2 Kings 16

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XVI.—What monsters of children have some of the best of saints! Grace must be infused by God, not conveyed by parents. Who can know the desperate wickedness of the human heart, if left to itself! It can extinguish natural affections, and turn men into monsters: it can make them rush headlong into the very sins which ruined their neighbours before their eyes. In the day of distress, sinners are bent upon turning themselves every way for relief, but from God alone can they have it. They will stick at nothing slavish, 47 dishonest, or shameful, to obtain that from men which they might have from him in the most honourable manner. Yea, they will choose those very idols for saviours, whose insufficiency to save has been manifested as with a sun-beam. What a plague to princes are those ministers who flatter them in their impiety, and readily comply therewith! And the most abandoned profligates are often very fond of that devotion which themselves have devised. 5