can take no pleasure in beholding any punishment but what is necessary, 'shall they be tormented with fire and brimstone;'1 and the saints in heaven, who are far from having in them any revenge, or any uncharitableness, but only a right sense of the necessary administration of justice in God's kingdom, are described after the following manner: 'I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Allelujah, salvation and glory, and honour, and power unto the Lord our God; for true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication; and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.' And again: I heard the angel of the waters say, thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus; for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy and I heard another out of the altar say, even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.' The sense of all these places is nothing else, but that it is reasonable all the world should make acknowledgment of the righteousness of God's judgments; and of the necessity there is in the nature of things, and in the government of God, that wickedness should finally be destroyed. And though it be in great variety of expression, that the Scripture sets forth this truth; yet, by comparing the several expressions one with another, it is plain they all terminate only in the same thing. What Solomon thus expresses, 'He that justi • Rev. xiv. 10. 2 Ibid. xix. 10. 3 Ibid. xvi. 5. fieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, they both are an abomination to the Lord;1 is in the prophet Isaiah thus: 'Wo unto them which justify the wicked, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him;' and Prov. xxiv. 24, in a still more severe manner of speaking, 'He that saith unto the wicked, thou art righteous, him shall the people curse; nations shall abhor him.' Yet the meaning of all these places is still evidently one and the same; and the nations cursing such a person, plainly signifies nothing more, than an universal acknowledgment of the reasonableness and necessity of the threatenings denounced of God against him. In the book of Habakkuk, the figure is carried still higher: The very stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it: Wo to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity;' and in that pathetical expression of our Saviour, 'If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out." It is a highly figurative and very elegant manner of expressing only the reasonableness and necessity of the thing to be done. And because the design and end of all these ways of speaking in Scripture, is this only, to convince men of the necessity of coming to repentance, of reforming their manners, and of obeying the law of God; it is therefore very evident, that as showing men the penalties threatened in human laws, is a kind and friendly office, as only giving them warning in what manner to avoid them; so reciting, with the same intention, the 4 Prov. xvii. 15. ? Isaiah, v. 23. curses of God set forth in Scripture against all impenitent sinners, is likewise doing, not hurt, but good, to our neighbours. The only inference I shall draw at this time from what has been said, and wherewith I shall conclude, is this; that if, when the general denunciations of the wrath of God against sinners are recited, there be and ought to be, a great tenderness used in applying them in particular; and the design of repeating them publicly upon solemn occasions of humiliation is, that every man may apply them seriously to his own conscience, and not that any man should judge his brother; (for who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth;) from hence we may learn the extreme wickedness of those men's pretended Catholic religion, who presumptuously taking it for granted, that all who receive not their absurd doctrines, shall be eternally punished by God; take upon them to anticipate that unrighteous sentence, which they profanely pass in the seat of God; and destroy men's bodies for no other reason, but because they have first, with impious and antichristian uncharitableness, presumed to give judgment of condemnation against their souls. "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues; for in her is found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that are slain upon the earth.' SERMON III. ON RELIGIOUS RETIREMENT. BY BISHOP ATTERBURY. [FRANCIS ATTERBURY was born in 1662, appointed to the Deanery of Carlisle in 1704, and to the Bishopric of Rochester in 1713. He died at Paris, in 1732.] |