ancient times, that those who enjoyed much temporal felicity, could never enjoy eternal blessedness; and on the other hand, that those who passed through much misery on earth, should be compensated with the everduring enjoyments of heaven. To this opinion our Lord seems here to refer; and it is certain that there are multitudes of Scriptures, both in the Old and New Testaments, which appear to speak a similar language. Earthly possessions are not less dangerous than precarious: they promise much, though they perform nothing; yet as these promises still keep up the expectation, and increase the desire, the soul is diverted from seeking its rest in God; for rich men think they have reason to believe, that their wealth will secure them all possible happiness in this life. The poor cannot have this expectation, as there is nothing to support it; therefore, in times of distress, affliction, and want, they are obliged, if they seek at all, to seek in God, that happiness which they find their circumstances will not permit them to expect in life. As the gospel promises innumerable blessings to those who believe, they, pressed with want and distress, are glad to embrace it, while the others are too busy, or too happy, to obey the call of God, or seek that salvation, the want of which they scarcely ever permit their souls to feel. O! how deceitful are riches! Ye who possess them, hold them with a trembling hand; for all that you have received, you must give account to God. Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. Draw out your soul to the hungry; be, to the utmost of your power, every poor man's friend: and do not starve your own souls, and pamper your flesh, lest you should once hear, to your eternal dismay, Remember that in your life time you received your good things.

4. But privations of good, and recollection of past enjoyments, together with the earnest, though fruitless desire to escape from coming evil, and to enjoy a present good, will not form the whole of the punishment of the ungodly;

for added to these, we find present, actual torment in the burning gulf, I am tormented in this flame, ver. 24. The torments which a lost soul must endure in a hell of fire, will form, through all eternity, a continual present source of indescribable wo. Sinners may lose their time in disputing against the reality of hell-fire, till awakened to a sense of their folly, by finding themselves plunged into what God calls "the lake that burns with fire and brimstone." But let them consider, that whether the words are to be taken figuratively, or literally, the punishment they point out is awful, horrible, and real, beyond the power of language to describe, or thought to reach.

5. The well-known impossibility of ever escaping from this place of torment; or of having any alleviation of their misery in it, forms a fifth circumstance in the punishment of ungodly men. But besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, ver. 26. This is the most horrible circumstance of all to the damned, that they never can be delivered from this place of torment. The sovereign purpose of God, founded on the principles of eternal reason, separates the persons, and consequently the places of abode, of the righteous and the wicked; so that there can be no intercourse. They who wish to pass hence to you cannot, neither can they cross over who would come from you hither. Happy spirits cannot go from heaven to alleviate the miseries of the wretched, nor can any of the wretched escape from the place of their confinement to enter among the blessed. For though, from the reasons alleged under the first article, there may be a discovery from hell of the paradise of the blessed; yet there can be neither intercourse nor connexion.

On this circumstance Abraham appears to lay great stress; and therefore he emphatically adds, Kai sti Tadi TOUTOIS, but, above all other considerations, this is the chief reason, the grand irreversible decision, a great gulf is placed between us and you. Lightfoot has sufficiently proved in his Hora Talmudica, that the ancient He

brews believed that Paradise and Hell were so contiguous, that the respective inhabitants could plainly see each other. In the ancient Greek mythology, Tartarus, the place of punishment, and Elysium, the habitation of happy spirits, were represented as in the vicinity of each other, but separated by the rivers Cocytus and Phlegethon, in the latter of which ran a ceaseless stream of liquid fire. The original word xarua, signifies literally an immense gulf or chasm in the earth, without bottom, and which swallows up and renders invisible, whatever falls into it. Some of the ancients considered this as the place of tor ment. Plutarch, in his Treatise on the Damon of Socrates, gives a description of this place in the vision which Timarchus had at the cave of Trophonius.* " "Looking downward he perceived a great gulf (xaoua usya, the very words of the text,) round, resembling a sphere cut through; terrific, horrible, and deep, full of thick darkness, not quiet, but turbulent, and oftentimes belching up; whence might be heard myriads of groans, and roarings of living creatures, cries of multitudes of children, mingled with the lamentations of men and women, with noises and tumults of all descriptions, &c."

