Ezekiel 12

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XII.—Ministers ought to accommodate themselves, not only to the weakness, but even to the wilfulness of their hearers. They ought cheerfully to comply with the most difficult and self-debasing method which God directs for promoting his glory or the welfare of souls. It is necessary that we be affected ourselves with the truths with which we wish to affect others. And we have need to sit loose to this world, and be always preparing to leave it.—God exactly observes what entertainment is given to his ministers or messages, and is highly displeased if they are overlooked or condemned. It is easy for him to take the greatest in his snares, and to make the most hardened sinners either glorify him by their distinguished destruction, or by their conversion and candid acknowledgments of sin.—It is just that they who abuse plenty should be punished with want. Anxious care and slavish terrors can strangely embitter our comforts, and render them sore judgments. The decay of virtue in nations brings along with it the decay of every thing valuable, or a curse on what remains. And if once neighbours, by fraud, oppression, and murder, devour one another, let them expect that God will plague them with common devourers: and that he will make himself known, either in the terrors of his wrath to the impenitent, or in the riches of his grace to such as humble themselves under his mighty hand. How dreadful is it when corrupt speeches become common proverbs, by which Satan hardens sinners against the words or ways of God! But they, who will not believe God’s warnings, will too late be terribly convinced by the infliction of his judgments. And, let sinners put the evil day as far from them as they please, his threatenings will in due time prevail, and vindicate themselves