Karin Stephen - "The Misuse of Mind"

Edith A. How - "People of Africa"

Constance Skinner - "Pioneers of the Old Southwest"

C.C. Andrews - "Minnesota and Dacotah"

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Books: The Works of John Bunyan Volume 1

J >> John Bunyan >> The Works of John Bunyan Volume 1




The soul capable of diving into the depths and mysteries of hell.

9. But again, as the soul is thus capable of enjoying God in glory,
and of prying into these mysteries that are in him, so it is capable,
with great profundity, to dive into the mysterious depths of hell.
Hell is a place and state utterly unknown to any in this visible
world, excepting the souls of men; nor shall any for ever be capable
of understanding the miseries thereof, save souls and fallen angels.
Now, I think, as the joys of heaven stand not only in speculation,
or in beholding of glory, but in a sensible enjoyment and unspeakable
pleasure which those glories will yield to the soul (Psa 16:11),
so the torments of hell will not stand in the present lashes and
strokes which by the flames of eternal fire God will scourge the
ungodly with; but the torments of hell stand much, if not in the
greatest part of them, in those deep thoughts and apprehensions,
which souls in the next world will have of the nature and occasions
of sin; of God, and of separation from Him; of the eternity of those
miseries, and of the utter impossibility of their help, ease, or
deliverance for ever. O! damned souls will have thoughts that will
clash with glory, clash with justice, clash with law, clash with
itself, clash with hell, and with the everlastingness of misery;
but the point, the edge, and the poison of all these thoughts will
still be galling, and dropping, and spewing out their stings into
the sore, grieved, wounded, and fretted place, which is the conscience,
though not the conscience only; for I may say of the souls in hell,
that they all over are but one wound, one sore! Miseries as well
as mercies sharpen and make quick the apprehensions of the soul.
Behold Spira in his book, 14 Cain in his guilt, and Saul with the
witch of Endor, and you shall see men ripened, men enlarged and
greatened in their fancies, imaginations, and apprehensions though
not about God, and heaven, and glory, yet about their loss, their
misery, and their woe, and their hells (Isa 33:14; Psa 1:4; Rev
14:10; Mark 9:44,46).

The ability of the soul to bear.

10. Nor doth their ability to bear, if it be proper to say they
bear those dolors which there for ever they shall endure, a little
demonstrate their greatness. Everlasting burning, devouring fire,
perpetual pains, gnawing worms, utter darkness, and the ireful
souls, face, 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 a fear
of the rebukes of justice, how soon, I say, it wastes, moulders
away, and crumbleth 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 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 for ever overcome and
extinct; so that these two which lived in sin must for ever be
yoked together in hell. Now, there the soul being 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, because
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 a 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 hinderance 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 favour, 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 be 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, here will be 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.

[OF THE LOSS OF THE SOUL.]

THIRD, I shall now come to the third thing which was propounded to
be spoken to; and that is, to show you what we are to understand
by losing of the soul, or what the loss of the soul is--'What shall
a man give in exchange for his soul?'

[He that loseth his soul loseth himself.]

