think? If a man saw himself in prison, in irons, on the ladder, with the rope around his neck, would this not be distress to the body as well as to the mind? To the body, without doubt. Witness the heavy looks, the shaking legs, trembling knees, pale face, and beating and aching heart. How much more, then, when men see themselves in the most dreadful place! It is a fearful place, without doubt, for all who come there to behold themselves in (Luke 16:28).

Again, they will see others there, and by them will see themselves. There is an art by which a man may make his neighbor look so ghastly that he will frighten himself by looking at him, especially when he thinks that he himself looks the same. It is said of men at the downfall of Babylon that they will be amazed at one another, for “their faces shall be as flames” (Isa 13:8). And what if one should say that just as it is with a house set on fire within, where the flame rises out at the chimneys and out at the windows, and the smoke out at every chink and crevice it can find, so it will be with the damned in hell? That soul will breathe hell fire and smoke, and coals will seem to hang on its burning lips. Yes, the face, eyes and ears will all seem to be chimneys and vents for the flame and smoke of the burning which God by his breath has kindled in them and on them. And this will be seen in one another, to the great torment and distress of each other.

What shall I say? Here devils will be seen, and here howlings and mournings will be heard. Here the soul will see itself at an infinite distance from God; yes, the body will see it too. In a word, who knows the power of God’s wrath, the weight of sin, the torments of hell and the length of eternity? If no one, then no one can tell, when they have said all they can, how unbearable are the torments that will swallow up the soul, the lost soul, when it is cast away by God, and from him, into outer darkness for sin. But this much for the cause of the loss of the soul.

I now come to the second doctrine that I gathered from the words, namely, that however unconcerned and careless some may now be about the loss or salvation of their souls, the day is coming (though it will then be too late) when men will be willing, however much they had, to give it all in exchange for their souls. There are four things in the words that prove this doctrine.

1. There is a hint of life and feeling in the man who has lost his soul in hell, and that after he has lost it: “Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” These words cannot possibly apply to a man who has no life or feeling. For someone who is dead, in our ordinary sense of death, that is, deprived of life and feeling, would not give twopence to change his state. Therefore the words imply that the man is still alive and conscious. Now if a man were alive and conscious, even if he were in no other place than the grave, confined there while others are at liberty, what would he give in exchange for his place, to be rid of it for a better one! But how much more would he give to be delivered from hell, the present place and state of his soul!

2. There is also in the text a hint of a sense of torment: “Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” “I am tormented in this flame” (Luke 16:24). So the soul feels torment, and knows that there is a place of ease and peace. And out of that sense and feeling of torment, what would he give, yes, what would he not give, in exchange for his soul?

3. There is in the text a hint of how unbearable the torment is, because it supposes that the man whose soul is swallowed up in it would give all, however great his all might be, in exchange for his soul.

4. There is yet in the text a hint that the soul is aware of how long the punishment lasts. Otherwise the question would show a man rash rather than thoughtful in offering so much, as Christ supposes he does: his all in exchange for his soul.

But we will go no further in this way; we will take it for granted that the doctrine is sound. So I will next inquire into what this truth contains. And,

First, God has undertaken, and will accomplish, the breaking of the spirits of all the world, either by his grace and mercy to salvation, or by his justice and severity to damnation. The damned soul under consideration is certainly supposed, by the doctrine and by the text alike, to have been utterly careless and without regard for salvation as long as the acceptable time lasted, and as long as the white flag that signals terms of peace was hanging out. That is why it is said to be lost. But look: now it is careful, now it is anxious, now it asks, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

The man you read of in the Gospel could give his mind to nothing, in the days of the gospel, but finding out how to be clothed in purple and fine linen and to fare sumptuously every day. Yet God brought him so far down, and laid him so low at last, that he could crouch and cringe and beg for one small drop of water to cool his tongue (Luke 16:19, 24). Only a little before, he would have scorned to do such a thing, just as he scorned to stoop to the grace and mercy of the gospel. But God was resolved to break his spirit and the pride of his heart, and to humble his lofty looks: if not by his mercy, then by his justice; if not by his grace, then by hellfire.

He also threatens to bring this on the fool in the Proverbs: “They shall call, they shall seek, they shall cry” (Prov 1:22-32). Who will do so? The answer is: those who once scorned to seek, or call, or cry; those who stopped their ears, who pulled away their shoulders, and who refused to seek, or call, or cry to God for mercy (Zech 7:11-13).

Sinner, careless sinner, did you notice this first inference that I have drawn from my second doctrine? If you did, read it again anyway. It is this: “God has undertaken, and will accomplish, the breaking of the spirits of all the world, either by his grace and mercy to salvation, or by his justice and severity to damnation.” The reason for it is this: God is resolved to have the mastery; he is resolved to have the victory. “Who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together” (Isa 27:4). I will march against them.

God is merciful. He has come forth into the world by his Son, offering grace to sinners by the gospel, and he would gladly make a conquest over them for their good by his mercy. Now when he has come out, sinners, like briers and thorns, set themselves against him and will have none of his mercy. Well, but what does God say? He says: Then I will march on. I will go through them, and burn them together. I am resolved to have the mastery one way or another. If they will not bend to me and accept my mercy in the gospel, I will bend them and break them by my justice in hellfire. They say they will not bend; I say they shall. Now they “shall know whose words shall stand, mine or theirs” (Jer 44:25-28).

That is why the apostle, when he saw that some of the Corinthians were beginning to be unruly and to do things that began to put them in danger, says, “Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor 10:22). It is as if he said: My brothers, do you realize what you are doing? Do you not understand that God is resolved to have the mastery one way or another? And are you stronger than he is? If not, tremble before him, or he will certainly have you under his feet. “I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury” (Isa 63:3). This is how he speaks of those who set themselves against him; therefore beware.

Now the reason for this resolution of God flows from his determination to make all his sayings good, and to prove them true on the consciences of sinners. Since the unbelieving world will not believe now and flee from wrath, they will shortly believe and cry out under it. Since they will not now trust the Word to their salvation before they see, they will be made to trust it by sense and feeling to their damnation.

Second, the second inference that I draw from my second doctrine is this: It is, and will be, the lot of some to bow and break before God too late, or when it is too late. God is resolved, as I said, to have the mastery, and that not only by way of dominion and lordship in general, for he has that now. He is resolved to master, that is, to break, the spirit of the world, and to make all men cringe and crouch before him, even those who now say, “There is no God” (Ps 14:1), or, if there is one, “What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?” (Job 21:15; Mal 3:14).

Those who now harden their hearts in wickedness and turn their spirits against God give little thought to this. But this they shall think of, this they must think of, this God will make them think of, in that day. Even now they mock and deride that very day, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled in them (2 Pet 3:3-4). And, I say, they will think of these things then, and break at heart, and melt under the hand and power and majesty of the Almighty. For “As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God” (Isa 45:23; Rom 14:11). And again: “The nations shall see, and be confounded at all their might; they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms,” or creeping things “of the earth; they shall be afraid of the Lord our God, and shall fear because of thee” (Mic 7:16-17).

For then, whether they will or not, they will have to deal with God: not with him as merciful, or as one who may be entreated, but with him as just, and as a devouring fire (Heb 12:29). Yes, they will see that face and hear that voice from which the heavens and the earth will flee away and find no place to stay. And by this appearance, and by such words from his mouth as he will then speak to them, they will begin to tremble and call for the rocks to fall on them and cover them. For if these things happen when lesser judgments are carried out, what will be done, what effects will the last, most dreadful, and eternal judgment have on men’s souls?

