Moral Obduracy.
i. 5. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more.
I. The danger of despising the Divine chastisements. Heedlessness destroys the very power of taking heed. II. The terribleness of the peace which is often the portion of the wicked. Like the cessation of pain in a sick man, which indicates that mortification has set in, it may be only a sign that God has given them up as irreclaimable (Hos. iv. 17).[1] III. The folly of expecting sanctification as the inevitable result of suffering. Contrary to the expectation of the Universalists, the sufferings of the lost may only confirm them in their impenitence (Rev. ii. 9, 11, 21).[2]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] While God visits us at all, it is a sign He thinks of us. The present life is not the time for punishment devoid of mercy. While the debtor is on his way to prison, he may agree with his adversary, and escape the messenger’s hands. While the sick man feels pain, there is vitality and activity in his constitution, and he may recover. And therefore I think it must be a terrible thing to have one’s perdition sealed; to have the process already closed; both depositions and sentence, and laid up in God’s chancery, as an irreversible doom, and so him who is its object troubled no further, but allowed the full choice of his pleasures,—as one permits a man, between sentence and execution, his choice of viands, in full certainty that when his hour hath tolled the terrible law will take its course. How smoothly glides along the boat upon the wide, unruffled, though most rapid stream that hurries it onward to the precipice, over which its waters break in thunder! How calm, and undisturbed by the smallest ripple, slumbers its unreflecting steersman! Or for one rock in the midst of its too smooth channel, against which it may be dashed and whirled about, to shake him from this infatuated sleep! It is the only hope that remains for him. Woe to him if to the end his course be pleasant! That end will pay it all!—Wiseman.
[2] Afflictions leave the wicked worse, more impenitent, hardened in sin, and outrageous in their wicked practices. Every plague on Egypt added to the plague of hardness on Pharaoh’s heart; he that for some while could beg prayers of Moses for himself, at last comes to that pass that he threatens to kill him if he come to him any more. Or, what a prodigious height do we see some come to in sin after some great sickness or other judgment! Oh, how grossly and ravenous are they after their prey, when once they got off their clog and chain from their heels! When physic works not kindly, it doth not only leave the disease uncured, but the poison of the physic stays in the body also. Many appear thus poisoned by their afflictions.—Gurnall, 1617–1679.
Trust not in any unsanctified afflictions, as if these could permanently and really change the condition of your heart. I have seen the characters of the writing which the flames had turned into a film of buoyant coal; I have seen the thread which has been passed through the fire retain, in its cold grey ashes, the twist it had got in spinning; I have found every shivered splinter of the flint as hard as the unbroken stone: and let trials come, in Providence, sharp as the fire and ponderous as the crushing hammer, unless a gracious God send along with these something else than these, bruised, broken, bleeding as thy heart may be, its nature remains the same.—Guthrie.