There will be no such grace as patience in hell with him who has lost himself:  here will also be wanting 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.

“Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”  This curse is the chief and highest of all kinds of curses.  It lieth in a deprivation of all good, and in a being swallowed up of all the most fearful miseries, that a holy and just and eternal God can righteously inflict, or lay upon the soul of a sinful man.

Now let reason here come in and exercise itself in the most exquisite manner, yea, let it now count up all and all manner of curses and torments that a reasonable and immortal soul is or can be made capable of, and able to suffer under; and when it has done, it shall come infinitely short of this great anathema, this master-curse, which God has reserved amongst his treasures, and intends to bring out in that day of battle and war which he purposeth to make upon damned souls in that day.

“The sting of death is sin.”  Sin in the general of it is the sting of hell, for there would be no such thing as torment even there, were it not that sin is there with sinners; for the fire of hell, the indignation and wrath of God can fasten and kindle upon nothing but for or because of sin.  Sin then, as sin, is the sting and the hell of hells, of the lowest and upmost hells—­sin, I say, in the nature of it, simply as it is concluded both by God and the damned to be a breach of his holy law, so it is the sting of the second death, which is the worm of hell.

But then, as sin is such a sting in itself, so it is heightened, sharpened, made more keen and sharp, by those circumstances that attend it in every act; for there is not a sin at any time committed by man, but there is some circumstance or other attends it that makes it, when charged home by God’s law, bigger and sharper and more venomous and poisonous to the soul, than if it could be committed without them; and this is the sting of the hornet, the great sting.  I sinned without a cause, to please a base lust, to gratify the devil:  here is the sting.  Again, I preferred sin before holiness, death before life, hell before heaven, the devil before God, and damnation before a Saviour:  here is the sting.  Again, I preferred moments before everlastings, temporals before eternals, to be racked and always slaying before the life that is blessed and endless:  here is the sting.  Also, this I did against light, against convictions, against conscience, against persuasions of friends and ministers, and the godly lives which I beheld in others:  here is the sting.  Also, this I did against warnings; yea, though I saw others fall before my face by the mighty hand of God for committing the same:  here is the sting.

Sinners, would I could persuade you to hear me out:  a man cannot commit a sin, but by the commission of it he doth by some circumstance or other sharpen the sting of hell, and that to pierce himself through and through and through with many sorrows.