Christian ethics -- Fiction; Christian fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction
As Job sayes, God has strook them as wicked men in the open sight of
others, Job 34. 26. So that I cannot conceive, since their sin and
Judgment was so conspicuous, that my admonishing the world thereof,
should turn to their detriment: For the publishing of these things,
are, so far as Relation is concerned, intended for remembrancers: That
they may also bethink themselves, repent and turn to God, lest the
Judgments for their sins should prove hereditary. For the God of Heaven
hath threatned to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children,
if they hate him, to the third and fourth generation, Exod. 20. 5.
Nebuchadnezzars punishment for his pride being open, (for he was for
his sin, driven from his Kingly dignity, and from among men too, to eat
grass like an Ox, and to company with the beasts,) Daniel did not stick
to tell Belshazzar his son to his face thereof; nor to publish it that
it might be read and remembred by the generations to come. The same may
be said of Judas and Ananias, &c. for their sin and punishment were
known to all the dwellers at Jerusalem, Acts 1. Chap. 5.
Nor is it a sign but of desperate impenitence and hardness of heart,
when the offspring or relations of those who have fallen by open,
fearfull and prodigious Judgments, for their sin, shall overlook,
forget, pass by, or take no notice of such high outgoings of God
against them and their house. Thus Daniel aggravates Belshazzars crime,
for that he hardened his heart in pride, though he knew that for that
very sin and transgression his father was brought down from his height,
and made to be a companion for Asses. And thou his son, O Belshazzar,
sayes he, hast not humbled thy heart, though thou knewest all this.
Dan. 5. A home reproof indeed, but home is most fit for an open and
continued-in transgression.
Let those then that are the Offspring or relations of such, who by
their own sin, and the dreadfull Judgments of God, are made to become
a sign, (Deut. 16. 9, 10.) having been swept, as dung, from off the
face of the earth, beware, lest when Judgment knocks at their door, for
their sins, as it did before at the door of their Pregenitors, it falls
also with as heavy a stroak as on them that went before them: Lest, I
say, they in that day, instead of finding mercy, find for their high,
daring, and Judgment-affronting-sins, Judgment without mercy.
To conclude, let those that would not dye Mr. Badmans death, take heed
of Mr. Badmans wayes: for his wayes bring to his end; Wickedness will
not deliver him that is given to it; though they should cloak all with
a Profession of Religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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