Jeremiah 16

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XVI.—In evil days, a concern for our church and nation ought to swallow up our care for natural relations; for then our families, and other created comforts, become occasional additions to our trouble. Carnal feasting and mirth are very unseasonable when God’s destructive judgments are hanging over and ravaging around us. God is exact in marking men’s iniquities, and unavoidable is his punishment of them: but it is very hard to convince obdurate sinners of their guilt, or of the equity of God’s judgments. And yet how infinite is his mercy in connecting the most awful judgments with the most gracious deliverances, and in making his strokes of wrath to prepare men for the reception of his favours. And marvellous are all his ways: he makes both the miseries and the deliverances of the Jewish nation to promote the gathering of the Gentiles to Christ