God's anger

5. Lastly, we provoke him by our dissimulations; approaching to him with our lips, and keeping back our hearts: we pray unto him, and yet live against him: we call upon his Name, and rebel against his will: and so he is angry, and long angry, and long angry with the whole people, and long angry with his own people, and long angry with his people that prayeth.

5. Lastly, we provoke him by our dissimulations; approaching to him with our lips, and keeping back our hearts: we pray un to him, and yet live against him: we call upon his Name, and rebell against his will: and so he is angry, and long angry, and long angry with the whole people, and long angry with his own people, and long angry with his people that prayeth.

1. God may be angry, and sin is the cause of his anger; that's the first Proposition. Man may be angry without sin, not without perturbation: God is angry without either perturbation or sin. His anger is in his nature, not by anthropopathy, but properly; being his corrective Justice, or vindicative Justice. Iratus videtur, quia tunquam iratus operatur. Our anger is an impotent passion: His a most clear, free, and just operation. By this affection in our selves, we may guess at the perfection that is in God. The dissolute securitans think that God doth but smile at the absurdities of men; that ludit in humanis: that their drunkenness and adulteries rather ⟨p. 7⟩make him merry then angry. Like some carnal father, that laughs at the ridiculous behaviour of his children […] to whom their wanton speeches and actions are but a pleasure; and in which he rather encourageth, then chides. ^eIndeed, God is said to Laugh; He that sits in heaven laughs them to scorn: but woe be to the men at whose fooleries God laughs. It is a dissembling falsehood in man, to smile and betray, as Judas began his treachery with a kiss: Such are likened to those bottled windy drinks, that laugh in a mans face, and cut his throat. But this laughter in God, argues not so much what he does, as what they suffer; when by frustrating their sinful purposes, he exposeth them to contempt and scorne. Dei ridere, est hominem ludibrio exponere. If a little ant creeping out of a molehill, should march forth, and proffer to wrestle a fall with a giant, there were yet some proportion in this challenge: but there is none of a finite power to an infinite. Audacious sinners, that dare provoke the Lord of hosts! What are all the Armies and Forces of Tyrants, to oppose the omnipotent God?