God can tell how to fight against thee with the sword of his mouth, and to make thee a butt for his arrows; and this is a dispensation most dreadful.
God can tell how to bow thee down with guilt and distress, that thou shalt in nowise be able to lift up thy head.
God can tell how to break thy bones, and to make thee, by reason of that, to live in continual anguish of spirit; yea, he can send a fire into thy bones that shall burn, and none shall quench it.
God can tell how to lay thee aside, and make no use of thee as to any work for him in thy generation. He can throw thee aside as a broken vessel.
God can tell how to kill thee, and take thee away from the earth for thy sins.
God can tell how to plague thee in thy death, with great plagues and of long continuance.
What shall I say? God can tell how to let Satan loose upon thee; when thou liest dying, he can license him then to assault thee with great temptations; he can tell how to make thee possess the guilt of all thy unkindness towards him, and that when thou, as I said, art going out of the world; he can cause that thy life shall be in continual doubt before thee, and not suffer thee to take any comfort day or night; yea, he can drive thee even to a madness with his chastisements for thy folly, and yet all shall be done by him to thee as a father chastiseth his son.
Further, God can tell how to tumble thee from off thy death-bed in a cloud, he can let thee die in the dark; when thou art dying, thou shalt not know whither thou art going, to wit, whether to heaven or to hell. Yea, he can tell how to let thee seem to come short of life, both in thine own eyes and also in the eyes of them that behold thee. "Let us therefore fear," says the apostle—though not with slavish, yet with filial fear—"lest, a promise being left us of entering into rest, any of us should seem to come short of it."
Now all this and much more can God do to his, as a father by his rod and a father by rebukes: ah, who know but those that are under them, what terrors, fears, distresses, and amazements, God can bring his people into? He can put them into a furnace, a fire, and no tongue can tell what, so unsearchable and fearful are his fatherly chastisements, and yet never give them the spirit of bondage again to fear. Therefore, if thou art a son, take heed of sin, lest all these things overtake thee and come upon thee.
Dost thou fear the Lord? "The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on them that fear him."