Christian ethics -- Fiction; Christian fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction
2. It is the duty of those that can, to cry out against this deadly
plague, yea, to lift up their voice as with a Trumpet against it; that
men may he awakened about it, flye from it, as from that which is the
greatest of evils. Sin pull’d Angels out of Heaven, pulls men down to
Hell, and overthroweth Kingdoms. Who, that sees an house on fire, will
not give the Allarum to them that dwell therein? who that sees the
Land invaded, will not set the Beacons on a fame? Who, that sees the
Devils, as roaring Lyons, continually devouring souls, will not make an
Out-cry? But above all, when we see sin, sinful sin, a swallowing up a
Nation, sinking of a Nation, and bringing its Inhabitants to temporal,
spiritual, and eternal ruine, shall we not cry out, and cry, They are
drunk, but not with Wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink;
they are intoxicated with the deadly poyson of sin, which will, if its
malignity be not by wholsom means allayed, bring Soul and Body, and
Estate and Countrey, and all, to ruin and destruction?
3. In and by this my Out-cry, I shall deliver my self from the ruins
of them that perish: for a man can do no more in this matter, I mean
a man in my capacity, than to detect and condemn the wickedness, warn
the evil doer of the Judgment, and fly therefrom my self. But Oh! that
I might not only deliver my self! Oh that many would hear, and turn
at this my cry, from sin! that they may be secured from the death and
Judgment that attend it.
Why I have handled the matter in this method, is best known to my self:
and why I have concealed most of the Names of the persons whose sins or
punishments I here and there in this Book make relation of, is,
1. For that neither the sins nor Judgments were all alike open; the
sins of some, were committed, and the Judgments executed for them only
in a corner. Not to say that I could not learn some of their names; for
could I, I should not have made them publick, for this reason.
2. Because I would not provoke those of their Relations that survive
them; I would not justly provoke them, and yet, as I think, I should,
should I have intailed their punishment to their sins, and both to
their names, and so have turned them into the world.
3. Nor would I lay them under disgrace and contempt, which would, as I
think, unavoidably have happened unto them had I withall inserted their
Names.
As for those whose Names I mention, their crimes or Judgments were
manifest; publick almost as any thing of that nature that happeneth to
mortal men. Such therefore have published their own shame by their sin,
and God, his anger, by taking of open vengeance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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