1 Kings 16

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XVI.—For the wickedness of a land, many and bad are the princes thereof: and they multiply their murders and massacres one of another. But short-lived and troublesome is the power and honour procured by murder. How eagerly do men follow the very sins, or worse, which ruined their predecessors before their eyes! But, if thus they hardened themselves in their ingratitude, their blood must be on their own heads. God indeed sometimes permits wicked men to die in their beds, and leave their wicked children to pay off their awful reckoning. Drunkards fearfully expose themselves to death in a thousand forms. And it is terrible to be hurried drunk to the tribunal of an holy God! Rebellious projectors often perish in the flames which they have kindled; and revenge and envy attend them in death. And it is terrible when God punishes men’s harmony in wickedness with civil wars and discords. Dreadful is his case who is married to a wicked and abandoned woman: nothing is so base or horrid but she can persuade him to it. When kings are monsters in wickedness, the subjects will strive to outdo them in contempt of God. But such as despise his curse shall feel the weight of it