That is why you find that at the very first appearance of Jesus Christ the whole world begins to mourn and lament: “Every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him” (Rev 1:7). And so you also find them standing at the door and knocking, saying, “Lord, Lord, open unto us” (Luke 13:25; Matt 25:11). Moreover, you find them desiring as well, yes, so humble in their desires as to be content with the least degree of mercy: one drop, one drop on the tip of someone’s finger. What stooping, what condescension, what humility is here!

All these passages, every one of them, declare that the hand of God is on them, and that the Almighty has gained the mastery over them. He has conquered them, broken the pride of their power, laid them low, and made them cringe and crouch before him, bending the knee and begging for kindness. This, then, is how God will bow and bend and break them; yes, he will make them bow and bend and break before him. And this is also why they will weep and mourn and gnash their teeth, and cry, and repent that they were ever so foolish, so wicked, so traitorous to their souls, and such enemies of their own eternal happiness, as to stand out in rebellion against the Lord in the day of their visitation.

But here is their hard luck, their dismal lot and portion: all these things must happen when it is too late. It is, and will be, the lot and fate of these people to bow, bend, and break too late (Matt 25). You read that they come weeping and mourning, with tears; they knock and cry for mercy. But what did their tears avail? Why, nothing, for the door was shut. He answered and said, “I know you not whence you are.” But they repeat and renew their plea, saying, “We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.” What now? Why, he turns his first answer back on them a second time, saying, “I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.” Then he concludes, “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out” (Luke 13:26, 28).

They come weeping, and they go away weeping. They come to him weeping, because they saw that he had conquered them; but they departed weeping, because they saw that he would damn them. Yet, as we read in another place, they were very unwilling to leave him, as their reasoning and arguing with him shows: “Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?” But none of it would do; here there is no room for a change of mind. “These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matt 25:44-46). And now what would a man give in exchange for his soul? So, as I said before, all is too late. They mourn too late, they repent too late, they pray too late, and they seek to make an exchange for their soul too late. “Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Two or three things may still be gathered from these words; I mean, about the desires of those who have lost their souls to make an exchange for them. “What shall a man give in exchange?” What shall, what would, yes, what would not a man give in exchange for his soul, if he had it?

(1) What would a man not give (I mean a man in the condition that the text supposes some men are and will be in) to have another man’s virtues instead of his own vices? “Let me die the death of the righteous”: let my soul be in the state of the soul of the righteous (that is, with respect to his virtues) when I die, “and let my last end be like his” (Num 23:10). Some people now make a sport of taunting, jeering at, and deriding other men’s virtues. But the day is coming when their minds will be changed, and when they will be made to count those who have done the righteous acts and duties they scoffed at as the only blessed men. Yes, they will wish their souls were in blessed possession of the graces and virtues that those they hated were accompanied with, and if they had a whole world, they would give it for this change. But that will not do now; it is too late now. What then shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

And this is more than hinted at in that twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew mentioned before. For you find by that text how unwilling they were, or will be, to be counted unrighteous people. “Lord,” they say, “when did we see thee an hungred, or athirst, naked, or sick, and did not minister unto thee?” Now they are not willing to be numbered among the wicked, though formerly the ways of the righteous were an abomination to them. But alas! they stand before a just God, a just judge, a judge who will give everyone according to their ways. Therefore, “Woe unto (the soul of) the wicked now, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him” (Isa 3:11).

So on this point he is shut in. He cannot now exchange his vice for virtues, nor put himself or his soul in the place of the soul of the saved. So it still remains, and will remain forever, an unresolved question: “Or, what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” I do not doubt that a man’s state may be such in this world that, if he had it, he would give thousands of gold to be as innocent and guiltless in the judgment of the law of the land as this or that person is, heartily wishing that he were not the man he is. How much more, then, will men wish this when they stand ready to receive their last, their eternal judgment! “But what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

(2) As they would gladly, for the salvation of their souls, trade away their vices for the virtues, their sins for the good deeds, of others, so what would they not give to change places now, or to move from where they are now into paradise, into Abraham’s bosom! But this will not be allowed either; the righteous must have their inheritance to themselves. “Neither,” said Abraham, “can they pass to us, that would come from thence” (Luke 16:26); neither can those who would come from hell dwell in heaven.

So those who have lost, or will lose, their souls are bound to their place as well as to their sins. When Judas went to hell, he went to his home, “to his own place” (Acts 1:25). And when the righteous go from here, they too go home to their house, to their own place, for the kingdom of heaven is prepared for them (Matt 25:34). Between heaven and hell “there is a great gulf fixed” (Luke 16:26). That is a strange passage: “There is a great gulf fixed.” What this gulf is, and how impassable, those who lose their souls will know to their sorrow. For it is fixed there, where it is, on purpose to keep them in their place of torment, so that those who would pass from hell to heaven cannot.

But, I say, would they not change places? Would they not have a more comfortable house and home for their souls? Yes, truly; the text supposes it, and the sixteenth chapter of Luke affirms it. Yes, and if they could buy their souls a dwelling among the righteous, would they not? Yes, they would give all the world for such a change. What shall, what shall not, a man give in exchange for his soul, if he had it, and if it would serve his purpose?

(3) As the damned would exchange their own vices for virtues, and the place where they are for the one they will never come into, so what would they give for a change of condition? Yes, if a complete change cannot be obtained, what would they still give for the least degree of relief from that torment which they now know will go on without any break, and that forever and ever? “Tribulation and anguish, indignation and wrath” (Rom 2:8-9), the gnawing worm, and everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power cannot be borne without great horror and grief (2 Thess 1:7-10).

No wonder, then, if these poor creatures would gladly change their condition for some ease to their souls. Change! With whom? With an angel, with a saint; yes, with a dog or a toad. For a dog and a toad do not mourn, they do not weep, nor do they bear the indignation of wrath; they are as if they had never been. Only the sinful soul remains in its sins, in the place designed for lost souls, and in the condition that wrath and indignation against sin and transgression have decreed them to remain in forever.

And this brings me to the conclusion, which is this: seeing that the ungodly seek good things too late, therefore, in spite of their seeking, they must still remain in their place, their sins, and their torment. “For what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” Therefore God says that they must still remain and dwell there; no exchange can be made. “This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow” (Isa 50:11). They will lie down in it, they will make their bed there, there they will lie (Ezek 32:25-27).

And this is the bitter pill they must swallow at last. For after all their tears, their sorrows, their mournings, their repentings, their wishes and their longings, and all their schemings and desires to change their state for a better one, they must “lie down in sorrow.” The poor condemned man on the ladder or the scaffold has, if one only knew them, many a long wish and long desire that he might come down again alive, or that his condition were like that of one of the spectators, who are not condemned and brought there to be executed as he is. How carefully, too, he looks with his failing eyes to see whether someone is coming from the king with a pardon for him, all the while fumbling and stalling as well as he can to put off the minute of his execution! But at last, when he has looked, when he has wished, when he has desired, and done whatever he can, the blow of the axe, or the turn off the ladder, is his lot. So he goes off the scaffold; so he goes from among men. And so it will be with those we are considering. When all is said and done, and they have said and wished and done what they can, the judgment must not be reversed: they must “lie down in sorrow.”

They must, or shall, lie down! In old times, when a man was to be punished for his fault, he had to lie down to receive his stripes. So here, says the Lord, they shall lie down. “And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face” (Deut 25:2). And this lying down was to be his lot after he had pleaded for himself all he could. And the judge would cause him to be beaten before his face, while he was present to see judgment carried out. So it will be at the end of the world. The wicked will lie down and be beaten with many stripes in the presence of Christ, “and in the presence of the holy angels” (2 Thess 1; Rev 14:10). For he will be present not only at the trial as judge, but to see the sentence carried out; no, to carry it out himself, pouring out his wrath like a river, as burning brimstone, on the soul of the lost and castaway sinner.

