1 Chronicles 5

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. V.—Behold how sin degrades men, and thrusts them down from their excellency! And one false step often leaves an indelible in upon their memory. But God does not utterly cast off those who fall loudly at first, and are severely punished in the flesh. Behold how he divides the honours which had been sinfully forfeited, that no flesh may glory in his presence!—how he casts out the enemy from before his people by little and little, and gives them residence and substance as they have need of it! Behold these Godites in their pride; and see how God, in his wisdom, to mark them not utterly cast off, takes up their names just before their removal into a long capacity! But what mighty things the people of God can do when they take him along with them! With ease they tread down their enemies, and gather their spoils, when they go forth crying to and trusting in him. But sin is pregnant with the greatest mischief to the temporal as well as the eternal interests of professors. God can effectually serve his own purposes by the ambition of the most proud, tyrantical, and murderous, princes. And the most lasting destruction follows those who are cut off in their sins. They, who are governed more by sense than by faith in the choice of their settlement, find often, when it is too late, that they have made a very disadvantageous one. Their first settlement issues in their being first wretched and miserable