pleased to compare himself to a lion; and though in this life He hath
confined Himself with promises and gracious emanations of an infinite
goodness, and limits himself by conditions and covenants, and suffers
Himself to be overcome by prayers, and Himself hath invented ways of
atonement and expiation; yet when He is provoked by our unhandsome and
unworthy actions, He makes sudden breaches, and tears some of us in
pieces, and of others He breaks their bones or affrights their hopes
and secular gaieties, and fills their house with mourning and cypress,
and groans and death. But when this Lion of the tribe of Judah shall
appear upon His own mountain, the mountain of the Lord, in His natural
dress of majesty, and that justice shall have her chain and golden
fetters taken off, then justice shall strike, and mercy shall hold her
hands; she shall strike sore strokes, and pity shall not break the
blow; and God shall account with us by minutes, and for words, and for
thoughts, and then He shall be severe to mark what is done amiss;
and that justice may reign entirely, God shall open the wicked man's
treasure, and tell the sums, and weigh grains and scruples. Said Philo
upon the place of Deuteronomy before quoted: As there are treasures of
good things, and God has crowns and scepters in store for His saints
and servants, and coronets for martyrs, and rosaries for virgins, and
vials full of prayers, and bottles full of tears, and a register of
sighs and penitential groans, so God hath a treasure of wrath and
fury, of scourges and scorpions, and then shall be produced the shame
of lust, and the malice of envy, and the groans of the opprest, and
the persecutions of the saints, and the cares of covetousness, and
the troubles of ambition, and the insolencies of traitors, and the
violence of rebels, and the rage of anger, and the uneasiness of
impatience, and the restlessness of unlawful desires; and by this time
the monsters and diseases will be numerous and intolerable, when God's
heavy hand shall press the _sanies_ and the intolerableness, the