He shall lie down! These words imply that at last the damned soul will submit. For to lie down is an act that signifies submission, especially to lie down to be beaten. “The wicked shall be silent in darkness” (1 Sam 2:9). When the criminal has said and wished all he can, still at last he submits, is silent, and, as it were, helps to put his head into the noose, or lays his neck down on the block. So here it is said of the damned: They shall lie down in sorrow. There is also a place that says, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment” (Matt 25:46). To go, to go to punishment, is also an act of submission.

Now submission to punishment does, or should, flow from full conviction that the punishment is deserved, and I think that is how it is to be understood here. For “every mouth shall be stopped, and all the world (of soul losers) become guilty before God” (Rom 3:19; Luke 13:25-28; Matt 25:46). Every mouth will be stopped, not at the beginning of the judgment, for then they plead and pray and also raise objections against the judge, but at the end. After he has, by a judicial proceeding, justified his sayings against them (Rom 3:4) and overcome those who set themselves up as his judges, then they will submit and also lie down in sorrow. Yes, they will go away to their punishment as those who know they deserve it; yes, they will go away in silence.

How they will behave themselves in hell I will not argue here: whether with rage and blasphemy, rending and tearing the name and just actions of God toward them, or whether by way of submission there. I say, though this is no part of my present task, yet a word or two, if you please.

No doubt they will not be mute there. They will cry and wail and gnash their teeth, and perhaps sometimes at God too. But I cannot help thinking that the justice they have deserved, and its fair administration upon them, will for the most part prevail with them to rend and tear themselves, to acquit and justify God, and to add fuel to their fire by concluding that all the fault is theirs, and that they have fully deserved this just damnation. For it would seem strange to me if just judgment among men should end this way, and God should not justify himself in the conscience of all the damned. But as here on earth, so there: he will let those who go to hell know that he has not done without a cause, a sufficient cause, all that he has done in damning them (Ezek 14:23).

I come now to make some use and application of the whole. And first: if the soul is as excellent a thing as we have shown it to be, and if its loss is so great a loss, then here you may see who the extravagant ones really are; I mean, those who are extravagant in the highest degree.

Solomon tells us of “a great waster,” and says also that he who is slothful in his business is brother to such a one (Prov 18:9). Whom Solomon had his eye on, or whom he counted so great a waster, I cannot tell. But I challenge the whole world to show me anyone who, for wasting and destroying, can be compared with the man who will hazard the loss of his soul for the lusts and pleasures of this life. Many men are so lavish, and spend at such a reckless rate, that they bring a thousand pounds a year down to five hundred, and five hundred down to fifty; and some even bring that fifty down to less than ninepence. But what is this compared to the man who will never stop losing until he has lost his soul? I have heard of some who would throw away a farm, a good estate, on the roll of a single bowl. But what is this compared to casting away the soul? I say, what is this compared to the loss of the soul, and that for less than the roll of a bowl?

Nothing can be compared to sin for badness. It is the vile thing; it cannot be given a worse name than its own. It is worse than the vilest man, worse than the vilest of beasts. Yes, sin is worse than the devil himself, for it is sin, and sin only, that has made the devils devils. And yet for this, for this vile, this abominable thing (Jer 44:4), some men, indeed most men, will venture the loss of their souls. Yes, they will mortgage, pawn, and put their souls up for sale for it. Is not this a great waster? Does not this man deserve to be ranked among the extravagant ones?

What do you think of the man who, when he tempted a girl to immorality, said to her, “If you will venture your body, I’ll venture my soul”? Wasn’t that likely to be a fine bargain, do you think? Or wasn’t this man likely to come out a gainer by doing so? This is the man who prizes sin at a higher rate than he does his immortal soul. Yes, this is the man who values a quarter of an hour’s pleasure more than he fears everlasting damnation. What shall I say? This man is willing to give more to be damned than God requires him to give to be saved. Is not this an extravagant one? “Be astonished, O ye heavens! at this, and be horribly afraid!” (Jer 2:9-12). Yes, let all the angels stand amazed at the unaccountable prodigality of such a man.

Objection 1. But some may say, “I cannot believe that God will be so severe as to cast an immortal soul away into hellfire for a little sin.”

Answer. I know you cannot believe it. For if you could, you would sooner eat fire than run this risk. That is why all who go down to the lake of fire are called the unbelievers. And the Lord shall cut you in two, you who make this objection, and shall appoint you your portion with them (Luke 12:46), unless you believe the gospel and repent.

Objection 2. “But surely, even if God should be so angry at the beginning, it cannot help but grieve him in time to see and hear souls roaring in hell, and that for a little sin.”

Answer. Whatever God does abides forever (Eccl 3:14). He does nothing in a passion or in a fit of anger; he proceeds with sinners by the most perfect rules of justice. So it would be injustice to deliver those whom the law condemns. Yes, he would make his word false if, after a time, he were to deliver from hell those about whom he has solemnly testified that they shall be there forever.

Objection 3. “Oh, but as he is just, so he is merciful; and mercy is full of pity, and very compassionate to the afflicted.”

Answer. Oh, but mercy abused becomes most fearful in tormenting. Have you never read that the Lamb turned lion, and that the world will tremble at the wrath of the Lamb, and be more afflicted at the thought of that than at the thought of anything else that shall happen to them on the day when God calls them to account for their sins (Rev 6:16-17)? The time of mercy will then be past, for now is that acceptable time; “behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). The gate of mercy will then be shut, and must not be opened again (Matt 25:10; Luke 13:25); for now that gate is open, now it stands open as a door of hope.

The time for showing pity and compassion will then be at an end. For that, as far as God’s dealings with sinners are concerned, will last only until the hourglass of the world has run out. And when that day is past, notice what God says shall follow: “I will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you” (Prov 1:26-27). Notice how many stinging expressions the Lord Jesus Christ threatens the refusing sinner with, the sinner who refuses him now: I will laugh at him, I will mock at him. But when, Lord, will you laugh at and mock the impenitent? The answer is, “I will laugh at their calamities, and mock when their fear cometh; when their fear cometh as desolation, and their destruction like a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon them.”

Objection 4. “But if God Almighty is set on this point, and there is no moving him to mercy on that day, still we can only lie in hell until we are burned out, as the log does at the back of the fire.”

Answer. Poor besotted sinner, is this your last resort? Will you comfort yourself with this? Are your sins so dear, so sweet, so desirable, so profitable to you, that you will venture burning in hellfire for them until you are burned out? Is there nothing else to be done but to make a covenant with death, and to keep up your agreement with hell (Isa 28:15)? Is it not better to say to God now, “Do not condemn me,” and to say now, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner”? Would not tears, and prayers, and cries to God for mercy in this acceptable time do you more good in the next world than lying and burning out in hell will do?

But to come closer to you: have I not told you already that there is no such thing as a ceasing to be? That the damned shall never be burned out in hell? There shall be no more such death, or any cause of dissolution, forever. This one thing, well considered, not only breaks the neck of the wild notion on which your foolish objection is built, but will break your stubborn heart in pieces. For then it follows that unless you can conquer God, or endure with ease the conflict with his sin-revenging wrath, you will be made to mourn while under his everlasting wrath and indignation, and to know that there is no such thing as burning out in hellfire.

Objection 5. “But if this must be my case, I shall have plenty of companions. I shall not go to hell, nor burn there, alone.”

