lambs they persecute. In them there is blood, and flesh, and
fleece to be had; and therefore on these do they gorge
themselves. In them there is weak armour of defence against their
cruelties; therefore over these they may domineer. I will speak
it boldly: there is not a mighty Nimrod in this land that dares
hunt his equal; but over his inferior lamb he insults like a
young Nero. Let him be graced by high ones, and he must not be
saluted under twelve score off. In the country he proves a
termagant; his very scowl is a prodigy, and breeds an earthquake.
He would be a Caesar, and tax all. It is well if he prove not a
cannibal! Only Macro salutes Sejanus so long as he is in
Tiberius's favour; cast him from that pinnacle, and the dog is
ready to devour him. Thomas Adams.
Verse 9. "He draweth him into his net." "They hunt
with a net." Micah 7:2. They have their politic gins to catch
men; gaudy wares and dark shops (and would you have them love the
light that live by darkness, as many shopkeepers?) draw and tole
customers in, where the crafty leeches can soon feel their
pulses: if they must buy they shall pay for their necessity. And
though they plead, We compel none to buy our ware, caveat
emptor; yet with fine voluble phrases, damnable
protestations, they will cast a mist of error before an eye of
simple truth, and with cunning devices hunt them in. So some
among us have feathered their nests, not by open violence, but
politic circumvention. They have sought the golden fleece, not by
Jason's merit, but by Medea's subtlety, by Medea's sorcery. If I
should intend to discover these hunter's plots, and to deal
punctually with them, I should afford you more matter than you
would afford me time. But I limit myself and answer all their
plans with Augustine. Their tricks may hold in jure fori,
but not in jure poli —in the common-pleas of earth, not
before the king's bench in heaven. Thomas Adams.
Verse 9. Oppression turns princes into roaring lions, and
judges into ravening wolves. It is an unnatural sin, against the
light of nature. No creatures do oppress them of their own kind.
Look upon the birds of prey, as upon eagles, vultures, hawks, and
you shall never find them preying upon their own kind. Look upon
the beasts of the forest, as upon the lion, the tiger, the wolf,
the bear, and you shall ever find them favourable to their own
kind; and yet men unnaturally prey upon one another, like the
fish in the sea, the great swallowing up the small. Thomas
Brooks.
Verse 10. "He croucheth, and humbleth himself,"
etc. There is nothing too mean or servile for them, in the
attempt to achieve their sinister ends. You shall see his
holiness the Pope washing the pilgrims' feet, if such a stratagem
be necessary to act in the minds of the deluded multitude; or you
shall see him sitting on a throne of purple, if he wishes to awe
and control the kings of the earth. John Morison.
Verse 10 If you take a wolf in a lambskin, hang him up;
for he is the worst of the generation. Thomas Adams.
Verse 11. "He hath said in his heart, God hath
forgotten." Is it not a senseless thing to be careless of
sins committed long ago? The old sins forgotten by men, stick
fast in an infinite understanding. Time cannot raze out that
which hath been known from eternity. Why should they be forgotten
many years after they were acted, since they were foreknown in an
eternity before they were committed, or the criminal capable to
practice them? Amalek must pay their arrears of their ancient
unkindness to Israel in the time of Saul, though the generation
that committed them were rotten in their graves. 1 Samuel 15:2.
Old sins are written in a book, which lies always before God; and
not only our own sins, but the sins of our fathers, to be
requited upon their posterity. "Behold it is written." Isaiah
65:6. What a vanity is it then to be regardless of the sins of an
age that went before us; because they are in some measure out of
our knowledge, are they therefore blotted out of God's
remembrance? Sins are bound up with him, as men do bonds, till
they resolve to sue for the debt. "The iniquity of Ephraim is
bound up." Hosea 13:12. As his foreknowledge extends to all acts
that shall be done, so his remembrance extends to all acts that
have been done. We may as well say, God foreknows nothing that
shall be done to the end of the world, as that he forgets
anything that hath been done from the beginning of the world.
Stephen Charnock.
Verse 11. "He hath said in his heart, God hath
forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it." Many
say in their hearts, "God seeth them not," while with their
tongues they confess he is an all-seeing God. The heart hath a
tongue in it as well as the head, and these two tongues seldom
speak the same language. While the head tongue saith, "We cannot
hide ourselves from the sight of God," the heart-tongue of wicked
men will say, "God will hide himself from us, he will not see."
But if their heart speak not thus, then as the prophet saith
(Isaiah 29:15), "They dig deep to hide their counsel from the
Lord;" surely they have a hope to hide their counsels, else they
would not dig deep to hide them. Their digging is not proper, but
tropical; as men dig deep to hide what they would not have in the
earth, so they by their wits, plots, and devices, do their best
to hide their counsels from God, and they say, "Who seeth, who
knoweth? We, surely, are not seen either by God or man."
Joseph Caryl.
Verse 11. The Scripture everywhere places sin upon this
root. "God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never
see it." He hath turned his back upon the world. This was the
ground of the oppression of the poor by the wicked, which he
mentions, verses 9, 10. There is no sin but receives both its
birth and nourishment from this bitter root. Let the notion of
providence be once thrown out, or the belief of it faint, how
will ambition, covetousness, neglect of God, distrust,
impatience, and all other bitter gourds, grow up in a night! It
is from this topic all iniquity will draw arguments to encourage
itself; for nothing so much discountenances those rising
corruptions, and puts them out of heart, as an actuated belief
that God takes care of human affairs. Stephen Charnock.
Verse 11. "He hath said in his heart," etc.
"Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do
evil." Ecclesiastes 8:11. God forbears punishing, therefore men
forbear repenting. He doth not smite upon their back by
correction, therefore they do not smite upon their thigh by
humiliation. Jeremiah 31:19. The sinner thinks thus,: "God hath
spared me all this while, he hath eked out patience into
longsuffering; surely he will not punish." "He hath said in
his heart, God hath forgotten." God sometimes in infinite
patience adjourns his judgments and puts off the sessions a while
longer, he is not willing to punish. 2 Peter 3:9. The bee
naturally gives honey, but stings only when it is angered. The
Lord would have men make their peace with him. Isaiah 27:5. God
is not like a hasty creditor that requires the debt, and will
give no time for the payment; he is not only gracious, but "waits
to be gracious" (Isaiah 30:18); but God by his patience would
bribe sinners to repentance; but alas! how is this patience
abused. God's longsuffering hardens: because God stops the vials
of his wrath, sinners stop the conduit of tears. Thomas
Watson.
Verse 11. "He hath said in his heart, God hath
forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it." Because
the Lord continues to spare them, therefore they go on to provoke
him. As he adds to their lives, so they add to their lusts. What
is this, but as if a man should break all his bones because there
is a surgeon who is able to set them again?. . . . . . Because
justice seems to wink , men suppose her blind ;
because she delays punishment, they imagine she denies to punish
them; because she does not always reprove them for their sins,
they suppose she always approves of their sins, But let such
know, that the silent arrow can destroy as well as the roaring
cannon. Though the patience of God be lasting, yet it is
not everlasting. William Secker.
Verses 11, 12, 13. The atheist denies God's ordering of
sublunary matters. "Tush, doth the Lord see, or is there
knowledge in the Most High?" making him a maimed Deity, without
an eye of providence, or an arm of power, and at most restraining
him only to matters above the clouds. But he that dares to
confine the King of heaven, will soon after endeavour to depose
him, and fall at last flatly to deny him. Thomas
Fuller.
Verse 13. "He hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not
require it." As when the desperate pirate, ransacking and
rifling a bottom was told by the master, that though no law could
touch him for the present, he should answer it at the day of
judgment, replied, "If I may stay so long ere I come to it, I
will take thee and thy vessel too." A conceit wherewith too many
land-thieves and oppressors flatter themselves in their hearts,
though they dare not utter it with their lips. Thomas
Adams.
Verses 13, 14. What, do you think that God doth not
remember our sins which we do not regard? for while we sin the
score runs on, and the Judge setteth down all in the table of
remembrance, and his scroll reacheth up to heaven. Item, for
lending to usury; item, for racking of rents; item, for starching
thy ruffs; item, for curling thy hair; item, for painting thy
face; item, for selling of benefices; item, for starving of
souls; item, for playing at cards; item, for sleeping in the
church; item, for profaning the Sabbath-day, with a number more
hath God to call to account, for everyone must answer for
himself. The fornicator, for taking of filthy pleasure; the
careless prelate, for murthering so many thousand souls; the
landlord, for getting money from his poor tenants by racking of
his rents; see the rest, all they shall come like very sheep when
the trumpet shall sound and the heaven and the earth shall come
to judgment against them; when the heavens shall vanish like a
scroll, and the earth shall consume like fire, and all the
creatures standing against them; the rocks shall cleave asunder,
and the mountains shake, and the foundation of the earth shall
tremble, and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us, fall upon
us, and hide us from the presence of his anger and wrath whom we
have not cared to offend. But they shall not be covered and hid;
but then shall they go the back way, to the snakes and serpents,
to be tormented of devils for ever. Henry Smith.