I thank God that with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell,
nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed
my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of
hell, &c.
Excellent throughout. The fear of hell may, indeed, in some desperate cases, like the moxa, give the first rouse from a moral lethargy, or like the green venom of copper, by evacuating poison or a dead load from the inner man, prepare it for nobler ministrations and medicines from the realm of light and life, that nourish while they stimulate.
S. 54.
There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, &c.
This is plainly confined to such as have had Christ preached to them;—but the doctrine, that salvation is in and by Christ only, is a most essential verity, and an article of unspeakable grandeur and consolation. Name—nomen, that is, {Greek: noumenon}, in its spiritual interpretation, is the same as power, or intrinsic cause. What? Is it a few letters of the alphabet, the hearing of which in a given succession, that saves?
S. 59.
'Before Abraham was, I am,' is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in
some sense if I say it of myself, for I was not only before myself,
but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod
held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before
the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I
dead before I was alive;—though my grave be England, my dying-place
was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain.
Compare this with s. 11, and the judicious remark there on the mere accommodation in the 'prae' of predestination. But the subject was too tempting for the rhetorician.