and beautify his spouse, and gather his saints together, we and PART III. all thy Christian people knit in a holy fellowship may enter into the joy of our Lord, and partake of the eternal refreshments of the kingdom of light and glory, where thou, O holy and eternal Jesu, livest and reignest in the excellencies of a kingdom, and the infinite durations of eternity. Amen. DISCOURSE XVII. Of the Causes and Manner of the Divine Judgments. Ad Num. 21 and 27. GOD'S judgments are like the writing upon the wall, which Mamada was a missive of anger from God upon Belshazzar, it came upon an errand of revenge, and yet was writ in so dark characters, that none could read it but a prophet. Whenever God speaks from heaven, he would have us to understand his meaning; and if he declares not his sense in particular signification yet we understand his meaning well enough, if every voice of God lead us to repentance. Every sad accident is directed against sin, either to prevent it or to cure it; to glorify God, or to humble us; to make us go forth of ourselves, and to rest upon the centre of all felicities, that we may derive help from the same hand that smote us. Sin and punishment are so near relatives, that when God had marked any person with a sadness, or unhandsome accident, men think it warrant enough for their uncharitable censures, and condemn the man whom God hath smitten, making God the executioner of our uncertain or ungentle sentences. Whether sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind? said the Pharisees to our blessed Lord; Neither this man, nor his parents, was the answer; meaning, that God had other ends in that accident to serve; and it was not an effect of wrath, but a design of mercy both directly and collaterally. God's glory must be seen clearly by occasion of the curing the blind man. But, in the present case the answer was something different. Pilate slew the Galileans, when they were sacrificing in their conventicles apart from the Jews. For they first had separated from obedience and paying tribute to Cæsar, and then from the church, who disavowed their mutinous and discontented doctrines. The cause of the one and the other are linked in mutual complications and endear valuv abans νους ανθρώποισιο Solon. Luke xiii. 2. PART III.ment, and he who despises the one will quickly disobey the other. Presently upon the report of this sad accident the people run to the judgment seat, and every man was ready to be accuser and witness and judge upon these poor destroyed people; but Jesus allays their heat, and though he would by no means acquit these persons from deserving death for their denying tribute to Cæsar, yet he alters the face of the tribunal, and makes those persons, who were so apt to be accusers and judges, to act another part, even of guilty persons too, that since they will needs be judging, they might judge themselves, for think not these were greater sinners, than all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things. I tell you nay, but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish; meaning that although there was great probability to believe such persons, schismatics (I mean) and rebels, to be the greatest sinners of the world, yet themselves who had designs to destroy the Son of God had deserved as great damnation. And yet it is observable, that the holy Jesus only compared the sins of them that suffered with the estate of the other Galileans, who suffered not; and that also applies it to the persons present who told the news, to consign this truth unto us, that when persons confederate in the same crimes are spared from a present Kug judgment falling upon others of their own society, it is indeed a strong alarm to all to secure themselves by repentance against the hostilities and eruptions of sin; but yet it is no Six. Eschyl. exemption or security to them that escape to believe themselves persons less sinful; for God sometimes decimates or tithes delinquent persons, and they die for a common crime according as God hath cast their lot in the decrees of predestination; and either they that remain are sealed up to a worse calamity, or left within the reserves and mercies of repentance; for in this there is some variety of determination and undiscerned providence. Χρονῳ του Θεος ατίζων τις βροτων δωσει Σκελίδες. Pius scilicet Deus partem percussit sententiæ suæ gladio, ut partem corrigeret exemplo, probaretque omnibus simul, et coercendo censuram, et indulgendo pietatem. Salvian. 2 The purpose of our blessed Saviour is of great use to us in all the traverses and changes, and especially the sad and calamitous accidents of the world. But in the misfortune of others we are to make other discourses concerning divine judgments, than when the case is of nearer concernment to ourselves. For first, when we see a person come to an unfortunate and untimely death, we must not conclude such a man perishing and miserable to eternity. It was a sad calamity that fell upon the man of Judah, that returned to Vetabo qui Cereris sa crum Vulgarit ariisdem fragilemque canæ, sub Sit trabibus, mecum Solvat phase lum: sæpe Diespiter Neglectus, incesto addidit Hor.1.3, od. 2. integrum. eat bread into the prophet's house contrary to the Word of PART III. the Lord; he was abused into the act by a prophet, and a pretence of a command from God, and whether he did violence to his own understanding, and believed the man, because he was willing, or did it in sincerity, or in what degree of sin or excuse the action might consist no man there knew, and yet a lion slew him, and the lying prophet that abused him escaped and went to his grave in peace. Some persons joined in society or interest with criminals have perished in the same judgments; and yet it would be hard to call them equally guilty who in the accident were equally miserable and involved. And they who are not strangers in the affairs of the world cannot but have heard, or seen some persons, who have lived well and moderately, though not like the flames of the Holocaust, yet like the ashes of incense, sending up good perfumes, and keeping a constant and slow fire of piety or justice, yet have been surprised in the midst of some unusual unaccustomed irregularity, and died in that sin; a sudden gaiety of fortune, a great joy, a violent change, a friend is come, or a marriage day, hath transported some