Chapter 11: Of the Punishment of Sin
Scripture referenced in this chapter 6
Q. Since all the children of men are thus woefully defiled with sin, what punishment is due by reason of the sin?
A. In one word all kind of death, and cursedness, which in the particulars contains all the plagues that are written in God's book, and many more which are not written.
Q. What are the general heads of those plagues?
A. They are temporal, and spiritual, and eternal.
Q. What are the temporal plagues?
A. The cursing of the earth, and the creatures made subject to vanity, and the bodies of men become subject to plagues and pains and death.
Q. What else?
A. In name ignominy and reproach, both alive and after death, and calamities in men's wives, children and friends.
Q. What other outward miseries are there?
A. In the outward estate poverty and losses, and their very blessings to be turned into curses.
Q. What are the spiritual miseries?
A. The loss of God's image and all comfortable communion with him, with bondage to the devil, and a necessity of sinning.
Q. What else are the spiritual miseries?
A. When men are given up to more sin as to hardness of heart, blindness of mind and strong delusions.
Q. What is the eternal misery?
A. Damnation and destruction in another world (2 Thessalonians 1:9; John 5:29).
Q. Wherein does that consist?
A. In being deprived of all good, and in the contrary sense and feeling of evil.
Q. What good shall the wicked be then deprived of?
A. They shall then be deprived of the favorable presence of God, of the joys of heaven, of the society of the saints, and all comfort of the creature.
Q. And what evil shall they then have the feeling of?
A. They shall feel unspeakable torment both in soul and body (Mark 9:43, 44, 45; Luke 16:23, 24).
Q. What will be the effect thereof?
A. It will cause weeping and gnashing of teeth, the former through grief and dolor, and both of them through indignation and despair.
Q. If they must be deprived of heaven, and of the presence of God and of his saints, what place and company shall they be in?
A. They shall be in hell as in a prison, or deep pit, or lake that burns with fire and brimstone, and their company shall be no other but the devil and his angels.
Q. This punishment of the damned is in itself most dreadful and terrible, but how long shall it continue?
A. The thing were something less grievous, if this misery would ever have an end; but this is the aggravation of it that it must be everlasting (2 Thessalonians 1:9; Matthew 25:41, 46; Matthew 9:43, 44).