Answer. What, again? Is there no breaking the league between sin and your soul? What, resolved to be a self-murderer, a soul-murderer? What, resolved to murder your own soul? But is there any comfort in being hanged in company? In sinking to the bottom of the sea in company? Or in going to hell, in burning in hell, and in enduring the everlasting pains of hell, in company? O besotted wretch! But I tell you, the more company, the more sorrow; the more fuel, the more fire. That is why the damned man we read of in Luke wanted his brothers to be so warned and persuaded that they would be kept out of that place of torment (Luke 16:27-28).

But to hasten on: I come now to the second use.

Is it so? Is the soul such an excellent thing, and its loss so unspeakably great? Then here you may see who are the greatest fools in the world: those who, to get the world and its promotions, will neglect God until they lose their souls. The rich man in the gospel was one of these great fools, because he was more concerned about what he should do with his goods than about how his soul should be saved (Luke 12:16-21).

Some are for venturing their souls for pleasures, and some are for venturing their souls for profits. Those who venture their souls for pleasures have but little excuse for what they do; but those who venture their souls for profit seem to have a great deal. “And they all with one consent began to make excuse.” Excuse for what? Why, for neglecting the salvation of their souls. But what made them make this excuse? Why, their profits came tumbling in. “I have bought a piece of ground”; “I have bought five yoke of oxen”; and “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come” (Luke 14:15-20).

That is how it was with the fool first mentioned too. His ground brought forth plentifully, so he must of necessity forget his soul, and, as he thought, with all the reason in the world. So he falls to crying out, “What shall I do?” Now, if someone had said, “Look to the good of your soul, man,” the answer would have been ready: “But where shall I store my goods?” If the reply had been, “Wait till harvest,” back he comes again: “But I have no room to store my goods.” Tell him about praying, and he answers that he must get on with his building. Tell him he should go often to hear sermons, and he replies that he must keep an eye on his workmen. “He cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isa 44:20).

And see whether in the end he did not prove a fool. For though he finished building his barns and put into them all his fruits and his goods, yet even then his soul was empty and void of everything good. Nor did he show himself any the wiser in singing that requiem he sang to his soul at the last: “Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry” (Luke 12:19). For in all his labors he had refused to get the food that is truly meat and drink for the soul. No, in singing this song he only provoked God to make haste and send to fetch his soul to hell. For that is how the conclusion of the parable begins: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” (Luke 12:20). So, I say, it is the greatest folly in the world for a man, on any pretext whatever, to neglect to make sure of the salvation of his soul.

There are six signs of a fool, and they all meet in the man who does not concern himself, and to good purpose, with the salvation of his soul.

1. A fool has no heart to get wisdom, even when the price is in his hand (Prov 17:16).

2. “It is a sport to a fool to do mischief” (Prov 10:23), and to make light of committing sin.

3. “Fools despise wisdom”; “fools hate knowledge” (Prov 1:7, 22).

4. “A fool,” after he has been restrained, “returneth to his folly” (Prov 26:11).

5. “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes” (Prov 12:15).

6. The fool goes merrily “to the correction of the stocks” (Prov 7:22).

I might add many more, but these six will suffice for now. By them it appears that the fool has no heart for the heavenly prize, and yet he has a heart to amuse himself in sin. While he despises wisdom, his way still looks right to him. Yes, if he is restrained from vice for a while, he greedily turns back to it again. And when he has finished his course of folly and sin in this world, he will go down the steps to hell as heedlessly, as carelessly, as unconcernedly and as quietly as the ox goes to the slaughterhouse. This is a soul fool, a fool of the biggest size. And so is everyone who lays up treasure for himself on earth “and is not rich towards God” (Luke 12:21).

Objection 1. But wouldn’t you have us mind our worldly concerns?

Answer. Mind them, but mind them in their place. Mind your soul first and most. The soul is more than the body, and eternal life is better than temporal life. First seek the kingdom of God (Matt 6:33), and prosper in your health and your estate as your soul prospers (3 John 2). But it is rare to see this command obeyed, for the kingdom of God is the last thing people think about. So if John’s wish were to light on some people and come true for them, they would have neither health nor wealth in this world. To prosper and be in health as their soul prospers? What, to thrive and improve in outward things no faster than that? Then we would see them with wasting bodies and poor estates. For are not the souls of most people as far from thriving in grace and spiritual health as the fruitless tree that is pulled up by the roots?

Objection 2. But would you have us sit still and do nothing?

Answer. Must you always run to the extremes? Must you either mind this world to the damning of your souls, or not mind your callings at all? Is there no middle way? May you not, indeed must you not, earn your bread by honest industry? That is, by caring most for the next world, and so using this one as not abusing it (1 Cor 7:29-31). A man does this, and only then, when he sets this world and the next in their proper places in his thoughts, his esteem and his judgment, and deals with both accordingly (2 Cor 4:18). And is there not all the reason in the world for this? Are not the things that are eternal best? Will temporal things make your soul live (Deut 8:3; Matt 4:4)? Or are you not one of those who should look after the salvation of their soul (Heb 10:39)?

Objection 3. But most people do what you forbid, so why may we not do it too?

Answer. God says, “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil” (Exod 23:2). It is not what people do, but what God commands; it is not what presents itself to us, but what is best, that we should choose (Matt 6:33; Luke 10:41-42). Now, “He that refuseth instruction, despiseth his own soul,” and “He that keepeth the commandment, keepeth his own soul” (Prov 15:32; Prov 19:16). So do not make these foolish objections. But what does the Word say? How do you read it? It tells you that the pleasures of sin last only for a season; that the things that are seen are only temporal; that he is a fool who is rich in this world and is not rich towards God; “and what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

Objection 4. But can’t a person be equally devoted to both?

Answer. A divided heart is a worthless one (Hos 10:2). “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt 6:24; Luke 16:13). “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). And yet this objection of yours shows that your heart is divided, that you are a Mammonist, or that you love the world. But will riches profit in the day of wrath (Prov 11:4)? Indeed, are they not harmful even in the day of grace? Do they not tend to glut the heart, and to turn a man and his mind away from things that are better (Luke 21:34)? Why, then, will you set your heart on that which is not? Yes, and then what will become of those who are so far from minding their souls that for whole days, whole weeks, whole months and years together, they scarcely consider whether they have souls to save?

But, thirdly, is it so? Is the soul such an excellent thing, and is its loss so unspeakably great? Then this should teach people to be very careful to whom they commit the teaching and guidance of their souls.

This is a business of the greatest concern. People will be careful to whom they commit their children, whom they make the executors of their wills, and into whose hands they trust the deeds and papers of their lands. But how much more careful we should be to whom we commit the teaching and guidance of our souls! And yet most people are the least careful of all in this. There are several sorts of soul shepherds in the world:

1. There are idol shepherds (Zech 11:17).

2. There are foolish shepherds (Zech 11:15).

3. There are shepherds who feed themselves and not their flock (Ezek 34:2).

4. There are hard-hearted and pitiless shepherds (Zech 11:5).

5. There are shepherds who, instead of healing the diseased, strike, push and wound them (Ezek 34:4, 21).

6. There are shepherds who cause their flocks to go astray (Jer 50:6).

7. And there are shepherds who feed their flock. These are the shepherds to whom you should commit your soul for teaching and for guidance.

Question. You may ask, “How should I know those shepherds?”

Answer. First, surrender your soul to God by Christ, and choose Christ to be the chief shepherd of your soul. Then he will direct you to his shepherds, and in his mercy he will set such shepherds over you “as shall feed thee with knowledge and understanding” (1 Pet 2:25; 1 Pet 4:19; John 10:4-5; Song 1:7-8; Jer 3:15; Jer 23:4). Until you have surrendered your soul to Christ, so that he may be your chief shepherd, you cannot recognize his under-shepherds, nor choose to put your soul under their teaching and guidance, for you cannot love them. Besides, false shepherds present them in so many ugly guises, and dress them up in so many false and scandalous costumes, that if I were to direct you to them while you are a stranger to Christ, you would count them deceivers, devourers and wolves in sheep’s clothing, rather than the shepherds who belong to the great and chief Shepherd, who is also the Bishop of the soul.

