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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Ver. 25,26. We must still remember, that all these things are spoken in a figure. The
great gulf here mentioned, to be fixed between heaven and hell, is too wide for persons on opposite sides of it to be heard communicating their minds each to other. All that our Saviour designs to let us know is, that the circumstances of damned souls are such, that, if it were possible, they would beg the help and assistance of the meanest saints, whom they have in this life most scorned, despised, or abused; but as they will have no such opportunities as to crave any thing at their hands, so if they had, they could not receive the least relief from them; their state is determined, they are fixed for eternity, and there can be no change of their condition for the better. Abraham is here brought in calling this man
Son, either as lineally descended from him, or being a member of that church of which he was the father. It will add to the torments of the damned, to hear and consider the former means and advantages they have been under for salvation, if they have descended from godly parents, or have been members of the church of Christ.
That in thy lifetime thou receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things. The good things which the rich man received were no more the cause of his damnation, than the evil things which Lazarus met with were the cause of his salvation; but the rich man’s ill use of the former, and Lazarus’s good improvement of the latter, through the grace of God bestowed on him. Though it be not ordinary with God to give the same persons the upper and the nether springs, yet he sometimes doth it, of which Abraham, and Lot, and Job, and David, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph of Arimathea, are some instances. But the term thy signifies the error of this rich man; he looked upon the good things of this life as his portion, those were the things which be set his heart upon, and let his heart run out to the neglecting the good things of another life. Lazarus received evil things, God gave him a mean, afflicted portion in this life; but he was found patient, and glorifying of God by a quiet and believing submission to his will under them; now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. So then it seemeth that departed souls do not sleep, as some have dreamed; if they did, they could neither have been capable of comfort or torment.
And besides all this, there is a great gulf fixed, &c.; the meaning of which is no more than,
1. That the state of souls upon their separation from the bodies of men and women is determined and fixed. As the tree falls, so it lieth.
2. That there is no commerce, or intercourse, between glorified and damned souls. The papists passage from purgatory to heaven is a new found way, or rather a new fancied one. If purgatory be (as they pretend) a place where souls are tormented, it may be wondered how they should pass over this gulf: it seemeth Abraham did not know the way, St. Peter knew as little; this is one of his pretended vicar’s new discoveries, but it is no wisdom in any souls to trust to this passage, of which Abraham knew as little as he did of our prayers passing to them, or to God for them, for there is casma mega esthrigmenon, a great gulf established.