^ Lips, de Constantia, lib. ii. cap. 25.
> George Buchanan, the Scholar and Historian. — G.
' Job xxi. 14 ; 2 Pet. ii. 20-22 ; Isa. Ixvi. 3 ; Eph. iv. 19 Isa. v. 19 ; Jer. ix. 5.
HeB. XII. 14.] AND BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 83
shew the least favour to him. Now certainly if God will not take the wicked by the hand, he will never take them into heaven, he will never take them into his bosom. God will have no commerce nor communion with those to whom he will not so much as lend a hand. God will wash his hands of them for ever, to whom he will not give a hand. Which made Augustine say, that he would not be a wicked man one half-hour for all the world, because he might die in that half-hour. God will wash his hands of every man that lives and dies a wicked man. Mat. xxv. 11, 12. The hearts and ways of wicked men are full of hells ; and therefore to fill heaven with such, would be to fill heaven with hells.
(2.) Secondly, This truth may serve to convince those that are scoffers and mockers at holiness, of their woeful and miserable estate^ 2 Pet. iii. 3 ; Jude 18. Holiness is so high and so noble a thing, that men should rather honour it than deride it — reverence it than reproach it ; they should rather set a crown of glory than a crown of thorns upon the head of it. Holiness is the glorious image of God fairly stamped upon the soul ; and to deride holiness is to deride God himself. God takes all the afi'ronts that are done to his image as done to himself ; and this scoffers shall know at last to their eternal woe. If it was such a heinous crime in Tiberius his days, as Suetonius reports it was, to carry the image of Augustus upon a ring or coin into any sordid place, ah, how heinous a crime is it then to cast dirt and filth, scom and reproach upon holiness, which is the image of the invisible God ! The despite and contempt that is done to the image or coin of a prince is done to the prince himself, and accordingly he will revenge it. In old Rome there were near as many statues as there were living people, and some were made of gold, some of silver, some of brass, some of ivory, and some of polished marble ; and there was an earli appointed whose office it was continually to walk up and down in the night, attended with many soldiers, to see that none did wrong the statues of those that were set up in the city, and if any such were found that had done wrong to any of the statues, they were put to death.^ Holi- ness is the statue of God, and such as shall dare to deface it and wrong it, God will destroy. The old world scofied and scorned at righteous- ness, and God sweeps them away with a flood. Ham mocked and scoffed at righteous Noah, and what did he get by it but a curse ? Ishmael scoffed at holy Isaac, and what did he get by his scoffing and mocking but ejection out of Abraham's family ? And what became of those two-and-forty young scoffers that scoffed and mocked at holy Elisha ? were they not cursed in the name of the Lord, and torn in pieces by two she-bears which were more fierce and cruel than others ? The Jews were given up to scoffing and mocking of the messengers of the Lord, till there was no remedy : till old and young were de- stroyed by the sword of the Chaldees ; till their temple and city were fired and sacked, and thirty of them sold for a penny, &c., and those that escaped the sword were captivated and enslaved. Sennacherib scoffed and mocked at the virgin daughter of Sion, but his scoffs issued in the destruction of his army by the hand of an angel, and in
1 = ' Noble man,' or ' noble officer,' a frequent Shakesperian use.— G. * Lipsius de Mag. Rom. Imperii.
84 THE NECESSITY, EXCELLENCY, RARITY, [HeB. XII. 14.
his own by the hands of his two sons.^ Julian, the emperor, was a great mocker and scoffer at the Christians, but G-od struck him with an arrow from heaven, which made him cry out Vicisti, Galiloee, thou GaUlean, [meaning our Lord Jesus,] hast overcome me.^ Felix, for one malicious scoff, did nothing day and night but vomit blood, till his unhappy soul was separated from his wretched body. Lucian, for barking against religion as a dog, was by the just judgments of God devoured of dogs. History tells us of some scoffers that God hath stricken with madness, others with blindness, others with loathsome diseases, and some God hath stricken dead, and others he hath left to be their own executioners. Scoffing at holiness is a metropolitan sin,^ and therefore no wonder if God executes upon scoffers metropolitan judgments. Mockers and scoffers are the worst of sinners. Among the three sorts of sinners that David mentions, scorners have the chair, the chair of pestilence, as the Septuagint translateth it.* Scorners are the pests of mankind. The eye of the scorner is blinded ; the heart of the scorner is hardened ; the judgment of the scorner is perverted ; the will of the scorner is enthralled, and the conscience of the scorner is seared, and this makes the scorner fall mad upon scoffing at holy men and holy things. Look, as they are the worst of servants that will scoff and mock a child in the family, because he is his father's picture — though they take wages of his father, and live by his father — so they are the worst of sinners who scoff at holiness, which is the very picture of God, though they live by him and cannot live without him. Yet this world is full of such monsters, who count it a grace to disgrace holiness, and to lade holy ones with all the names of scorn and contempt that they can invent, or that Satan can help them to. These are your holy brethren, these are fanatics, these are your holy sect, these are your pure souls, these are your strict precisians, these are the saints forsooth, these are the brotherhood ! Erasmus saith that that proverb, ' A young saint, and an old devil,' was devised by the devil himself to scoff and mock men out of their holiness. It hath been the common portion of men most eminent in grace and holiness to be most scoffed and scorned in all ages. Job xvii. 2 ; Neh. iv. 1 ; Isa. xxviii. 22 ; Luke xviii. 32. Witness Noah, Isaac, and Elisha but now cited, and witness Job, chap. xxi. 3, ' Suffer me that I may speak, and after that I have spoken mock on ;' chap. xii. 4, ' I am as one mocked of his neighbour, who calleth upon God, and he answereth him: the just upright man is laughed to scorn.' So David, Ps. xxxv. 16, ' With hypocritical mockers in feasts, they gnashed upon me with their teeth ;'^ Ps. xliv. 14, ' Thou makest us a byword among the heathen ;' Ps. Ixxix. 4, 'We are become a reproach and derision to them who are round about us ;' Ps. cix. 25, ' I am become a reproach to them ; when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.' So Isaiah, chap. viii. 18, * Behold, I and the children that the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel.' So Jeremiah, chap. xx. 7, ' I am in derision