A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

;AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 41CHAP. XI.Four other Reasons dissaading ftoni the former Sin.(4.) A cry far louder than the noise of many waters orvoice of greatest thunder, knocks continually with strongimportunity at God's just tribunal for a shower of " fire andbrimstone and a horrible tempest" to be rained down upontheir heads ; I mean, a cry of blood, wrongs, disgraces, andslanders, wherewith they have loaded the saints of God." And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, OLord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge ourblood on them that dwell on the earth T' (Rev. vi, 10.)(5.) They are the principal provokers of God's wrathagainst a nation. Their hateful heat, overflowing gall, andscornful carriage against God's people doth ripen apace hisfiercest indignation, fill up full the vials of his vengeance,and draw down upon a kingdom a desperate and final ruinwithout all remedy. " But they mocked the messengers ofGod, and despised his words, and misused his prophets,until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, tillthere was no remedy " (2 Chron. xxxvi, 16).(6.) Their spiteful spirits being once thoroughly set onheat with this fire of hell, and infernal rage against thegrace of God and his people, commonly continue in flameand fury until their fearful and flnal confusion. And theybeing once fleshed, as it were, with the blood of the saints,at least by scoft's and slanders (for even lewd and lyingtongues are keen razors and sharp swords, scourges andscorpions that fietch blood), they feed insatiably upon thesweetness of such supposed cursed revenge, until they beseized upon with their irrecoverable ruin, and fall amongstthe inflamers of their malice, and arch persecutors of allprofessors, the fiends of hell. I'his is my meaning : thispestilent and crying sin of persecution is like the gulf ofdrunkenness, which Augustine compares to the pit of hell,into which when a man is once fallen there is no redemptionor return. A persecutor is rarely or never reclaimed, either bymiracle or ministry, mercy or misery. Fire from heaven fallingupon the first captain and his fifty did not frighten thesecond captain and his fifty from pressing upon Elijah to apprehendhim (2 Kings i, 10, 11). The soldiers who cameto take Jesus, as soon as he said " I am he," were strangelyupon the sudden struck down to the ground (John xviii, 6)and yet this miracle did never a whit mollify and abate themalice of the priests and pharisees against him. Not evenE 3