Yet this I will say to you: beware of the shepherd who does not care for his own soul, who walks in such ways and does such things as tend directly to damn his own soul. I say, beware of such a man. Do not come near him; let him have nothing to do with your soul. For if he is not faithful to what is his own soul, you may be sure he will not be faithful to what is another man’s. He who feeds his own soul with ashes (Isa 44:20) will scarcely feed yours with the bread of life. So beware of such a man; and there are many such in the world.

“By their fruits you shall know them” (Matt 7:20). They are all for flattering the worst and frowning on the best. They are all for promising life to the profane and for slaying the souls that God would have live. They are also men who hunt the souls that fear God, but who are all for sewing pillows under the arms of those whom God would have lean on what would afflict them. These are the ones “that, with lies, do make the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad,” says God, and who have “strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he shall not return from his wicked way, by promising of him life” (Ezek 13:18-22).

And as you should, for your soul’s sake, choose good soul shepherds for yourself, so also, for the same reason, you should choose for yourself a good wife, a good husband, a good master, a good servant; for the soul is concerned in all these things. Abraham would not allow Isaac to take a wife from the daughters of Canaan (Gen 24:3), nor would David allow a wicked servant to come into his house or to stay in his sight (Ps 101:7). Bad company is also very destructive to the soul (Prov 13:20), and so is evil talk (1 Cor 15:33). So be diligent to shun all these things, so that you may persevere in that way whose end will be the saving of your soul.

And since, under this head, I have fallen upon cautions, let me add these to the ones I have already given you.

Caution 1. Beware, beware of learning to do evil from anyone who is good. It is possible for a good man to do things that are bad; but do not let his bad action embolden you to rush into sin. Do you see a good man stumble at a stone, or slip into the dirt? Let that warn you to be careful. Let his stumble make you wary; let his fall make you watch your own steps. “Ever follow that which is good” (1 Thess 5:15). Your soul is at stake.

Caution 2. Beware of the good things of bad men, for a snare lies in them too. Their “good words and fair speeches” tend to deceive (Rom 16:17-18). Learn to be good by the Word of God and by the holy lives of those who are good. Do not envy the wicked, “nor desire to be with them” (Prov 24:1); “choose none of his ways” (Prov 3:31). Your soul lies at stake.

Caution 3. Beware of playing the hypocrite in religion. Whatever you know of God and his Word, profess it honestly, conform to it heartily, and serve him faithfully. For what is the hypocrite the better for all his profession “when God taketh away his soul” (Job 27:8)?

Caution 4. Beware of delaying to turn to God and to choose his ways as the delight of your heart, “for the Lord’s eye is upon them that fear him, to deliver their souls” (Ps 33:18-19).

Caution 5. Do not boast of your flocks and your herds, of your gold and your silver, of your sons and your daughters. What is a house full of treasures, and all the delights of this world, if you are empty of grace, “if thy soul be not filled with good” (Eccl 6:3)?

Is it so? Is the soul such an excellent thing, and is its loss so unspeakably great? Then please let me ask you a little about this: what provision have you made for your soul? There are many who, in their eagerness for the things of this life, rob their soul of good, even of that good which, if they had it, would be good for them forever (Eccl 4:8). But that is not what I am asking about. I am not asking what provision you have made for this life, but what provision you have made for the life and the world to come. “Lord, gather not my soul with sinners,” says David (Ps 26:9); that is, not with the men of this world. Lord, not with those who have their portion in this life, whose belly you fill with your hidden treasure. So you see how Solomon laments some people, and how his father prays to be delivered from the lot of those who have their portion in this life and have made no provision for their soul. Well then, let me ask you about this matter. What provision have you made for your soul? And:

1. What have you thought about your soul? What weighty thoughts have you had of the greatness and the immortality of your soul? This must be the first question. For the one whose thoughts have not been truly exercised, seriously and weightily exercised, about the greatness and immortality of his soul will not take care, in any effective way, to make provision for his soul for the life and world to come. The soul is a man’s all, whether he knows it or not, as I have already shown you. Now a man will be concerned about what he thinks is his all. We read of the poor servant who “setteth his heart upon” his wages (Deut 24:14-15). But that is because they are his all, his treasure, the thing in which his worldly worth lies. Why, your soul is your all! It is strange if you do not think so. And it is stranger still if you do think so, and yet have only light, rare and trivial thoughts about it. These two things seem inconsistent, so let your conscience speak. Either you have very great and weighty thoughts about the excellent greatness of your soul, or else you do not reckon your soul to be as great a thing as it is, or you do not reckon it your all.

2. What judgment have you made of the present state of your soul? I am speaking now to the unconverted. Your soul is under sin, under the curse, and an object of wrath. This is the sentence that the Word passes upon it: “Woe unto their soul,” says God, “for they have rewarded evil unto themselves” (Isa 3:9). This is the sentence of God. Well, but what judgment have you passed upon your soul while you live in your debauchery? Is it not the same one your companions passed on theirs before you, saying, “I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst” (Deut 29:19)? If so, know that your judgment is gross and your soul is miserable. Turn, or in a little while your eyes will see all this.

3. What care have you taken to secure your soul, so that it might be delivered from the danger sin has brought it into? If a man has a horse, a cow, or a pig that is sick, or in danger through this or that accident, he will take care of his animal so that it does not die. He will pull it out of the ditch on the Sabbath day. But oh, that is the very day on which many men put their soul into the ditch of sin! That is the day they set apart for pursuing wickedness. But, I say, what care have you taken to get your soul out of this ditch? It is a ditch out of which you can never get it without the help of an almighty arm.

In things belonging to this life, when a man feels his own strength fail, he will beg the help and aid of another. And no man can by any means deliver his soul from the power of hell by his own arm, as you too will admit, unless you are a mere brute. But what have you done with God for help? Have you cried? Have you cried out? Yes, do you still cry out, and that day and night before him, “Deliver my soul” (Ps 17:13), “Save my soul, preserve my soul” (Ps 25:20), “Heal my soul” (Ps 41:4), and “I pour out my soul unto thee” (Ps 42:4)? Yes, can you say, “My soul, my soul waiteth upon God, my soul thirsteth for him, my soul followeth hard after him” (Ps 62:1, 5; Ps 63:1, 8)?

I say, do you do this, or do you hunt your own soul to destroy it? With some people the soul is the game, their lusts are the dogs, and they themselves are the huntsmen. And never do they whoop and call, and laugh and sing, more than when they have handed over their soul, their darling, to these dogs. That is a thing David trembled to think of, when he cried, “Dogs have compassed me. Deliver my darling,” that is, my soul, “from the power of the dog” (Ps 22:16, 20). So, I say, he cried, and yet these dogs were only wicked men. But oh, how much worse a sin, a lust, is than a man at doing us harm; yes, worse than a dog or a lion is at hurting a lamb!

