A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 45(11.) The whole body of the militant church, join all asone man with strong concurrent importunity at the throneof grace, and with one heart and spirit constantly continuethere such piercing prayers against all stubborn impenitentscorners, all incurable, implacable persecutors, as thepeople of God have been wont to pour out in such cases ;as Lament, iii, 59, ice. " O Lord, thou hast seen my wrong :judge thou my cause. Thou hast seen all their vengeanceand all their imaginations against me. Thou hast heardtheir reproach, O Lord, and all their imaginations againstme ; the lips of those that rose up against me, and theirdevice against me all the day. Behold their sitting down,and their rising up : I am their music. Render unto thema recompence, U Lord, according to the work of theirhands. Give them sorrow of heart, thy curse unto them.Persecute and destroy them in anger from under theheavens of the Lord." ]Sow I would not be in that man'scase, against whom God's people complain upon goodground at that just and nighest tribunal one half hour, forthe imperial crown and command of all the kingdoms of theearth ; for who knows whether just at that time the righteousLord for his children's sake and safety may rain upon sucha man's head "snares, fire and brimstone, and a horribletempest 1"(12.) And the prayers of the saints poured out in thebitterness of their souls, vexed continually with their maliciouscruelties and cruel mockings, are means many times tobring persecutors to an untimely end, to knock them downbefore their time. Do not you think that the faithful Jewsat Jerusalem, hearing of Antiochus marching towards themlike an evening wolf to drink up their blood, had presentlyrecourse unto God's righteous throne with strong cries tostay his rage'? And do you not think that those very prayersdrew down upon him that hoirible and incurable plague,whereupon " he died a miserable death in a strange countryin the mountains? " Herod, for any thing we know, mighthave lived many a fair day longer if he had dealt fairly withthe apostles of Christ ; but putting one to the sword, andanother in prison, he put the church to their prayers (Actsxii, 2— 5), vvhich prayers (for " there is a certain oranipotencyof prayer," as Luther was wont to say) did sooncreate those vermin that ate him up horribly in the heightof his pride (ver. 23). The ecclesiastical story reports,that the loathsome and dreadful end of Arrius, that execrableenemy to Jesus Christ, v/as hastened by the prayers ofthe good and orthodox r>ishop, Alexander, who wrestledwith God in earnest deprecations against him all the night