2 Kings 8

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. VIII.—How severely God corrects apostate professors! His providences make us sometimes glad to leave the most commodious settlement on earth. And how ready are most to take advantage against, and to seize on, the property of the absent or distressed. But it is a mercy if we have magistrates to whom we may safely appeal from the injustice of friends or neighbours. God in his providence remarkably connects things for the welfare of those who fear him and have shewn kindness to his servants. He can raise us up friends in our difficulties where we least expected them. And it is the glory of a government to administer justice impartially to the oppressed. Diseases and death, without ceremony, attack the most great and powerful: and affliction often changes men’s minds, and makes them to regard ministers and prayers, which they had formerly condemned and hated. But ah! the bloody and burbarons rage of war! Enraged pride sticks at nothing. In high stations men will, without remorse, perpetrate what would have shocked them when in low conditions: and nothing is too horrid for the human heart left to itself, and violently tempted. Few courtiers report the naked truth to their sovereigns: and flatterers are most to be suspected for enemies. They who flatter us with hopes of life hinder our serious preparation for death. The mordinate desire of power will prompt men to villany and murder. And the sinful indulgence of children, or too early trusting them with power, and especially their unequal marriages with wicked women, entail upon families and nations the most certain misery. But death and hell infallibly meet with tyrants at last. And alas; in their way to it, how often are the wounds of their body taken care of, while those of their soul are neglected