Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/106

102 world, have the same also after death, but in much greater fulness and perfection, accompanied with a joy and happiness exceeding all description. And the heaven, which they carry within their bosoms, produces a correspondent heaven around them: so that according to the degree and quality of their love to the Lord and to their neighbour, such is their internal and their external felicity, which in both respects is inconceivable to the natural mind. On the other hand, they, who have admitted the Life of hell to gain the ascendency within them in this world, continue to be under the same influence also after death, but in an aggravated degree; while the misery and unhappiness, which is necessarily entailed on the love and practice of evil, perpetually assails, and wrings them to the heart.

The fire of hell is not, as many have supposed, material fire; for this cannot in any wise affect or torment a spirit; but it is the lust or delight of evil, which consists in envy, hatred, revenge, cruelty, and other deadly passions. For as the heat and genial warmth of heaven is pure disinterested love, and universal benevolence, so infernal fire is the continual burning desire of committing violence, and spreading destruction among others. It is therefore written by the prophet, "Wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke: the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother," Isa. ix.18, 19. In this and many other passages by fire is meant the lust of self-love and the love of the world; and by the smoke which ascends, the false arising from and accompanying evil.

In a general point of view, heaven may be said to consist of two kingdoms, the celestial and the