Second object of deprecatory prayer - How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings 4/4

   It was the speech of a gracious woman when on the very marches of death: ‘O Lord, send me not to hell among such filthy company, which thou knowest I have not liked on earth.’  But as for those that can fadge very well with their lusts, and the company of the wicked here, I know not how they can thus depre­cate that place where they shall meet with that which pleaseth them so much on earth.  David, Ps. 26, first protests his abhorrency against the ways and society of the wicked: ‘I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers; I have hated the congregation of evil-doers; and will not sit with the wicked,’ ver. 4, 5: then his zeal for God, and delight he had in his house to praise and serve him, ver. 6-8.  After which, he breaks out into this prayer, ‘Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men,’ ver. 9.  As if he had said, I am not of their knot in my life, O let me not be of their bundle at my death.  I have praised thee on earth, send me not to blaspheme thee in hell.  I have loved the habitations of thy house here, let me not dwell with unclean spirits hereafter.

           (b) Hell is a state of separation from the blissful presence of God.  Pray to be delivered from it under this notion—as it is the last, yea, everlasting excommunication of the creature from God.  ‘Go, ye cursed,’ that is, never to see my sweet face more—called therefore ‘outer darkness,’ because not the least beam or stricture of his favour to enlighten the souls of the damned, nor the least crevice is left open for hope to expect it.  The heat of hell-fire is not so dismal, as the want of this light.  This makes them cursed; ‘Go, ye cursed.’  The curse lies in their depar­ture from God, the fountain of all blessing.  All be­sides this were tolerable.  Would God cast but one kind look upon those miserable souls, as they swim in this lake of fire and brimstone, it were able to change the property of the place, and the joy thereof were enough to take away the sense of their torment.  The three worthies in Daniel could walk in the fire, having God to bear them company, as if they had been only in the sunshine.  That which a saint prizeth most in heaven is the presence of God: ‘So shall we ever be with the Lord,’ I Thes. 4:17.  And hell is most dreaded by them, because a gulf is fixed between the souls in it and God, that no communion can be had with him to all eternity.  O how few pray against hell under this notion! how few cry out with David, ‘Cast me not away from thy presence!’ Ps. 51:11.  If this were the thing above all they feared should befall them in the other world, would they so willingly live without ac­quaintance with God in this world?  Surely no.

           (c) Hell is a state wherein the damned can never actually satisfy God’s justice; for their debt being infinite, and they, because creatures, but finite, will ever be paying.  But the last farthing can never be paid, which is the only reason they lie forever in prison, because it can never be said, ‘Now God hath his due.’  But Christ, the saints’ pay-master, dis­charged their whole debt at once, and took in the bond, which he nailed to his cross, leaving no back-reckoning unpaid, to bring the believer afterward into any danger from the hands of divine justice. Now, as an ingenuous debtor desires his freedom at his cred­itor’s hands, that thereby he may be capable of paying his debt, as well as to escape the misery that himself should endure by his imprisonment; so an ingenuous soul—and such is every saint—deprecates hell, as well with an eye to God’s glory, as to his own ease and happiness.  Lord, saith the sincere soul, if thou pack­est me away to hell, there I shall pay thee, it is true, by my just torments something in a dribbling way by retail, but never be able to discharge the whole sum; but at Christ’s hands thou mayest receive to the full what thy justice can demand at mine, and also make me thy poor creature a trumpeter of thy praise to eternity.  O send me not to blaspheme thee among that wretched crew of damned souls and unclean spirits, who so much desire to join with the choir of holy angels and saints in singing hallelujahs to thy holy and glorious name.