4. What signs and tokens do you carry about with you of how it will go with your soul at last? There are signs and tokens of a good end, and signs and tokens of a bad end, that the souls of sinners will have. There are signs of the salvation of the soul (Heb 6:9), evident tokens of salvation; and there are signs of the damnation of the soul, evident signs of damnation (Phil 1:27-28; Job 21:29-30; 1 Sam 2:34). Now, which of these do you have? I cannot stop here to show you which are which. But your soul and its salvation lie before you, and you have the book of signs about these matters beside you, the Holy Bible. You also have men of God to go to, and their assemblies to attend. Look to yourself! Heaven and hell are close at hand, and one of them will swallow you up: heaven, into unspeakable and endless glory; or hell, into unspeakable and endless torment. Yet further:

5. What are the pleasures and delights of your soul now? Are they things divine, or things natural? Are they things heavenly, or things earthly? Are they things holy, or things unholy? For whatever things you delight in now, the great God counts you a servant to those things, and for them and from them you will receive your wages at the day of judgment: “His servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness” (Rom 6:16).

Wicked men talk of heaven, and say they hope and desire to go to heaven, even while they go on being wicked men. But, I say, what would they do there? If all who desire to go to heaven were to get there, they would truly make a hell of heaven. For, I say, what would they do there? Why, just what they do here: scatter their filthiness all over the face of heaven, and make it as vile as the pit the devils live in. Take holiness out of heaven, and what is heaven? I would rather be in hell, if there were none but holy ones there, than be in heaven itself with the children of iniquity. If heaven were filled with wicked men, God would quickly drive them out, or abandon the place because of them. It is true that those who go to heaven have been sinners, and none but sinners go there; but they are washed: “Such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11).

When the young women were gathered together for the great King Ahasuerus, before they were brought to him into his royal presence, they were to be taken to the house of the women, there to be purified with things for purification, and that for twelve months together: six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odors and other things. And so every young woman came to the king (Esth 2:3, 9, 12-13). God has also appointed that those who come into his royal presence must first go to the house of the women, the church, and there receive from the eunuchs things for purification, things to make us “meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col 1:12). No one can go from a state of nature to glory except by a state of grace. The Lord gives grace and glory. That is why the one who goes to heaven is said to be wrought for it, fitted and prepared for it (2 Cor 5:5; Rom 9:23).

Is it so? Is the soul such an excellent thing, and is its loss so unspeakably great? Then this doctrine commends as the wise ones those who, above all other business, concern themselves with the salvation of their souls: those who make all other matters only things by the way, and the salvation of their souls the one thing needful. But only comparatively few will be concerned with this application, for where is the one who does this? Solomon speaks of one man in a thousand (Eccl 7:28). However, there are some, and blessed be God for some. But they are the ones who are wise, yes, wise in the wisdom of God.

1. They are wise because they reject what God has rejected, and that is sin.

2. They are wise because they think little of what the Word counts of little worth, and that is the world.

3. They are wise because they choose for their portion what God commends to us as the most excellent thing, namely himself, his Christ, his heaven, his Word, his grace, and holiness. These are the great and most excellent things, and these are the things that the truly wise man has chosen for his soul (and all other wise men are fools in God’s account, and in the judgment of his Word). And if this is so, glory and bliss must surely be their portion, though others will miss it: “The wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the promotion of fools” (Prov 3:35).

Let me, then, encourage those who are of this mind to be strong and hold on their way. Soul, you have chosen right. I will say of your choice what David said of Goliath’s sword: “There is none like that; give it me” (1 Sam 21:9). “Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Rev 3:11). Oh, how I admire this wisdom! This comes by the direction of the Lawgiver. This comes by the teaching of the blessed Spirit of God. It is not the wisdom that this world teaches, nor the wisdom that the world chooses, which comes to nothing (1 Cor 2:6). Surely you have seen something of the world to come, and of its glory, through faith. Surely God has made you see emptiness where others find fullness, and vanity in what others count their darling. Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.

But who told you that your soul was such an excellent thing as your practice declares you believe it to be? What! Set more by your soul than by all the world? What! Cast a world behind your back for the welfare of a soul? Is this not playing the fool in the reckoning of sinners, while angels wonder at your wisdom and rejoice over it? What a thing this is, that your soul and its welfare should stand higher in your esteem than all those glories that dazzle the eyes of the world! Surely you have looked upon the sun, and that makes gold look like a clod of clay in your eyesight.

But who put thoughts of the excellencies of eternal things (I say, who put thoughts of the excellency of those things) into your mind in this wanton age? It is an age in which thoughts of eternal life and of the salvation of the soul are, with many and to many, like the Moroccan ambassador and his men: men of strange faces, in strange dress, with strange gestures and behavior, monsters to behold.

But where did you get that heart which welcomes these thoughts, these heavenly thoughts? These thoughts are like the French Protestants, banished from the very place where they would gladly have found a harbor. How did they come to your house, to your heart, and find a welcome in your soul? May the Lord keep them forever in every imagination of the thoughts of your heart, and incline your heart to seek him more and more.

And since the whole world has slighted and despised and counted foolish the thoughts and meditations that exercise your soul, what strong and mighty support is it on which, and with which, you hold up your spirit and take encouragement in this forlorn, untrodden, and lonely way of yours? For so, I dare say, it is with most. But certainly it is something above yourself, something mightier to uphold you than the power, rage, and malice of all the world are to cast you down. Otherwise you could not bear up, when at one time wind and weather, and at another the stream and its force, are against you.

Objection 1. “I know my soul is an excellent thing, and that the world to come and its glories, even in the smallest glimpse of them, swallow up the whole world that is here. My heart also greatly desires to be exercised with thoughts of eternity, and I count myself never better than when my poor heart is filled with them. As for the rage and fury of this world, it sways me very little, for my heart has come to a settled point. But yet, for all that, I meet with many discouragements, and with things that do indeed weaken my strength in the way.”

But, brave soul, please tell me: what are the things that discourage you and weaken your strength in the way?

“Why, the amazing greatness of this enterprise of mine, that is one thing. I am now pursuing things of the highest, the greatest, the most enriching nature, even eternal things, and the thought of how great they are overwhelms me. For when the heat of my spirit in pursuing them has cooled and abated a little, I seem to hear myself talking to myself like this: ‘You fool! Can you imagine that such a gnat, such a flea, such an ant as you can take and possess the heavens, and wrap yourself up in the eternal glories? If you first try how successful your efforts are on things far lower and baser, yet much easier to obtain, such as crowns, kingdoms, earldoms, dukedoms, gold, silver, or the like, how vain these attempts of yours prove! And yet you think you can win heaven for your soul! Away, away! By its height you may well conclude it is far above, out of your reach. By its breadth, it is too large for you to grasp. And by the nature of its excellent glory, it is too good for you to possess.’ These are the thoughts that sometimes discourage me and weaken my strength in the way.”

Answer. The greatness of your undertaking only shows the nobility of your soul, in that it cannot, and will not, be content with such low and dry things as the base-born spirits of the world can and do content themselves with. And as to the greatness of the things you aim at, though they are indeed things without equal, yet they are not too big for God to give. He has promised to give them to the soul that seeks him. Yes, he has prepared the kingdom, given the kingdom, and laid up in the kingdom of heaven the things your soul longs for, presses after, and cannot be content without (Luke 12:32; Matt 25:34; Col 1:5; 1 Pet 1:4). As for your making a trial of how successful your efforts are on things more inferior and base, that is only a trick of the old deceiver. God has refused to give his children the great, the fine, and the glorious things of this world, except for a few, because he has prepared some better thing for them (1 Cor 1:27; Heb 11:36-40). So do not faint, but let your hand be strong, for your work shall be rewarded (Gal 6:9). And since your soul is at work for soul-things, for divine and eternal things, God will give them to you. You are not one of those who draw back to perdition, but one of those who believe to the saving of the soul (Heb 10:39); you shall receive the end of your faith, the salvation of your soul (1 Pet 1:8-9).

Objection 2. “But my discouragement does not all lie in this. I see so much of the sinful vileness of my nature, and feel how ready it is to thrust itself forward on every occasion to defile my whole self, and more. Now this, added to the former, greatly increases my discouragement.”

