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.
But so we read, and are commanded to remember, because they are
written for our example, that God destroyed at once five cities of the
plain, and all the country, and Sodom and her sisters are set forth
for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Fearful it
was when God destroyed at once twenty-three thousand for fornication,
and an exterminating angel in one night killed one hundred and
eighty-five thousand of the Assyrians, and the first-born of all the
families of Egypt, and for the sin of David in numbering the people,
three score and ten thousand of the people died, and God sent ten
tribes into captivity and eternal oblivion and indistinction from a
common people for their idolatry. Did not God strike Korah and his
company with fire from heaven? and the earth opened and swallowed up
the congregation of Abiram? And is not evil come upon all the world
for one sin of Adam? Did not the anger of God break the nation of
the Jews all in pieces with judgments so great, that no nation ever
suffered the like, because none ever sinned so? And at once it was
done, that God in anger destroyed all the world, and eight persons