To this if we add the almightiness of the Judge, His infinite wisdom
and knowledge of all causes, and all persons, and all circumstances,
that He is infinitely just, inflexibly angry, and impartial in His
sentence, there can be nothing added either to the greatness or the
requisites of a terrible and an almighty Judge. For who can resist Him
who is almighty? Who can evade His scrutiny that knows all things?
Who can hope for pity of Him that is inflexible? Who can think to be
exempted when the Judge is righteous and impartial? But in all these
annexes of the Great Judge, that which I shall now remark, is that
indeed which hath terror in it, and that is, the severity of our Lord.
For then is the day of vengeance and recompenses, and no mercy at
all shall be showed, but to them that are the sons of mercy; for the
other, their portion is such as can be expected from these premises.
If we remember the instances of God's severity in this life, in the
days of mercy and repentance, in those days when judgment waits upon
mercy, and receives laws by the rules and measures of pardon, and that
for all the rare streams of loving; kindness issuing out of paradise
and refreshing all our fields with a moisture more fruitful than the
floods of Nilus, still there are mingled some storms and violences,
some fearful instances of the divine justice, we may more readily
expect it will be worse, infinitely worse, at that day, when judgment
shall ride in triumph, and mercy shall be the accuser of the wicked.
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