The ability of the soul to bear.
10. Nor doth their ability to bear, if it is proper to say they bear those dolors which there forever they shall endure, a little demonstrate their greatness. Everlasting burning, devouring fire, perpetual pains, gnawing worms, utter darkness, and the ireful souls, faces, 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 the soul that is damned for sin doth bear these things, as to say it doth ever sink under them: and, therefore, their place of torment is called the bottomless pit, because they are ever sinking, and shall never come there where they will find any stay. Yet they live under wrath, but yet only so as to be sensible of it, as to smart and be in perpetual anguish, by reason of the intolerableness of their burden. But doth not their thus living, abiding, and retaining a being(or what you will call it), demonstrate the greatness and might of the soul? Alas! heaven and earth are short of this greatness, for these, though under less judgment by far, do fade and wax 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 fear of the rebukes of justice, how soon, I say, it wastes, molders away, and crumbles into the grave; but the soul is yet strong, and abides sensible to be dealt withal for sin by everlasting burnings.
The might of the soul is further shown.
11. The soul, by God's ordinance, while this world lasts, has a time appointed it to forsake and leave the body to be turned again to the dust as it was, and this separation is made by death, (Heb 9:27); therefore the body must cease for a time to have sense, or life, or motion; and a little thing brings it now into this state; but in the next world, the wicked shall partake of none of this; for the body and the soul being at the resurrection rejoined, this death, that once did rend them asunder, is forever overcome and extinct; so that these two which lived in sin must forever be yoked together in hell. Now, there the soul is joined to the body, and death, which before did separate them, being utterly taken away, the soul retains not only its own being, but also continueth the body to be, and to suffer sensibly the pains of hell, without those decays that it used to sustain.
And the reason why this death shall then be taken away is, that justice in its bestowing 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 destruction, which, though it is everlasting, will not put a period to their sensible suffering the vengeance of eternal fire (2 Thess 1:8,9).
This death, therefore, though that also be the wages of sin, would now, were it suffered to continue, be a hindrance to the making known of the wrath of God, and also of 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 sensible suffering for sin, and so removing one of the objects of vengeance the power of God's wrath would be so far undiscovered. (2.) It would also hinder the manifestation of the power and might of the soul, which is discovered much by its abiding to retain its own being while the wrath of God is grappling with it, and more by its continuing to the body a sensible being with itself.
Death, therefore, must now be removed, that the soul may be made the object of wrath without molestation or interruption. That the soul, did I say? yea, that soul and body both might be so. Death would now be a favor, though once the fruit of sin, and also the wages thereof, might it now be suffered to continue, because it would ease the soul of some of its burden: for a tormented body cannot but be a burden to a spirit, and so the wise man insinuates when he says, 'The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity;' that is, bear up under it, but yet so as that it feels it a burden. We see that, because of the sympathy that is between body and soul, how 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, but 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, there will be a burden upon burden, and all upon the soul, for the soul will be the chief seat of this burden! But thus much to show you the greatness of the soul.
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