You fool!
(Lewis
Bayly, "The Practice of Piety" 1611)
But God said to him, "You fool!
This very night your
soul will be demanded from you. Now who will get the
things you've accumulated?" (Luke 12:20)
And so all trembling, the lost soul comes forth from the
body, and instantly is seized upon by infernal fiends, who
carry it with violence to the bottomless lake which burns
with fire and brimstone; where it is kept as a prisoner in
torments until the general judgment of the great day!
The loathsome carcass is afterwards laid in the grave. And
thus the godless and unregenerated worldling, who made . . .
earth his paradise,
his belly his god,
his lust his law;
as in his life he sowed vanity--so he is now dead,
and reaps misery!
In his prosperity he neglected to serve God--in his
adversity God refuses to save him! And the devil, whom
he long served--now at length pays him his wages!
Detestable was his life--damnable is his death!
The devil has his soul, and the grave has his carcass--in
which pit of corruption, den of death, and dungeon of
sorrow--let us leave the miserable sinner, rotting with . . .
his mouth full of earth,
his belly full of worms,
his carcass full of stench;
expecting a fearful resurrection, when the body shall
be reunited with the soul; that as they sinned together,
so they may be eternally tormented together!
"For God didn't appoint us to wrath, but to the obtaining
of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Thes. 5:9