What a horrible place to spend an eternity in ! and yet the Scriptural account of hell is far more terrific. But as the term is here used to signify the place that separates paradise from perdition, we must consider it not only as a real line of demarkation, by which the limits of the place of torment and the place of blessedness are designated; but also as pointing out the impossibility of the restoration of the wretched, and the impossibility of the lapse of the blessed. In a state of probation men may

* Κατω δ' απιδοντι φαινεσθαι ΧΑΣΜΑ ΜΕΓΑ στρογγυλον, οιον εκτετμημένης σφαι ρας, φοβερον δε δεινως και βαθυ, πολλου σκοτους πληρες, ουχ ησυχαξοντος, αλλ' εκταρ αττομένου και ανακλυξοντος πολλακις : οθεν ακουεσθαι μυριας μεν ώρυγας και στεναγμους ξωων, ηυρίων δε κλαυθμον βρεφών, και μεμιγμένους ανδρών και γυναικών οδυρμους, ψοφους δε παντοδαπους, και θορύβους, κ. τ. λ.

Plutarch. D. genio Socrat. p. 663. Edit. Xyland. 1574.

stand or fall. Time is the state of probation to human spirits-in eternity their state is fixed. Those who are faithful unto death, shall receive the crown that fadeth not away. They ended their state of probation in the salvation of God; and are now irreversibly fixed in the state of glory. These cannot possibly fall, because their state of probation, in which alone defection was possible, is eternally terminated. The others fell in their state of probation, and rose not again: therefore they are consigned to an eternal separation from God: for as their time of probation is ended, consequently their state is irreversibly fixed. The great gulf, says Abraham, sorgirα εστηρικται is established, made firm and durable, and now there is no more hope! It was the opinion of Origen of old, and has been the opinion of many since his time, that the great gulf would be abolished; and that, in process of time, damned spirits should be emancipated from the. chains of darkness and perdition. This opinion was grounded on the supposition, that suffering tends to purify and expiate; that all punishment is emendatory, and that it is not likely that God should punish men eternally for those faults which they had committed in time. Leaving the nature of sin entirely out of the question, as well as the justice of God, we must consider that the final se paration of an unholy soul from God, is a necessary consequence of the state in which it is found. For as it is unholy, it cannot be united to God, because God is holy, If then it cannot be united to him, it must be separated from him; and as he is the fountain of happiness, to be separated from him is to be separated from happiness, and consequently to be in a state of misery. The perdition, therefore, of ungodly souls is not so much an effect of the vindictive justice of God, as a necessary consequence of the unholy state in which they are found at their departure from the body. If it be possible for them to grow holy in hell, of course they may at last be capable of endless union with God. But suffering cannot produce such

a change, because suffering is an effect produced by sin; and it is physically and morally impossible that an effect should destroy the cause by which it is produced. Reprobate souls suffer only because they are sinful; and while sin remains they must suffer; and as suffering, which is an effect of sin, cannot destroy its producing cause, so misery must continue, unless their guilt be pardoned, and their nature be made pure. But there is no direct evidence from Scripture that ever this will be done, and therefore no solid ground to support a sinner's hope, that he shall ever be permitted to cross this great gulf, and enter into the abodes of the blessed. It would be easy to strengthen these observations with other arguments, but they are waived, because not arising out of the text. We may, therefore, safely conclude, from the evidence afforded in the Sacred Writings, that a consciousness of the impossibility of ever being freed from the gulf of perdition, must form another circumstance in the torment of the lost.

6. The recollection, that their bad example and influence have perverted others, and brought them into the same ruin with themselves, must be a source of misery to the ungodly; for, according to the requisitions of justice, a man should suffer for the evil, and in proportion to the evil he has done to others. Send Lazarus to my father's house, to testify unto my five brethren, that they come not into this place of torment, ver: 27, 28. "A rich man," says Father Quesnel, "by leaving his relatives an example of an effeminate and voluptuous life, and likewise riches to enable them to imitate his example, leaves them two means of damning themselves, and is punished in hell for so doing. For one part of damnation consists in being exposed to the reproaches of those whom we have loved in an improper manner, and thereby made companions in our misery." His brothers had, no doubt, been influenced by his example, and led to content themselves with an earthly portion, and thus forget their im