Judges 3

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. III.—While men are on earth, inward corruptions and outward enemies will be still left, to prove their stedfastness or exercise their graces. One of the most dangerous snares is an irreligious partner in marriage, which is ruinous in its consequences, as it opens a wide inlet to every abomination, and generally leads to forgetfulness of God. But God can easily find instruments to punish us, far or near, even among our own relations. And yet how light, especially at first, are his strokes of vengeance in comparison of what our iniquities deserve. God also can easily find and qualify instruments for the deliverance of his people: and ordinarily he employs such as have been most 1. 1. courageous and faithful in his work, or such as seem naturally most unfit for it. But, if we, after deliverances, return to our own sins, we may expect that God will return to judgment: and, if lighter corrections have been ineffectual, God will make them longer and heavier. Nor is any instrument so despicable, but he can make it the rod of his anger. Wicked men, kings not excepted, are often fattened up to their own shame and destruction, and find their message from God, in a ruinous s’r ke of his wrath. But easy work is the ruin of the strongest enemies when we a e called, directed, and assisted by God!