special protection. On the other hand, they are destroyed with equal rapidity when he sets his face against them. War, famine, and pestilence are his ministers : the stars in their courses fight against his enemies : the elements enlist themselves under his banners. Universal nature rises up to avenge the quarrel of his covenant. Wretched indeed is that nation which he has abandoned to ruin ! The destruction of the Jewish nation is an awful specimen and pledge of the vengeance which he will execute on those who have filled up the measure of their iniquities.]
2. To Churches—
[The Christian Church, when in its infancy, was honoured with very peculiar tokens of the Divine presence, and, in con- sequence thereof, "grew and multiplied" to a surprising extent. But when the life and power of godliness had declined among the Churches of Asia, and he had often warned them to no purpose, he "took away the candlestick from them;" so that in the cities where Christ was once worshipped and glorified, his name is scarcely known. Nor need we go back to the early ages of the Church; for in many places in our own land where Christ was once preached, nothing is now heard but Socinian heresy or heathen morality. The ignorance of the preachers, the blindness of the hearers, and the unprofitableness of the ordinances, concur in establishing the melancholy truth affirmed in our textb.]
3. To individuals —
[If we admit, as we must, that "God will not forsake his people0," still we have no evidence that we are his, any longer than we obey his commandments. If we go out from his people, it is rather a proof that we never truly belonged to themd. But lamentable is the state of him who provokes God to leave him : for as soon as ever God deserts him, an evil spirit will enter into hime; yea, perhaps seven spirits, worse than ever before inhabited his soul, may take possession of him, and reduce him to a more awful state of bondage than he ever before experienced f. Hardness of heart, searedness of conscience, and probably an abandonment of all religious pro- fession, with painful apprehensions of death and judgment, will be the bitter fruits of such a dereliction, which at last will issue in an aggravated and eternal condemnation.]
Let us then attentively consider, II. How we may avert it from ourselves —
b Compare Micah iii. 6, 7. Isai. vi. 9, 10. Amos viii. 11 — 13. c 1 Sam. xii. 22. d 1 John ii. 19.
c 1 Sam. xvi. 14. f Luke xi. 24—26.