[8.] Eighthly, The spiritual Judgments that God hath given such up to, ivho have sited the blood of the just, speaks out their blood to be precious blood. Oh the dreadful horrors and amazing terrors of con- science that such have been given up to ! Take a few instances among the many that might be given. The Vaivod that had betrayeil Zegedine, a godly man, professed to Zegedine that he was so hauntetl with apparitions and the furies of his own conscience, that he could not rest day nor night. Dionysius, a cruel tyrant, a bitter enemy to all good men and good things, was so troubled with fear and horror of conscience, that, not darmg to trust his best friends with a razor, he used to singe his beard with burning coals [Cicero.] A sleepy con- science, when awakened, is like a sleepy lion ; Avhen he awakes he roars and tears his prey. It is like Prometheus' vulture, it lies ever gnawing.i Sin bring?; a stain and a sting. liorror of conscience meets a man in the dark, and makes him leap in the night, and makes him quake in his sleep, and makes him start in every corner, and makes him think every bush is a man, every man a devil, and every devil a messenger to fetch him quick to hell. By this Theodoric saw the face of a man in the mouth of a fish ; Nessus heard the noise of murder in the voice of birds; Saundes(P) ran distracted over the Irish moimtains. This made Cain wander, Saul stab himself, Judas hang himself, Arius empty his bowels at the stool, Latomus cry desperately, he was damned, he was damned, and Julian confess that he was conquered. It makes man, the lord of all, to be slave to all. Lord, what is man ? Cer- tainly it is better with Evagrius to lie secure on a bed of straw, than to have a turbulent conscience on a bed of down, having curtains em- bossed with gold and pearl. But,
[9.] Ninthly and lastly. The shedding of the blood of the just is a sin of so high a cry, and so deep a dye, that for it God is resolved, except men repent, that he will shut them out of the highest heaven, and cast them down to the loivest hell; as you may see by comparing the scriptures in the margin together ; 2 and therefore certainly the blood of the just is most precious blood. Now, seeing that the blood of the just is such })rccious blood, who will wonder if God sets such cities and towns and countries into a flame about their ears, upon whose skirts the blood of the just is to be found ? Josephus, speaking of the desolation of Jerusalem, saith. Because they have sinned against the Lord God of their fathers, in shedding the blood of just men and innocents that were within thee, even m the temple of the Lord, therefore are our sorrowful sighings multiplied, and our weapons^ daily increased. It was the blood of the just, the blood of the innocents, that turned Jerusalem into ashes.
' Conscience is God's preacher in the bosom. Conscience is m'dle testes, a thousand witncpses for or against a man. Conscience hath a good memory. - Oal. V. 21 ; Rev. xxi. 8, and x.xii. 15 ; 1 John iii. 15 ; .Mat. .xxii. 7. ^ Query, 'weepings'?— Ed.
ISA. XLII. 24, 25.] THE LATE FIEEY DISPENSATION. 127
I have read of one Rabbi Samuel, who six hundred years since writ a tract in form of an epistle to Rabbi Isaac, master of the synagogue of the Jews, wherein he doth excellently discuss the cause of their long coptivity and extreme misery, and after that he had proved that it was inflicted for some grievous sin, he sheweth that sin to be the same which Amos speaks of : ' For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes.' The selling of Joseph he makes the first sin ; the worshipping of the calf in Horeb, the second sin ; the abusing of God's prophets, the third sin ; and the selling of Jesus Christ, the fourth sin. For the first, they served four hundred years in Egypt ; for the second, they wandered forty years in the ^\dlderness ; for the third, they were captives seventy years in Babylon ; and for the fourth, they are held in pitiful cap- tivity even till this day.
When Phocas, that bloody cut-throat, sought to secure himself by building high walls, he heard a voice from heaven telling him, that though he built his bulwarks never so high, yet sin within, blood within, w^ould soon undermine all. Shedding the blood of the just is a sin that hath undermined the strongest bulwarks, and that hath blown up, and burnt up, the most glorious cities that have been in the world. And who can tell but that the blood of the just that was shed in the Marian days, might now come up into remembrance before the Lord ? 1 For in four years of her reign there were consumed in the heat of those flames two hundred and seventy-seven persons — viz., five bishops, one-and-twenty ministers, eight gentlemen, eighty-four artificers, one hundred husbandmen, servants, and labourers, six-and- twenty wives, twenty widows, nine virgins, two boys, and two infants. I say, who can tell but that the blood of these precious servants of the Lord hath cried aloud in the ears of the Lord for vengeance against that once glorious, but now desolate city? Men of brutish spirits, and that are skilful to destroy, make no more of shedding the blood of the just, than they do of shedding the blood of a swine ; but yet this hideous sin makes so great a noise in the ears of the Lord of hosts, that many times he tells the world by his fiery dispensations that it cannot be purged away but by fire. And thus much for the sins that bring the fiery judgment : our way now to the application is plain.
^ Speed's Chronicle in Queen Mary.
128 London's lamentations on [Isa XLII. 24, 25.
THE FIRST PART OF THE APPLICATION.
1. To see the hand of the Lord in it. Ten considerations to ivork to this.
2. To mourn tinder the sense of so great a judgment.
We come now to the nsc and api)lication of this important point. The explication of a doctrine is but the drawing of the bow: the appHcation is the hitting of the mark, tlic white, &c.
Is it so, that God is the autlior or efficient cause of all the great calamities and dreadful judgments that are inflicted upon cities and countries, and, in particular, of that of fire ? Then,