day--must this be here eternally confined and made the mockery of insulting devils? Oh, eternity! That thought fills me with despair--I _cannot, will not_, yet _I must be_ miserable for ever!' "But I can no more. These thoughts are too melancholy for me to dwell upon, as well as for you to hear; and God knows, as punishing is His strange work, so denouncing His threatenings is mine. But if the bare mentioning the torments of the damned is so shocking--good God! terrible must the enduring of them be!" A sermon in such a strain would give offence in many of the costly churches and pretentious chapels of the present day; but it was devoutly listened to on board the _Whitaker_. Why? Perhaps, one reason may be found in the solemn fact that it is the sovereign prerogative of God, not only to raise up faithful preachers, but, to give ears to hear, and hearts to understand. For more than a fortnight, Whitefield was detained at Gibraltar, where he received the greatest kindness. Major Sinclair, a gentleman whom he had never seen before, hearing of his arrival, provided him two handsome rooms in a merchant's house,[122] and ministered to his wants. General Columbine and many others treated him with the utmost courtesy. Governor Sabine gave him a general invitation to dine with him every day during his stay, an invitation which was frequently accepted. The governor was an exemplary man, and, except when prevented by ill-health, had not been absent from public prayers for seven years.[123] His table was sumptuous; but his guests, officers and others, indulged in no excesses. "We had," says Whitefield, the once Oxford ascetic, "what an Epicurean would call _coena dubia_; but the law at the governor's table was the same with that of Ahasuerus, 'No one was compelled;' and all the officers behaved in such a decent manner every time I dined there, that they pleased me very much."[124] [122] Whitefield's Works, vol. i., pp. 37 and 39. [123] Ibid. p. 38. [124] In Cooper's edition of Whitefield's Journal, which was published without his sanction, and which occasioned the publishing of Hutton's edition, he writes under date of February 22: "We had an elegant entertainment; but my thoughts were mostly employed in pitying the unhappiness of great men who are in such a continual danger of having their table become a snare to them." James Hutton left this out.