It should be your wisdom to labour more to avoid hell than to endeavour to find out the place where hell is. If you do not labour to avoid hell, be sure, wherever hell is, hell will find you to receive you into everlasting torments. This use Chrysostom makes of this point: if a man's house were on fire, he would not inquire how it came, but how to quench it.
Though it is uncertain where the precise place of hell is, yet you may certainly know that sin is the very road to hell, and the direct way there. You may not know the place for certain, yet this i most certain: sin will lead you to hell. Proverbs 7:27: "Whosoever goes into a whore, her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death." And the more prodigal you are in sinning, the faster you run towards the place of the damned.
Do you not know where hell is distinctly? this should teach you to take heed of sin in every place, for hell follows sin at the heels. If you sin against God, God knows how near hell you are. You have a phrase, Genesis 4:7, God's speech to Cain: "If thou dost ill, behold, sin lies at thy door;" that is, the punishment due to sin--if you are drunk within, or swear within, or cheat within--behold, hell is at your door, damanation at your door. You know not how near you are to hell if you sin against God. Therefore take heed of sin in every place seeing you know not where the particular place of hell is.
Though we know not where hell is, yet of this we are sure; there are some men who carry the resemblance of hell about them wherever they go. A guilty and galled conscience joined with a profane and wicked life is the lively picture of hell itself. [Christopher Love--3rd sermon on hell's terrors]
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