Man ashiv le-Yahoweh, or, A serious enquiry for a suitable return for continued life,…

VI. To be worse and more wicked after so great a judgement, will be to slight and set at nought the justice of God, when you have seen with your eyes the dreadful heaps of dead Corpse, that it hath made in every Church-yard. Have you not seen that God is displeased with sin, and will you go on to do worse, as if you would bid defiance to God, even when he is angry and displeased? Have you not seen that there is wrath in God? and that justice will call sinners to his bar by dragging them out of this world? And will you after all this go on to sin against a just God, and as it were say, let justice do its pleasure, I will have mine? this doth aggravate your sin.

VI. To be worse and more wicked after so great a judgement, will be to slight and set at nought the justice of God, when you have seen with your eyes the dreadful heaps of dead Corpse, that it hath made in every Church-yard. Have you not seen that God is displeased with sin, and will you go on to do worse, as if you would bid defiance to God, even when he is angry and displeased? Have you not seen that there is wrath in God? and that justice will call sinners to his barre by dragging them out of this world? And will you after all this go on to sin against a just God, and as it were say, let justice do its pleasure, I will have mine? this doth aggravate your sin.

VII. To be worse after such a judgement, will be to sin against the Patience and the mercy of God that hath spared thee, and waiteth to see what thou ⟨p. 56⟩wilt do after such a visitation. The mercy of God is the attribute thou intendest to appeal to, it is that which thou hopest in, but by this thy wickedness thou wilt turn mercy it self against thee, that which thou wilt make thy request unto, must be the mercy of God, but this will plead against thee, and patience will plead against thee. Lord, will Mercy say, when thousands dyed weekly in London, I had pity upon this sinner and did spare him; when the Angel went through the Streets and Lanes in London, I Mercy marked out this man for longer life, but he abused me, and sinned the more. And I [shall Patience say] waited some months or years after the Plague, to see if the mercy showed him, would any thing work upon him, but I was abused too as well as Mercy: The longer I, Patience, did lengthen out his life, the more he added to his sins, and therefore now we, both Patience and Mercy, deliver him up into the hands of Justice to deal with him according to his sins, and according to the wrong he hath offered unto us. Oh how will thy mouth be stopped when Mercy and Patience shall plead against thee; sins against Mercy and protracted Patience, are aggravated sins; and the pleadings of Mercy and Patience against a man, will be the most piercing cutting pleadings.