Answer. This should be a cause of humiliation and self-abasement, but not of discouragement. For the best of saints have their weaknesses, and these very weaknesses too. The ladies, as well as the woman who grinds at the mill, know what attends their sex; and the giants in grace, as well as the weak ones and the shrubs, feel the same things that you plead as reasons against exercising hope, or offer as grounds for your discouragement. On this very account poor David says, “My soul refused to be comforted” (Ps 77:2). And Paul, under a sense of this, cries out, “O wretched man that I am!” and comes, as it were, to the borders of a doubt, saying, “Who shall deliver me?” (Rom 7:24). Only he was quick to remember that Christ was his righteousness and the price of his redemption, and there he found relief.

Again, this should drive us to faith in Christ. For this is why corruptions are still left in us by divine permission. They are not left in us to drive us to unbelief, but to faith, that is, to look to the perfect righteousness of Christ for life. And for further help, consider that this is why Christ lives in heaven making intercession: that you might be saved by his life, not by yours, and by his intercessions, not by your perfections (Rom 5:6-9; Col 1:20). So do not let your weaknesses be your discouragements. Only let them set you to the duties the gospel requires of you, namely faith, hope, repentance, humility, watchfulness, diligence, and the like (1 Pet 1:13; 1 Pet 5:5; 2 Cor 7:11; Mark 13:37; 2 Pet 1:10).

Objection 3. “But together with these things I find weakness and faintness in my graces. My faith, my hope, my love, and my desires toward these and all other Christian duties are weak. I am like the man in the dream who would have run, but could not; who would have fought, but could not; and who would have fled, but could not.”

Answer. 1. Weak graces are graces, and weak graces may grow stronger. But if the iron is blunt, put more strength to it (Eccl 10:10).

2. Christ seems to be most tender toward the weak: “He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young” (Isa 40:11). And again: “I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick” (Ezek 34:16). Only here your wisdom will be shown: that you grow in grace, and that you use the means to do it, lawfully and diligently (2 Pet 3:18; Phil 3:10-11; 1 Thess 3:11-13).

I come, in the next place, to a use of terror, and with that I will conclude. Is it so? Is the soul such an excellent thing, and is its loss so unspeakably great? Then this shows the sad state of those who lose their souls. We are used to counting people in a pitiful condition when by one single stroke they are stripped of their whole estate. The fire swept away all a man had; or all he had was in such a ship, and that ship sank to the bottom of the sea. This is sad news, this is heavy tidings, and everyone mourns over it, especially if the people were great in the world and were brought by their loss from a high condition to a low one, to a very low one.

But alas! What is this compared to the loss we have been speaking of all this while? The loss of an estate may be made good; or if not, a man may find friends to support him in his present pitiful condition, though not to restore him. But that will be far from the case with the one who loses his soul. Ah! He has lost his soul, and can never be recovered again, unless hellfire can comfort him, unless he can take solace in the fiery indignation of God. Terrors will be upon him; anguish and sorrow will swallow him up because of his present misery. He will also be slighted and treated as nothing by God and his angels in this miserable state of his, and this will add sorrow to his sorrow, and howling to his vexation of spirit.

To present you with emblems of tormented spirits, or to draw a picture of hell before your eyes, would be too light a thing for so weighty a subject as this. Nor can any man frame or invent words, however deep and profound they may be, that are enough to set out the torments of hell to the life. All those expressions, fire, brimstone, the lake of fire, a fiery furnace, the bottomless pit, and a hundred more besides, all fall too short to set forth the miseries of those who will be damned souls. “Who knoweth the power of God’s anger?” (Ps 90:11). No one at all. And unless the power of that anger can be known, it must remain as unspeakable as the love of Christ, which passes knowledge.

We hear it thunder, and we see it lightning. Yes, eclipses, comets and blazing stars are all liable to strike us with terror. The thought of a ghost, of a dead wife or a dead husband appearing, or the like: how terrible these things are! But alas, what are they? Mere flea bites, no, not even that bad, when compared with the torments of hell. Guilt and despair, what are they? Who understands them perfectly? The angry looks of an infinite Majesty: what mortal in the land of the living can tell us in full how dismal and how crushing they are to the soul of a man, when they come as from “the power of his anger” and arise from the utmost indignation? Besides, who knows all the ways by which the Almighty will inflict his just vengeance on the souls of damned sinners?

When Paul was caught up to the third heaven, he heard words that were unspeakable; and he who goes down to hell will hear groans that are unutterable. Hear, did I say? They will feel them. They will feel them burst from their wounded spirits as thunderclaps burst from the clouds. Once I dreamed that I saw two people (whom I knew) in hell, and it seemed to me that I saw a continual dropping from heaven, as of great drops of fire falling on them, to their sore distress. Oh! Words fail, thoughts fail; imagination and fancy are poor things here. Hell is another kind of place and state than anyone alive can think. And since I am on this subject, I will treat a little of hell here, as far as the Scriptures will give me leave, and all the more because I am on a use of terror, and because hell is the place of torment (Luke 16).

1. Hell is said to be beneath, as heaven is said to be above. Just as “above” signifies the utmost joy, triumph and happiness, so “beneath” is the fittest term to describe the place of hell, because of the utmost opposition between these two. Hell is the place of the utmost sorrow, despair and misery. There the underlings are forever trampled under the feet of God; they are beneath, below, under! (Prov 15:24).

2. Hell is said to be darkness, and heaven is said to be light. Light shows the pleasantness and the desirableness of heaven; darkness shows the dismalness and weariness of hell. And how wearily, oh, how wearily and wearisomely, as I may say, will damned souls turn themselves from side to side and from place to place in hell, while they are swallowed up in the thickest darkness and gripped by the burning thoughts of the endlessness of that most unutterable misery! (Matt 22:13).

3. Men are said to go up to heaven, but they are said to go down to hell. Up, because of exaltation, and because those who go to heaven must abound in beauty and glory. Down, because of the sad dejection, the great deformity and the vile contempt that sin has brought on those who go to hell (Ezek 32:18).

4. Heaven is called a hill or mount (Heb 12); hell is called a pit or hole (Rev 9:2). Heaven is called a mount, Mount Zion (Rev 14), to show how God has exalted, and will exalt, those who loved him in the world. Hell is called a pit or hole, to show how all the ungodly will be buried in the yawning paunch and belly of hell, as in a hollow cave.

5. Heaven! Heaven is spoken of as the height of heaven (Job 22:12), and hell as the bottomless pit (Rev 9:2; Rev 20:3). The height of heaven shows that the exaltation of those who ascend up there is both perfect and unsearchable. The bottomless pit of hell shows that the downfall of those who descend into it will never come to an end. Down, down, down they go, and nothing but down, down still!

6. Heaven! It is called the paradise of God (Rev 2:7), but hell is called the burning lake (Rev 20:15). A paradise, to show how quiet, harmless, sweet and beautiful heaven will be to those who possess it, as the garden was at the beginning of creation. Hell, the burning lake, to allude to Sodom, which since its destruction has been turned into a stinking lake. It shows that just as their distress was unutterable, to the highest amazement, full of confusion and horror, when that tempestuous storm of fire and brimstone was rained on them from the Lord out of heaven, so it will be, to the utmost degree, with the souls that are lost and cast into hell.

