July 30 — On the Entertainments of Hell

Consider, first, what kind of entertainments are prepared in a miserable eternity, to succeed the banquets and revellings, and other extravagances of a voluptuous life, in which worldlings pass this short time of their mortality. O, how strangely shall the scene be altered, when, immediately after death, they shall find their souls buried in hell! Ah! what kind of feasting shall they meet with there! what ravenous hunger and thirst, without being ever able to obtain so much as one drop of water I Their wine is the gall of dragons and the venom of asps, which is incurable Deut. xxxii. 33. Their cups are full of the wine of the wrath of God, Revel, xiv — cups of liquid fire, and stinking sulphur. Their gardens of pleasures are turned into a pool of fire and biimstone, their carnal embraces into the eternal gnawings of infernal serpents ever preying upon their bosoms.

Consider, secondly, the music with which these wretches shall be foi ever entertained in hell: eternal bowlings and yellings, eternal shrieks and groans, eternal curses and blasphemies; the insulting voices of the tormentors, scoffing at their sufferings, the lashes of their scourges, d&c. Ah, unhappy sinners, who shall have such entertainments as these! Surely if there were nothing else ia hell but the being condemned to an everlasting night, in the n idst of all this horror and confusion of so many frightful noisej, dismal groans, and horrid blasphemies, any reasonable man would choose the worst of temporal evils, rather than to be condemned to eternity to such a melancholy entertainment.

Consider, thirdly, that the sense of smelling, in the damned, shall also have its share in this infernal feast, where it shall be for ever regaled with the loathsome exhalations of those filthy dungeons below, and with the intolerable stench of those half putrefied carcasses that are broiling there. And what shall come in to complete the misery of their entertainment, shall be the abominable company, which they must have with them for endless ages, of so many hideous spirits, so many merciless devils, and, what shall be worse to them than devils, the unhappy partners of their sins. O, what bitter hatred, what hellish rage and fury, shall their former love be turned into! O, how shall they now curse, how shall they tear and torment one another, being eternally chained together, in those black fiery links, which, by their dark passions and lusts, they have in their life time made for themselves I O worldlings, break then your bonds in sunder,now, whilst you have time; withdraw yourselves now fi-om all the objects of your criminal passions, and all disorderly affections. lest, if you carry them with you out of this world, they serve for nothing else but to add so many fiery links to your everlasting chains, and to bind you down to as many devils.

Conclude to fly, for the future, from a voluptuous life, and all the sinful entertainments of the children of this world, who heme their consolation here, and who laugh now, but shall mourn and weep hereafter, (St. Luke vi.;) and, for thy part, to lament henceforward the share thou hast had with them, whilst thou hast walked on with them in the broad road of a worldly life; and by these penitential tears, joined with a new life, thou shalt escape having a share with them in the entertainments of i>ell.