And I saw the murderers and their accomplices cast into a certain narrow place full of evil snakes where these evil beasts smote them while they turned to and fro in that punishment, and worms like great black clouds afflicted them. And the souls of those who had been murdered said, as they stood and looked upon the punishment of their murderers, O God, just is thy judgment. And other men and women were aflame up to the middle, and were cast into a dark place and were beaten by evil spirits, and their inwards were eaten by restless worms. These were they who persecuted the righteous and delivered them up to the authorities. And over against these were other men and women gnawing their tongues and having flaming fire in their mouths. These were false witnesses. And in a certain other place there were pebbles sharper than swords or any needle, red hot, and women and men in tattered and filthy raiment, rolled about on them in punishment. These were the rich who trusted in their riches and had no pity for orphans and widows and despised the commandment of God. And in another great lake full of boiling pitch and blood and mire stood men and women up to their knees. These were the usurers and those who take compound interest. The noted preacher, scholar and president of Princeton College, Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," put in forcible and picturesque language the religious and legal view of punishment as vengeance: They [sinners] deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God's using His power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment on their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" Luke xiii. 7. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God's mere will, that holds it back. They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God, that is expressed in the torments of hell: and the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment, is not because God, in whose power they are, is not then very angry with them; as angry as He is with many of those miserable creatures that He is now tormenting in hell, and do there feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth; yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, that, it may be, are at ease and quiet, than He is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell.