[1] If a king warns a city of traitors, and calls upon them to
search them out and send them away, and they never regard
the message, but willingly give them harbour and
entertainment, it is a sign that they are disaffected to
him: to cherish a sin after warning is open defiance of
God.--_Manton,_ 1620-1667.
[2] At this first step we might reason on the testimony if we
pleased, instead of accepting it, and raise the objection
that to imagine passion in God, especially so turbid a
passion as anger, conflicts with our notions of His
character, and degrades Him in our apprehensions. Beware!
remember that in forming an estimate of the character and
proceedings of God, we are but little children forming an
estimate of the character and proceedings of a man of
matured experience. Were it not more reasonable, as well as
more reverent, to accept what He says, and to leave Him
afterwards to clear up any mystery which may envelope His
nature? I can indeed conceive in Him nothing turbid,
impetuous, or impulsive, such as sullies the clearness of
the human will. But this I can conceive, that there is in
Him some high perfection (more incomprehensible to my
finite capacity than the speculations of an astronomer to a
peasant child), of which anger is the most adequate
exponent to my mind, and which I must be content to think
of and speak of as anger, or else to remain in total
ignorance of it. And this also I can--not only conceive,
but most readily assent to, that in an absolutely perfect
nature there should be an utter abhorrence of, and
antipathy to, moral evil, most justly represented to simple
minds by the terms "anger," "curse." We have never seen a
perfect character; no perfect character, save one, ever
moved upon the earth: but the righteous man, who is
striving after and approximating to perfection, has often
crossed our path; and surely we have marked in him, that
the more righteous he is, the more doth he abhor (in the
language of Holy Scriptures) everything that is evil. What
is the effect upon one who breathes habitually the
atmosphere of communion with God, of catching in the
current tidings of the day the intelligence of some awful
outburst of depravity? When such an one passes on an errand
of mercy through the crowded alleys of a great city, and
the shouts of malignant execration and profaneness ring in
his ear, or with what feeling does he encounter these
symptoms of human degradation? Are they not like a foul
odour to his nostrils, or a jarring note to his ear, or an
abortion to his sight? Does he not turn away with loathing,
and recoil from such scenes and such sounds with an
antipathy strong in proportion to his goodness? And is it,
then, so hard to conceive that in perfect goodness there
may be a recoil from moral evil, something similar in kind
to this, though infinitely stronger in degree? And is not
such a recoil righteous, and a token of
righteousness?--_Goulburn._
[3] Let us take heed, for mercy is like a rainbow, which God
set in the clouds to remember mankind: it shines here as
long as it is not hindered; but we must never look for it
after it is night, and it shines not in the other world. If
we refuse mercy here, we shall have justice there.--_Jeremy
Taylor,_ 1612-1667.