First, The loss of the soul is a loss, in the nature of it, peculiar
to itself. There is no such loss, as to the nature of loss, as is
the loss of the soul; for that he that hath lost his soul has lost
himself. In all other losses, it is possible for a man to save
himself, but he that loseth his soul, loseth himself--'For what is
a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself?'
(Luke 9:25). Wherefore, the loss of the soul is a loss that cannot
be paralleled. He that loseth himself, loseth his all, his lasting
all; for himself is his all--his all in the most comprehensive
sense. What mattereth it what a man gets, if by the getting thereof
he loseth himself? Suppose a man goeth to the Indies for gold, and
he loadeth his ship therewith; but at his return, that sea that
carried him thither swallows him up--now, what has he got? But this
is but a lean similitude with reference to the matter in hand--to
wit, to set forth the loss of the soul. Suppose a man that has been
at the Indies for gold should, at his return, himself be taken by
them of Algiers, and there made a slave of, and there be hunger-bit,
and beaten till his bones are broken, 15 what has he got? what
is he advantaged by his rich adventure? Perhaps, you will say, he
has got gold enough to obtain his ransom. Indeed this may be; and
therefore no similitude can be found that can fully amplify the
matter, 'for what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' 'Tis
a loss that standeth by itself, there is not another like it, or
unto which it may be compared. 'Tis only like itself--'tis singular,
'tis the chief of all losses--the highest, the greatest loss. 'For
what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' A man may lose
his wife, his children, his estate, his liberty, and his life, and
have all made up again, and have all restored with advantage, and
may, therefore, notwithstanding all these losses, be far enough off
from losing of himself. (Luke 14:26; Mark 8:35). For he may lose
his life, and save it; yea, sometimes the only way to save that,
is to lose it; but when a man has lost himself, his soul, then all
is gone to all intents and purposes. There is no word says, 'he
that loses his soul shall save it;' but contrariwise, the text
supposeth that a man has lost his soul, and then demands if any can
answer it--'What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' All,
then, that he gains that loseth his soul is only this, he has gained
a loss, he has purchased the loss of losses, he has nothing left
him now but his loss, but the loss of himself, of his whole self.
He that loseth his life for Christ, shall save it; but he that
loseth himself for sin, and for the world, shall lose himself
to perfection of loss; he has lost himself, and there is the full
point.

There are several things fall under this first head, upon which I
would touch a little.

He that has lost himself will never be more at his own dispose.

(1.) He that has lost his soul has lost himself. Now, he that lost
himself is no more at his own dispose. While a man enjoys himself,
he is at his own dispose. A single man, a free man, a rich man,
a poor man, any man that enjoys himself, is at his own dispose. I
speak after the manner of men. But he that has lost himself is not
at his own dispose. He is, as I may say, now out of his own hands:
he has lost himself, his soul-self, his own self, his whole self,
by sin, and wrath and hell hath found him; he is, therefore, now no
more at his own dispose, but at the dispose of justice, of wrath,
and hell; he is committed to prison, to hell prison, there to
abide, not at pleasure, not as long and as little time as he will,
but the term appointed by his judge: nor may he there choose his
own affliction, neither for manner, measure, or continuance. It
is God that will spread the fire and brimstone under him, it is God
that will pile up wrath upon him, and it is God himself that will
blow the fire. And 'the breathof the Lord, like a stream of brimstone,
doth kindle it' (Isa 30:33). And thus it is manifest that he that
has lost himself, his soul, is no more at his own dispose, but at
the dispose of them that find him.

He that hath lost himself, is not at liberty to dispose of what he
hath.

(2.) Again, as he that has lost himself is not at his own dispose,
so neither is he at liberty to dispose of what he has; for the
man that has lost himself has something yet of his own. The text
implies that his soul is his when lost, yea, when that and his all,
himself is lost; but as he cannot dispose of himself, so he cannot
dispose of what he hath. Let me take leave to make out my meaning.
If he that is lost, that has lost himself, has not, notwithstanding,
something that in some sense may be called his own, then he that
is lost is nothing. The man that is in hell has yet the powers, the
senses, and passions of his soul; for not he nor his soul must be
thought to be stripped of these; for then he would be lower than
the brute; but yet all these, since he is there, are by God improved
against himself; or, if you will, the point of this man's sword is
turned against his own heart, and made to pierce his own liver.

