A commentary vpon the Epistles of Saint Paul to Philemon, and to the Hebrewes together with a compendious explication of the second and third Epistles of Saint Iohn. By VVilliam Iones of East Bergholt in Suffolke, Dr. in Divinity, and sometimes one of the fellowes of the foundation of Emmanuel Colledge in Cambridge.

VERSE 17.

SEcond branch: with whom he was grieved, in the ninth verse, the terme of forty yeares was annexed to their tempting of God: heere the time that God was displeased with them. But we have shewed that this is all one.

They with whom God was grieved, are set forth, 1. By their action. 2. By their passion. 1. By that which they did. 2. By that which they suffered.

That persisted stubbornely in their sinnes, and would not be re∣claimed from them. GOD is displeased with none, but with them that sin against Him: He strikes not as a blind man, every one hand over head, that comes under his reach; all is fish that comes to his net: he is angry with a godly man, as well as with an ungodly man. The Sodomites were destroyed: but Lot was saved. Sinne not: and though thou dwellest amongst sinners, yet GOD will not powre downe the Vialls of His wrath upon thee: the soule that sinneth shall surely dye.

2 By that, which they suffered. Whose members. The parts put for the whole: yet the word (members) is very emphaticall. Come into a field where a sore battell hath beene fought, and you shall finde heere a legge, and there an arme, one member in this place, an other in that, which is lamentable to behold: So their members were scattered in the wildernsse: some lay in this place; some in that. They fell: some one way, some another. Some devoured by wild beasts: some stung to death by Serpents▪ some the earth swal∣lowed up quicke: some swept away with the pestilence. They all fell in the wildernesse by one death or an other: namely, all the im∣penitent sinners. It is to be restreined to them; for Moses and Aaron and sundry others are to be exempted. Gods wrath was not thus ex∣treamely kindled against them. All those that dwelt in their sinnes, fell thus in the wildernesse.

The consideration of these temporall plagues inflicted on sinners, should scare us from sin: the water wherewith the old world was drowned; the fire and brimstome, that consumed the Sodomites; the casting of Iezebel that filthy strumpet out of a window, and the eat∣ing of her by dogs; the hanging of Absalom by the haire of his head, the fal of the tower of Siloam upon eighteen persons, and the falling of the carkasses of the Israelites in the wildernesse. Though we feare not hell, because we see it not: yet let us feare the arrowes of GODs wrath which he may shoot at us in this world, and pierce us through. If ye will not feare him, because he can kill the soule, which is the greatest: yet feare him, because he hath infinite wayes to destroy your bodies. He can make the French Pox to eate up the body of an Whore-monger: He can make the body of an ominous and mali∣cious person to consume away to the very bones: He can wash away

the flesh of a drunkard: He can give all our bodies, if it please Him, as foode to the foules of the ayre: he can make them to lye rotting on the earth, and not to have the honour of buriall, as Iezabel and these in the wildernes, but make us to be buried, as an Asse is buried, as it fell out to Iehojakim. Therfore in respect of these bodily punish∣ments at least let us feare God, and take heed of displeasing him.