T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S Almighty God.” As though there would be a very great manifestation of His almighty power in what the fierce ness of His wrath should inflict: as though Omnipotence should be, as it were, enraged, and exerted, as men are wont to exert their strength in the fierceness of their wrath. O! then, what will be the consequence? Whose hands can be strong, and whose heart can endure? To what a dreadful, inex pressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the creature be sunk, who shall be the subject of this! Consider this, you that remain in an unregenerate state. That God will exe cute the fierceness of His anger, implies that He will inflict wrath without pity. He will not forbear the execution of His wrath, or in the least lighten His demand. “Therefore will I also deal in fury; mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.”—Ezek. 8:18. Now, God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of ob taining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is passed, your most lament able and dolorous cries will be in vain; you will be wholly lost. God will have no other use to put you to but to suffer; you shall be continued in being to no other end! for you will be a “vessel of wrath fitted to destruction;” and there will be no other use of this vessel, but only to be filled full of wrath. “Be cause I have called and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand and no njan regarded; but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity: I will mock when your fear cometh. When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and an guish cometh upon you; then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowl-
832 The subject who very much enrages an arbitrary prince, is liable to suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent, or human power can inflict. But the greatest earthly potentates, in their greatest majesty and strength, and when clothed in their greatest ter rors, are but feeble, despicable worms of the dust, in comparison with the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth. It is but little that they can do, when most enraged, and they have exerted the utmost of their fury. All the kings of the earth, before God, are as grasshoppers; they are nothing and less than nothing; both their love and their hatred are to be despised. The wrath of the great King of kings is as much more terrible than theirs, as His majesty is greater. “And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that, have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear; Fear Him, which after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him.” Luke 12:4, 5. 2. It is the fierceness of His wrath that you are exposed to. We often read of the fury of God; Isa. 59:18. “Ac cording- to their deeds, accordingly He will repay, fury to His adversaries.” So Isaiah 66:15, “For behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with His char iots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.” And so also in many other places. Thus we read of “the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” Rev. 19:15. The words are exceedingly terrible. If it had only been said, “the wrath of God,” thé words would have implied that which is unspeakably dreadful; but it is said, “the fierceness and wrath of God:” the fury of God! the fierceness of Jehovah! O how dreadful must that be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them? But it is also, “the fierceness and wrath of
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