DESTRUCTION.
Is not destruction to the wicked? and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity?—Job, xxxi. 3.
O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end; and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them.—Psalm ix. 6.
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.—Matthew, vii. 13.
’Tis safer far to be that which we destroy,
Than by destruction swell in doubtful joy.
Shakspere.
What a scene of misery
Hath thine obdurate frowardness, old man,
Drawn on thy country’s bosom! and, for that,
Thy proud ambition could not mount so high
As to be styled thy country’s only patron;
Thy malice hath descended to the depth
Of hell, to be renowned in the title
Of her destroyer.
Beaumont and Fletcher.
To destruction, sacred and devote,
He with his whole posterity must die.
Milton.
Thus saith the righteous Lord,
My vengeance shall unsheath the flaming sword,
O’er all thy realms my fury shall be poured.
Where yon proud city stood,
I’ll spread the stagnant flood!
And there the bittern in the sedge shall lurk,
Moaning with sullen strain,
While sweeping o’er the plain,
Destruction ends her work.
Mason.
While like a tide our minutes flow,
The present and the past,
He fills his own immortal now,
And sees our ages waste.
The sea and sky must perish too,
And vast destruction come;
The creatures—look, how old they grow,
And wait their fiery doom!
Watts.