7. It is said that there are dwelling houses, or places, in the kingdom of heaven (John 14:1-3; Zech 3:7; Isa 57:1-2), and also that there are cells, or chambers of death, in hell (Prov 7:27). There are mansions, or dwelling places, in heaven, to show that everyone who goes there may have his reward according to his work. We are also told that there is hell, and the lowest hell (Deut 32:22; Ps 86:13). And there are chambers of death in hell, to show that there are places and states in hell too, in which sinners are imprisoned according to their faults. That is why it is said of some that they shall receive greater damnation (Luke 20:47), and of others that it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the judgment than for them (Luke 10:12, 14).

The lowest hell! How many hells there are above that one, or tormenting places more tolerable than the most extreme torments there, God and those who are there know best. But there are degrees, without doubt, and the term “lowest” shows the utmost and most extreme distress. So it is with the chambers of death, the second death in hell, for that is how I think the words should be understood: “Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death” (Prov 7:27). These are the chambers set in opposition to the chambers in the temple, or to the dwelling places in the house in heaven. And this opposition shows that as there will be degrees of glory in heaven, so there will be degrees of torment in hell.

There is every reason for it, since the punishment must be inflicted by God, who is infinitely just. Why should a poor, simple, ignorant man, though damned, be punished with the same degree of torment as the man who has lived a thousand times worse? It cannot be. Justice will not allow it; guilt, and the quality of the transgression, will not allow it; yes, the tormenting fire of hell itself will not allow it. For hellfire can kindle on nothing but sin, and on the sinner for the sake of his sin; and sin is like oil to that fire, as the Holy Spirit seems to suggest when he says, “Let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones” (Ps 109:18). If that is so, then as the quantity of the oil is, so the fire will burn, and so the flaming flame will ascend, and the smoke of their torment, forever and ever.

Suppose there is a piece of timber smeared with a little oil, and another that has been soaking in it for many years. Which of these two, do you think, would burn fiercest? And from which would the flaming flame ascend highest and make the most roaring noise? Suppose two vessels filled with oil, one holding a pint and the other a hogshead. And suppose they were both set on fire in one place, yet in such a way that their flames could not mix. No, even if they did mix, everyone would still conclude that the most amazing, roaring flame would be on the biggest vessel and would be the effect of the greatest quantity of oil. So it will be with the wicked in hell. The lowest hell is for the biggest sinners, and theirs will be the greater damnation and the more intolerable torment. Yet even he who has the least of this oil of sin in his bones, and the least of the kindlings of hellfire on him, will find he has hell enough, and will be weary enough of it. For he must still struggle with flames that are everlasting, because sin is such a thing that it can never be burned out of the soul and body of a damned sinner.

But again, having treated hell in this way, we will now speak a word or two about sin, for sin is what hellfire seizes on, and through sin it seizes on the soul. Sin! It is the sting of hell. “The sting of death is sin” (1 Cor 15:56). By “death” in this place we must not understand natural death, but the death that is in hell, the second death, that is, everlasting damnation. For the saints die a natural death, yes, and many sinners too, without the least touch of a sting from it. But here is a death that has a sting to hurt, to twinge and to wound the sinner with, even at the very time when it has the utmost mastery over him. And this is the death that the saved are delivered from. It is not natural death, for that is their end as well as the end of others (1 Cor 15:55; Eccl 2:15-16). It is the second death, the death in hell, for that is the portion of the damned, and it is from that death that the saints have a promise of deliverance: “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death” (Rev 2:11). And again: “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power” (Rev 20:6).

It is this death, then, that has the chambers to hold each damned soul in. And sin is the twining, winding, biting, poisoning sting of this death, or of these chambers of hell, with which sinners are stricken, stung and pierced. “The sting of death is sin.” Sin in general is the sting of hell, for there would be no such thing as torment even there, were it not that sin is there with sinners. For, as I have already hinted, the fire of hell, the indignation and wrath of God, can fasten and kindle on nothing except for sin, or because of sin. Sin, then, as sin, is the sting and the hell of hells, of the lowest and the uppermost hells. Sin, I say, in its very nature, simply as both God and the damned conclude it to be a breach of his holy law, is the sting of the second death, which is the worm of hell.

But then, as sin is such a sting in itself, so it is heightened, sharpened, and made keener and sharper by the circumstances that go along with it in every act. For no sin is ever committed by anyone without some circumstance or other attending it, which makes it bigger and sharper, and more venomous and poisonous to the soul, when God’s law charges it home, than it would be if it could be committed without them. And this is the sting of the hornet, the great sting.

I sinned without a cause, to please a base lust, to gratify the devil: here is the sting! Again, I preferred sin to holiness, death to life, hell to heaven, the devil to God, and damnation to a Savior: here is the sting! Again, I preferred moments to everlasting ages, temporal things to eternal things, and being racked and forever slain to the life that is blessed and endless: here is the sting! Also, I did this against light, against convictions, against conscience, against the persuasion of friends and ministers, and against the godly lives I saw in others: here is the sting! Also, I did this against warnings and forewarnings, yes, even though I saw others fall before my face by the mighty hand of God for committing the very same sin: here is the sting!

Sinners, I wish I could persuade you to hear me out! A man cannot commit a sin without, by committing it, sharpening the sting of hell through some circumstance or other, and sharpening it to pierce himself through and through, and through, with many sorrows (1 Tim 6:10).

Also, for some, the sting of hell will be that the damnation of others is charged to their account. For it is by imitating them, by being deluded by them, persuaded by them and drawn in by them, that those others perish in hell forever. And that is why these chief sinners must die in themselves all the deaths that the damned ones they have drawn into hell must also bear in their own souls forever. God threatened this to the prince of Tyre, that capital sinner, because by his pride, power, practice and policy he had cast others down into the pit. Therefore God says to him, “They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas.” And again, “Thou shalt die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers; for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God” (Ezek 28:8, 10). Ah! This will be the sting for those who are the principal, the chief, and, as I may call them, the captain and ringleading sinners. Vipers will come out of other men’s fire and flames, and will settle on, seize on and forever stay on their consciences. And this will be the sting of hell, the great sting of hell, to them.

I will add yet more to all this. How the fair prospect some once had of heaven, even the very thought of it, will sting them when they come to hell! It will not be so much their fall into the pit as the place they fell from that will be to them the buzzing noise and the sharpened sting of the great and terrible hornet. “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer!” (Isa 14:12). There is the sting. You who are exalted up to heaven will be thrust down to hell (Matt 11:23); though you have made “thy nest among the stars,” from there I will fetch you down (Obad 4). There is a sting. To be pulled away from the everlasting gates of glory, for the love of some vain lust and through it, and to be swallowed up for it in the belly of hell, and made to lodge forever in the dark chambers of death: there is the piercing sting!

But again, as there is the sting of hell, so there is the strength of that sting. For a sting, however sharp or venomous it may be, does but little hurt if it lacks the strength to drive it home to do what it was meant to do. But this sting has strength to make it pierce into the soul: “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law” (1 Cor 15:56). Here, then, is the strength of the sting of hell: it is the law in its perfect penalty. “For without the law, sin is dead” (Rom 7:8). Yes, again he says, “Where no law is, there is no transgression” (Rom 4:15). The law, then, in its executive part, follows the soul into hell, and there it strengthens sin, that sting of hell, to pierce the soul forever and ever by charging sin on the conscience in a way that cannot be uttered. Nor can the soul rightly grumble or complain against God or against his law, for then the soul, its understanding sharpened, will clearly discern the justness, righteousness, reasonableness and goodness of the law, and see that nothing is done to it by the law but what is just and fair.

This, therefore, will put great strength and force into sin to sting the soul and to strike it with the lashes of a scorpion. Add to these things the abiding life of God: the Judge and God of this law will never die. When princes die, the law by which transgressors are at present bound in chains may be altered. But oh! Here is something else that will make this sting so sharp and keen: the God who executes this law will never die. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:30-31).