The soul by being in hell loseth nothing of its aptness to think,
its quickness to pierce, to pry, and to understand; nay, hell
has ripened it in all these things; but, I say, the soul with its
improvements as to these, or anything else, is not in the hand of
him that hath lost himself to manage for his own advantage, but in
the hand, and in the power, and to be disposed as is thought meet
by him into whose revenging hand by sin he has delivered himself--to
wit, in the hand of God. So, then, God now has the victory, and
disposeth of all the powers, senses, and passions of the soul for
the chastising of him that has lost himself. Now the understanding
is only employed and improved in and about the apprehending of such
things as will be like daggers at the heart--to wit, about justice,
sin, hell, and eternity, to grieve and break the spirit of the
damned; yea, to break, to wound, and to tear the soul in pieces.
The depths of sin which the man has loved, the good nature of God
whom the man has hated, the blessings of eternity which the soul
has despised, shall now be understood by him more than ever, but yet
so only, as to increase grief and sorrow, by improving of the good
and of the evil of the things understood, to the greater wounding
of the spirit; wherefore now, every touch that the understanding
shall give to the memory will be as a touch of a red-hot iron, or
like a draught of scalding lead poured down the throat. The memory
also letteth those things down upon the conscience with no less
terror and perplexity. And now the fancy or imagination doth start
and stare like a man by fears bereft of wits, and doth exercise
itself, or rather is exercised by the hand of revenging justice,
so about the breadth and depth of present and future punishments,
as to lay the soul as on a burning rack. Now also the judgment, as
with a mighty maul, driveth down the soul in the sense and pangs
of everlasting misery into that pit that has no bottom; yea, it
turneth again, and, as with a hammer, it riveteth every fearful
thought and apprehension of the soul so fast that it can never be
loosed again for ever and ever. Alas! now the conscience can sleep,
be dull, be misled, or batter, no longer; no, it must now cry out;
understanding will make it, memory will make it, fancy or imagination
will make it. Now, I say, it will cry out of sin, of justice, and
of the terribleness of the punishment that hath swallowed him up
that has lost himself. Here will be no forgetfulness; yet nothing
shall be thought on but that which will wound and kill; here will
be no time, cause, or means for diversion; all will stick and gnaw
like a viper. Now the memory will go out to where sin was heretofore
committed, it will also go out to the word that did forbid it. The
understanding also, and the judgment too, will now consider of the
pretended necessity that the man had to break the commandments of
God, and of the seasonableness of the cautions and of the convictions
which were given him to forbear, by all which more load will be laid
upon him that has lost himself; for here all the powers, senses,
and passions of the soul must be made self-burners, self-tormentors,
self-executioners, by the just judgment of God; also all that the
will shall do in this place shall be but to wish for ease, but the
wish shall only be such as shall only seem to lift up, for the cable
rope of despair shall with violence pull him down again. The will
indeed will wish for ease, and so will the mind, etc., but all these
wishers will by wishing arrive to no more advantage but to make
despair which is the most twinging stripe of hell, to cut yet deepeer
into the whole soul of him that has lost himself; wherefore, after
all that can be wished for, they return again to their burning chair,
where they sit and bewail their misery. Thus will all the powers,
senses, and passions of the soul of him that has lost himself be
out of his own power to dispose for his advantage, and will be only
in the hand and under the management of the revenging justice of
God. And herein will that state of the damned be worse than it is
now with the fallen angels; for though the fallen angels are now
cast down to hell, in chains, and sure in themselves at last to
partake of eternal judgment, yet at present they are not so bound
up as the damned sinner shall be; for notwithstanding their chains,
and their being the prisoners of the horrible hells, yet they have
a kind of liberty granted them, and that liberty will last till the
time appointed, to tempt, to plot, to contrive, and invent their
mischiefs, against the Son of God and His (Job 1:7; 2:2). And though
Satan knows that this at last will work for his future condemnation,
yet at present he finds it some diversion to his trembling mind,
and obtains, through his so busily employing of himself against the
gospel and its professors, something to sport and refresh himself
withal; yea, and doth procure to himself some small crumbs of minutes
of forgetfulness of his own present misery and of the judgment that
is yet to pass upon him; but this privilege will then be denied to
him that has lost himself; there will be no cause nor matter for
diversion; there it will; as in the old world, rain day and night
fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven upon them (Rev
14:10,11). Misery is fixed; the worm will be always sucking at and
gnawing of, their soul; also, as I have said afore, all the powers,
senses, and passions of the soul will throw their darts inwards,
yea, of God will be made to do it, to the utter, unspeakable, and
endless torment of him that has lost himself. Again,

They cannot sit down by the loss.