persons to indiscretions and too bold a license, and the indiscretion hath betrayed them to idle company, and the company to drink, and drink to a fall, and that hath hurried them to their grave; and it were a sad sentence to think God would not repute the untimely death for a punishment great enough to that deflexion from duty, and judge the man according to the constant tenor of his former life; if such an act was not of a malice great enough to outweigh the former habits, and interrupt the whole state of acceptation and grace. Something like this was the case of Uzzah, who espying the tottering ark went to support it with an unhallowed hand; God smote him, and he died immediately. It were too severe to say his zeal and indiscretion carried him beyond a temporal death to the ruins of eternity. Origen and many others have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, and did well after it; but those that did so, and died of the wound, were smitten of God and died in their folly; and yet it is rather to be called a sad consequence of their indiscretion, than the express of a final anger from God Almighty. For as God takes off our sins and punishments by parts, remitting to some persons the sentence of death, and inflicting the fine of a temporal loss, or the gentle scourge of a lesser PART III. | sickness; so also he lays it on by parts, and according to the proper proportions of the man and of the crime; and every transgression, and lesser deviation from our duty does not drag the soul to death eternal, but God suffers our repentance, though imperfect, to have an imperfect effect, knocking off the fetters by degrees, and leading us in some cases to a council, in some to judgment, and in some to hell fire; but it is not always certain that he who is led to the prison doors shall there lie entombed; and a man may by a judgment be brought to the gates of hell, and yet those gates shall not prevail against him. This discourse concerns persons whose life is habitually fair and just, but are surprised in some unhandsome, but less criminal action, and die, or suffer some great calamity, as the instrument of its expiation or amend 3 ment. 2. But if the person, upon whom the judgment falls, be habitually vicious; or the crime of a clamorous nature or deeper tincture; if the man sin a sin unto death, and either meets it or some other remarkable calamity, not so feared as death; provided we pass no further than the sentence we see then executed, it is not against charity or prudence, to say, this calamity in its own formality, and by the intention of God is a punishment and judgment. In the favourable cases of honest and just persons, our sentence and opinions ought also to be favourable; and in such questions to incline ever to the side of charitable construction, and read other ends of God in the accidents of our neighbour, than revenge or express wrath. But when the impiety of a person is scandalous and notorious, when it is clamorous and violent, when it is habitual and yet corrigible, if we find a sadness and calamity dwelling with such a sinner, especially if the punishment be spiritual; we read the sentence of God written with his own hand, and it is not sauciness of opinion, or a pressing into the secrets of providence to say the same thing, which God hath published to all the world in the expresses of his spirit; in such cases we are to observe the severity of God; on them that fall, severity; and to use those judgments as instruments of the fear of God, and arguments to hate sin, which we could not well do, but that we must look on them as verifications of God's threatening against great and impenitent sinners. But then, if we descend to particulars, we may easily be deceived. For some men are diligent to observe the accidents and PART III. chances of Providence upon those especially who differ from them in opinion; and whatever ends God can have, or what 4 man. tonsor secat excrementa capilli, Expirans cadit, et gelida tellure cadaDecubat, ultrices sic pen. dunt crimina ver pœnas. Valerand. ever sins man can have, yet we lay that in fault which we therefore hate, because it is most against our interest: the contrary opinion is our enemy, and we also think God hates it; but such fancies do seldom serve either the ends of truth or charity. "Pierre Calceon died under the barber's hand: there wanted not some who said, it was a judgment upon him for condemning to the fire the famous Pucelle of France, Pendula dum who prophesied the expulsion of the English out of the kingdom. They that thought this, believed her to be a prophetess; but others that thought her a witch, were willing to find out another conjecture for the sudden death of the gentleBut I instance in a trifle. Certain it is, that God removed the candlestick from the Levantine Churches, because he had a quarrel unto them; for that punishment is never sent upon pure designs of emendation, or for direct and immediate purposes of the divine glory, but ever makes reflection upon the past sin; but when we descend to a judgment of the particulars, God walks so in the dark to us, that it is not discerned upon what ground he smote them. Some say it was because they dishonoured the eternal Jesus in denying the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son: the Church of Rome calls the churches of the Greek communion, schismatical, and thinks God righted the Roman quarrel, when he revenged his own; some think they were cut off for being breakers of images, others think that their zeal against images was a means they were cut off no sooner; and yet he that shall observe what innumerable sects, heresies, and factions were commenced amongst them, and how they were wanton with religion, making it serve ambitious and unworthy ends, will see that besides the ordinary conjectures of interested persons, they had such causes of their ruin, which we also now feel heavily incumbent upon ourselves. To see God adding eighteen years to the life of Hezekiah upon his prayer, and yet cutting off the young son of David begotten in adulterous embraces; to see him rejecting Adonijah, and receiving Solomon to the kingdom, begotten of the same mother, whose son God in anger formerly slew; to observe his mercies to Manasses, in accepting him to favour, and continuing the kingdom to him, and his severity to Zedekiah in causing |