Take Up the Cross

Before the LORD: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth.
— Psalm 96:13

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
— Hebrews 9:27

I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.
— Isaiah 63:3

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
— Revelation 20:13-15

The Subject and General Division of the Discourse on the Punishment of Sin in Hell, by Thomas Goodwin. The following contains Chapter One of his work, “Of the Punishment of Sin in Hell.”

Of the punishment of sin in hell—That the wrath of God is the immediate cause of that punishment.

For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, the Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.—HEB. 10:30, 31

In flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.—2 THES. 1:8, 9

What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering, the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?—ROMANS 9:22

CHAPTER I

The subject and general division of the discourse

We have seen how sinful and guilty every man is in his unregenerate condition; what last remains, is to consider the greatness of that punishment, which all this sinfulness deserves: a punishment so great that it cannot be comprehended by our thoughts, nor ever be sufficiently expressed. For what hell and destruction are, is a mystery, as well as what heaven is: and the true and proper notion or conception of either, are a riddle to the most of men. As ‘eye hath not seen, ear not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man’ (the natural man),’what God hath prepared for those that love him;’ so, nor what God hath prepared for them that hate him. For it is the same, and no other punishment but that which is ‘prepared for the devil and his angels,’ as Christ says. And what it can be that should torment them, or be the immediate executioner of vengeance on them, the imagination of man, confined to worldly agents and instruments, cannot divine or take in.

Other scriptures go metaphorically to work in setting out this punishment by things outwardly, sensibly dreadful. But these scriptures (of all other) that are my texts, do more plainly, and without parables, declare it to us, in its immediate causes, and from them do leave us to infer the fearfulness.

For instance, other scriptures set it out to us as a ‘prison,’ 1 Peter 3:19, large enough, to be sure, to hold men and devils: ‘The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God,’ Ps. 9:17. As also by their being retained in chains of darkness, 2 Peter 2:4, where men must lie till they have paid the utmost farthing, Mat. 5:26; where is nothing but ‘darkness, utter darkness,’ ‘blackness of darkness,’ Jude 4, that is, an emptiness of all good, not a beam of light to all eternity; also a ‘place of torment,’ Luke 16:28, where there is not admitted ‘one drop to cool one’s tongue,’ in the midst of the most raging scorchings. Also, I find it elsewhere expressed by the most horrid punishments and tortures that were found amongst the nations, cutting men in pieces, dividing them in the midst (διχοτομήσει, Mat. 24:49, 51), tearing them in pieces, Ps. 50:22; ‘cutting them up to the backbone,’ Heb. 4:12, 13;* ‘drowning men in perdition,’ 1 Tim. 6:9, and that with ‘millstones about their necks,’ as Christ adds, Mat. 18:6, to make sure they never rise again; also unto a being cast ‘bound hand and foot,’ Mat. 22:13,’into fire,’ to be burnt alive; ‘a furnace of fire,’ twice in one chapter, Mat. 13:42, 49, 50; ‘a lake of fire,’ and so drowned over head and ears for ever; a lake ‘fed with a stream of brimstone,’ which (of all matter that feedeth fire) is the most fierce; then again,’eternal fire,’ and that never to be slacked or extinguished. And you may with the like analogy go over whatever else of torment is most exquisite to outward sense.

But these and all else you can imagine, are but shadows and similitudes (as I myself heard one upon the rack of terror of conscience cry out, in a like comparison, These are but metaphors to what I feel), and indeed unto what the thing itself is. As to say of heaven, there are rivers of pleasures, a city whereof the streets are of gold, the gates of pearl, and such like, they are but metaphorical descriptions; for it is God himself that is the fountain of life. And oppositely it is said of the wrath to come, that ‘God is a consuming fire,’ Heb. 12:20.

But these scriptures which I have read, they all speak essences, quintessences. And as hell is said to be ‘naked before the Lord, and without a covering,’ Job 16:16, so do these words lay hell open nakedly, not unto our senses, but to the understanding of us, and then they leave us to infer how fearful! And although these scriptures consist of words that differ, yet they conspire together in the same scope and matter, viz., to set out damnation to us in the true and proper causes, and the real horridness thereof argued from those causes.

I shall confine myself to two heads; and in handling thereof, what the one of these scriptures is wanting in, the other will supply; in what the one is dark, the other explains. The heads themselves I shall take as I find them in the first of these Scriptures, Heb. 10:31.

First, That God himself, by his own hands, that is, the power of his wrath, is the immediate inflicter of that punishment or destruction of men’s souls in hell. It is a ‘falling into the hands of God.’

Secondly, The dreadfulness of that punishment inferred and argued therefrom: ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’

Which two are the doctrinal parts of this discourse.

For the first, that God himself is the immediate inflicter, &c.

For explication. We must distinguish how that God performs two parts herein: 1. Of a judge, to give forth the sentence of his authority. 2. Of an avenger, a party injured and provoked, and, as such, the inflicter. My scope in this distinction is, that we may, in reading the scriptures that speak of this punishment, know how to put a difference, and not transfer the whole of God’s agency in this matter unto that of sentencing it as a judge only. And besides that many scriptures do apart shew this distinction, there are some that still carry along with them both these agencies, or hand of God in it together, and yet as distinct; the one under the term of wrath and vengeance, the other under the notion of its being a judgment, the judgment of God and the judgment of hell-fire,* as Mat. 23:33. Thus first the text Heb. 10 terms it somewhile ‘vengeance and fiery indignation,’ ver. 30, 27; then again judgment, as ver. 27,’a fearful looking for of judgment,’ and ver. 30,’the Lord will judge,’ &c. The like, Rom. 2:5, 8, 9, where all is reduced in like manner to these two, God’s righteous judgment, and his wrath and indignation treasured up. Also, 2 Thes. 1,’The righteous judgment of God,’ vers. 5, 6, there is the sentence, and ‘destroyed from the glory of his power’ as the inflicting cause, ver. 9; likewise Rom. 9, as sovereign Lord he shews ἐξουσίαν, authority in this punishment, ver. 21, and then as the immediate inflicter, wrath and τὸ δυνατὸν, the ‘power of his wrath,’ ver. 22. That speech of our Saviour about this matter, one evangelist, Luke 12:5, records it,’Who is able, Ἐξουσίαν ἔχοντα, to cast into hell,’ namely, as a judge who casts a malefactor into prison. The other, Mat. 10:28,’Who is able, Τον δυνάμενον, to kill the soul, and to destroy body and soul in hell.’ Noting thereby that he useth his intrinsic power and force as the inflicter.

I shall be large in handling and proving this latter, as a great truth, concerning which I further premise, that I would not be understood to exclude other miseries, as inflicted by creatures used as God’s instruments, accompanying this; but that which I contend for is, that principally and eminently above all such, it is the wrath and indignation of God himself, working immediately in and upon men’s souls and consciences, that is intended in these and other scriptures. This is the subject of the first section of this discourse.

And let it be noticed now at the entrance, that the same scriptures and reasons that shall be brought to prove this in this first section, will be found again to serve as new arguments by way of inference, to set out and infer the latter also; that is, the dreadfulness of it, as will appear in the second section.

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