(3.) All therefore that he that has lost himself can do is, to
sit down by the loss. Do I say, he can do this?--oh! if that could
be, it would be to such, a mercy; I must therefore here correct
myself--That they cannot do; for to sit down by the loss implies
a patient enduring; but there will be no such grace as patience in
hell with him that has lost himself; here, will also want a bottom
for patience--to wit, the providence of God; for a providence of God,
though never so dismal, is a bottom for patience to the afflicted;
but men go not to hell by providence, but by sin. Now sin being
the cause, other effects are wrought; for they that go to hell,
and that there miserably perish, shall never say it was God by His
providence that brought them hither, and so shall not have that on
which to lean and stay themselves.

They shall justify God, and lay the fault upon themselves concluding
that it was sin with which their souls did voluntarily work--yea,
which their souls did suck in as sweet milk--that is the cause of
this their torment. Now this will work after another manner, and
will produce quite another thing than patience, or a patient enduring
of their torment; for their seeing that they are not only lost, but
have lost themselves, and that against the ordinary means that of
God was provided to prevent that loss; yea, when they shall see
what a base thing sin is, how that it is the very worst of things,
and that which also makes all things bad, and that for the sake
of that they have lost themselves, this will make them fret, and,
gnash, and gnaw with anger themselves; this will set all the passions
of the soul, save love, for that I think will be stark dead, all
in a rage, all in a self-tormenting fire. You know there is nothing
that will sooner put a man into and manage his rage against himself
than will a full conviction in his conscience that by his own only
folly, and that against caution, and counsel, and reason to the
contrary, he hath brought himself into extreme distress and misery.
But how much more will it make this fire burn when he shall see all
this is come upon him for a toy, for a bauble, for a thing that is
worse than nothing!

Why, this is the case with him that has lost himself; and therefore
he cannot sit down by the loss, cannot be at quiet under the sense
of his loss. For sharply and wonderful piercingly, considering the
loss of himself, and the cause thereof, which is sin, he falls to
a tearing of himself in pieces with thoughts as hot as the coals of
juniper, and to a gnashing upon himself for this; also the Divine
wisdom and justice of God helpeth on this self-tormentor in his
self-tormenting work, by holding the justice of the law against
which he has offended, and the unreasonableness of such offence,
continually before his face. For if, to an enlightened man who
is in the door of hope, the sight of all past evil practices will
work in him 'vexation of spirit,' to see what fools we were, (Eccl
1:14); how can it but be to them that go to hell a vexation only
to understand the report, the report that God did give them of sin,
of His grace, of hell, and of everlasting damnation, and yet that
they should be such fools to go thither? (Isa 28:19). But to pursue
this head no further, I will come now to the next thing.

[The loss of the soul a double loss.]

Secondly, As the loss of the soul is, in the nature of the loss, a
loss peculiar to itself, so the loss of the soul is a double loss;
it is, I say, a loss that is double, lost both by man and God; man
has lost it, and by that loss has lost himself; God has lost it,
and by that loss it is cast away. And to make this a little plainer
unto you, I suppose it will be readily granted that men do lose
their souls. But now how doth God lose it? The soul is God's as
well as man's--man's because it is of themselves; God's because it
is His creature; God has made us this soul, and hence it is that
all souls are His (Jer 38:16; Eze 18:4).

