DISCOURSE VI. 133 dens and caverns of the earth for concealment and safety. Let us survey this in a few particulars : Sinners, whose looks were once lofty and disdainful, whose eyes were exalted in pride, their months set against the heavens and their hearts haughty and full of scorn, they shall be humble to the dust of the earth, they shall creep into the hiding- places' of the moles and the bats, and thrust their heads into holes, and caverns, and dens of desolation, at the appearance of God, their Creator, in flaming fire, and the Son of God, their Judge.3 for he is the avenger of his own and his Father's injur- ed honours. Sinners, who were once fond of their idols and their sensual delights, who made idols to themselves of every agreeable crea- ture, and gave it that place in their hearts which belongs only to God, they shall be horribly confounded in that day, when God shall appear in his majesty to shake the earth to the centre, and to burn the surface of'it with all its bravery. This is nobly des- cribed by the prophet Isaiah, chapter the second, from 10-21. In that day shall a man cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made, each one for himself to worship, to the moles, and to the bats, to go into the clefts of the rock, and into the tops of the ragged 'rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Sinners, who once could not tell how to spend 'a day with- out gay company, those sons and daughters of mirth, who turn- ed their midnights into noon, with the splendour of their lamps, and the rich and shining furniture of their palaces; those noisy companions of riot, who made the streets of the city resound with their midnight revels, they shall now fly to the solitary ca verns of the rocks, and would be glad to dwell there in darkness and silence for ever, if they might but avoid the wrath of a pro- voked God, and the countenance of an abused Saviour. They would fain be shut up for ever from day - light, lest they should see the face of an almighty enemy, whose name and honour have been reproached in their songs of lewd jollity and pro- faneness. Sinners, who once were fond of liberty in the wildest sense and could not bear that any restraints should be laid upon their - persons or their wishes, who never could endure the thought of a confinement to their closets for one half hour to converse with God, or with their own souls there, they now all aloud to the rocks and the mountains to immure them round, as a refuge from the eye of their Judge. They were once perpetually roving abroad, and gadding through all the gay scenes of sensuality, in quest of new and flowery pleasures, but now they beg to be im- prisoned for ever in the dens and caves of the earth ; the deepest' t3
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