Works of John Bunyan – The Greatness of The Soul, And Unspeakableness 0f the Loss Thereof; What Shall A Man Give In Exchange For His Soul.53

 

The casting away, then, mentioned in Luke, is a casting away by the hand of God, by the revenging hand of God; and it supposes two things: 1. God's abhorrence of such a soul.  God's just repaying it for its wickedness by way of retaliation.

It supposes God's abhorrence of the soul. That which we abhor, that we cast from us, and put out of our favor and respect with disdain, and a loathing thereof. So when God teacheth 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; 25:41). 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. Wherefore, to be cast away, to be cast away by God, shows unto us God's abhorrence of such souls, and how vile and loathsome such are in His divine eyes.

 And the similitude of Abigail's sling, mentioned before, doth yet further show us 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, then he casteth it furthest from him, for with a sling he can cast a stone further than by his hand. 'And he,' saith 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 out of the middle of a sling.' When a stone is placed, to be cast away, in the middle of a sling, the slinger casts it the furthest of all. Now God is the slinger, abhorrence is His sling, and the lost soul is the stone, which is placed in the very middle of the sling, and is from there cast away.

And, therefore, it is said again, that 'such shall go into utter, outer darkness"—that is, furthest off of all. This therefore shows us how God abhors that man who, for sin, has lost himself. And well he may; for such a one has not only polluted and defiled himself with sin; and that is the most offensive thing to God under heaven, but he has abused the handiwork of God. The soul, as I said before, is the workman's hip of God, yea, the top piece that He hath made in all the visible world; also, He made it for us to be delighted with it and to admit it into communion with Himself. Now for a man to thus abuse God; 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, and notwithstanding the soul was also His; this is horrible and calls aloud upon that God whose soul this is to abhor, and to show, by all means possible, His abhorrence of such a one.