Now the loss of the soul doth not only stand in the sin of man, but
in the justice of God. Hence He says, 'What is a man advantaged, if
he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away' (Luke
9:25). Now this last clause, 'or be cast away,' is not spoken
to show what he that has lost his soul has done, though a man may
also be said to cast away himself; but to show what God will do to
those that have lost themselves, what God will add to that loss.
God will not cast away a righteous man, but God will cast away the
wicked, such a wicked one as by the text is under our consideration
(Job 8:20; Matt 13:50). This, then, is that which God will add, and
so make the sad state of them that lose themselves double. The man
for sin has lost himself, and God by justice will cast him away;
according to that of Abigail to David, 'The soul of my lord,' said
she, 'shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God;
and the souls of thine enemies, them shall He sling out, as out of
the middle of a sling' (1 Sam 25:29). So that here is God's hand as
well as man's; man's by sin, and God's by justice. God shall cast
them away; wherefore in the text above mentioned he doth not say,
or cast away himself, as meaning the act of the man whose soul is
lost; but, 'or be cast away' (Luke 9:25). Supposing a second person
joining with the man himself in the making up of the greatness of
the loss of the soul--to wit, God himself, who will verily cast
away that man who has lost himself. God shall cast them away--that
is, exclude them His favour or protection, and deliver them up to
the due reward of their deed! He shall shut them out of His heaven,
and deliver them up to their hell; He shall deny them a share in
his glory, and shall leave them to their own shame; He shall deny
them a portion in His peace, and shall deliver them up to the torments
of the devil, and of their own guilty consciences; He shall cast
them out of His affection, pity, and compassion, and shall leave
them to the flames that they by sin have kindled, and to the worm,
or biting cockatrice, that they themselves have hatched, nursed, and
nourished in their bosoms. And this will make their loss double,
and so a loss that is loss to the uttermost, a loss above every
loss. A man may cast away himself and not be cast away of God; a
man may be cast away by others, and not be cast away of God; yea,
what way soever a man be cast away, if he be not cast away for sin,
he is safe, he is yet found, and in a sure hand. But for a man so
to lose himself as by that loss to provoke God to cast him away
too, this is fearful.

The casting away, then, mentioned in Luke, is a casting away by
the hand of God, by the revenging hand of God; and it supposeth two
things--1. God's abhorrence of such a soul. 2. God's just repaying
of it for its wickedness by way of retaliation.

1. It supposeth God's abhorrence of the soul. That which we
abhor, that we cast from us, and put out of our favour and respect
with disdain, and a loathing thereof. So when God teacheth Israel
to loathe and abhor their idols, He bids them 'to cast away their
very covering as a stinking and menstruous cloth, and to say unto
it, 'Get you hence' (Isa 30:22), 'He shall gather the good into
vessels, and cast the bad away' (Matt 13:48; 25:41). Cast them out
of My presence. Well, but whither must they go? The answer is, Into
hell, into utter darkness, into the fire that is prepared for the
devil and his angels. Wherefore, to be cast away, to be cast away
of God, it showeth unto us God's abhorrence of such souls, and how
vile and loathsome such are in His divine eyes. And the similitude
of Abigail's sling, mentioned before, doth yet further show us the
greatness of this abhorrence--'The souls of thine enemies,' said
she, 'God shall sling out as out of the middle of a sling.' When
a man casts a stone away with a sling, then he casteth it furthest
from him, for with a sling he can cast a stone further than by
his hand. 'And he,' saith the text, 'shall cast them away as with
a sling.' But that is not all, neither: for it is not only said
that He shall sling away their souls, but that He shall sling them
away as 'out of the middle of a sling.' When a stone is placed, to
be cast away, in the middle of a sling, then doth the slinger cast
it furthest of all. Now God is the slinger, abhorrence is His
sling, the lost soul is the stone, and it is placed in the very
middle of the sling, and is from thence cast away. And, therefore,
it is said again, that 'such shall go into utter, outer darkness'--that
is, furthest off of all. This therefore shows us how God abhors
that man that for sin has lost himself. And well he may; for such
an one has not only polluted and defiled himself with sin; and that
is the most offensive thing to God under heaven; but he has abused
the handiwork of God. The soul, as I said before, is the workmans
hip of God, yea, the top-piece that He hath made in all the visible
world; also He made it for to be delighted with it, and to admit
it into communion with Himself. Now for man thus to abuse God; for
a man to take his soul, which is God's, and prostrate it to sin,
to the world, to the devil, and every beastly lust, flat against
the command of God, and notwithstanding the soul was also His; this
is horrible, and calls aloud upon that God whose soul this is to
abhor, and to show, by all means possible, His abhorrence of such
an one.