it is
easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that any thing hangs by:
thus easy is it for God, when he pleases, to cast his enemies down to
hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before him, at whose
rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?
They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands
in the way, it makes no objection against God's using his power at any
moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an
infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that
brings forth such grapes of Sodom, "Cut it down, why ***bereth it the
ground?" Luke 13:7. The sword of divine justice is every moment
brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary
mercy, and God's mere will, that holds it back.
They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They do not
only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the law
of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has
fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands
against them; so that they are bound over already to hell. John 3:18.
"He that believeth not is condemned already." So that every unconverted
man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is, John
8:23. "Ye are from beneath:" And thither he is bound; it is the place
that justice, and God's word, and the sentence of his unchangeable law
assign to him.
They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God, that
is expressed in the torments of hell. And the reason why they do not go
down to hell at each moment, is not because God, in whose power they
are, is not then very angry with them; as he is with many miserable
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