XVIII. would then follow that they should be alfo SER M. rewarded or punished as their Deeds have deserved; Because when Sentence is paffed, the Execution of it must follow. But now we have seen that no Judgment will be paffed until the Day of Judgment: And therefore it will follow that no one till then can' be admitted into Heaven or caft into Hell. And indeed were good Men in Heaven, or bad Men in Hell as foon as they depart; it is ftrange that the one or the other should be afterwards brought from thence, only to be judged and fent thither again. It should feem one would think too late to enquire into the Juftice of thofe Torments which the Damned perhaps have already born fome thousands of Years; or into the Right of the Juft to that Happiness and Bliss, which they have already been in Poffeffion of for as long a Duration. J But further, the Punishment to which the Wicked fhall be condemned at the Day of Judgment is the everlasting Fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels, Mat. xxv. 41. which is another Proof that the Punishment which the Wicked hall then what none shall fuffer before. at all likely that wicked Men, Ee 4 undergo, is For it is not though the XIV. SERM. Servants of the Devil, fhould be caft into Hell Fire before the Devil himself, for whom it is prepared. And it is plain from the Scriptures that even the Devil will not be thrown into thofe everlafting Torments till the Day of Judgment, I know there is a Paffage in the fecond Epiftle of St. Peter Chap. ii. 4. and another in the fingle Epistle of St. Jude ver. 6. which fome have imagined to imply that the Devils are already there. But neither of those Places affirm that the Devils are already punished; but exprefly say that they are referved unto Judgment as in St. Peter, or referved unto the Judgment of the great Day, as it is expreffed in St. Jude. If then they are only referved unto Judgment, then is their Sentence no more paffed on them as yet, than upon a Prisoner kept in Chains till the Affizes. They may tremble with the Dread of what they know they are to fuffer; but they are not yet affected with the Pain. That this is true, we have their own Teftimony, if it may be taken, in a Question which some of them put to our Saviour, What have we to do with thee, Jefu, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the Time? Mat. viii, 29. which fhewed that they were not, XIV. not, while our Saviour was on Earth, and SER M. ftill hoped that they fhould not be foon thrown into Torments, For they befought bim (St. Luke tells us) that he would not command them to go out into the Deep, Luke 2. 31. or, as it is in the Original, into the Abyfs or bottomless Pit, which is the Place which another Scripture tells us, they shall be caft into hereafter, Rev. xx. 3. The two Places of St. Peter and St, Jude I just now mentioned, if rightly tranflated, are fufficient to clear up this Matter to us. As we read them in our English Testaments indeed they are a little difficult. God Spared not the Angels that finned, but caft them down to Hell (faith our Tranflation) and delivered them into Chains of Darkness, to be reServed unto Judgment. But now here is a plain Mifinterpretation of that Word in the Greek, which we render cafting down into Hell: For in the Original it is faid, that they were caft down into Tartarus, *i. e. into the Air, or the Place about the Clouds, between Heaven and Earth: Which being rightly understood, and the other Members of the Text rightly difpofed, the whole Verse will Taglagwoas. See Whitby in 2 Pet. ii, 4. run SERM. run thus. XVIII. God did not Spare the Angels that finned, but having caft them down into the Air, delivered them to be kept in Chains of Darkness unto Judgment, i. e. Those Angels which formerly inhabited the Regions of perpetual Light and Day, were caft down for their Sins, into the Place about the Clouds, into the Atmosphere of the Earth, or into the Regions of our Air, where the cleareft Light is Smoke and Darkness in Comparifon of the Regions from whence they fell And there they are delivered into Chains of Darkness, i. e. they are confined, by the eternal Decree of God, from ascending again into the Regions of Light, being referved unto a greater and a much more difmal Catastrophe or Fall at the Judgment of the great Day.. And in this Sense must that other Paffage be understood, which we meet with in St. Jude. The Angels which kept not their first Estate, but left their own Habitations, he has referved in everlafting Chains under Darkness unto the Judgment of the great Day. From hence it follows, that though the Devil and his Angels are at present for ever banished from Heaven and the Prefence of God, and fo even now fuffer the Lofs of the *See Sherlock on Judgment, p. 164. beatifick 4 beatifick Vision; though, in the Language of Tertullian*, they are condemned beforehand to the tremendous Day, or fore-ordained to eternal Punishment, as St. Austin speaks; yet they don't suffer at present the infernal Flames, but as the Fathers generally held for the first 500 Years after Chrift, they have their Manfion or Refidence, or (to speak more properly) wander and ftray in that Space between Heaven and Earth, which belongs to our Atmosphere or Air, from whence they shall be thrown down at the Day of Judgment into the Lake of Fire and BrimStone (fays the facred Text) where they shall be tormented Day and Night for ever and ever, Rev. xx. 10. Accordingly we find it to have been the conftant Belief of former Times, of Jews and Heathens, as well as of Chriftians, that the Air or whole Atmosphere of our Earth was full of these evil and unhappy Spirits +. And that the great St. Paul (who is of fufficient Authority for us to follow) believed the fame, appears from his calling the Devil, the Prince of the Power of the Air, Ephef. ii. 2. and from the Advice he gives us to put on the See in Whitby, ut fupra. See the Authorities in Whitby on Ephes. ii. 2. whole SERM. XVIII. |
