DISC. VI.] THE VAIN REFUGE OF SINNERS. 437 ship, 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 without gay company, those sons and daughters ofmirth, who turned their midnights into noon, with the splendor 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 caverns 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 provoked 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 profaneness. 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, theynow call aloud to the rocks and the moun- tains, 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 imprisoned for in the dens and cavesof the earth;. the deepest and most dismal caves are their most ardent wishes, that they might never see the countenance of their divine avenger, nor feel the weight of his hand. Sinners, who, heretofore, thought themselves, and their deeds of darkness, secure enough from the eye of God, and from the strokes of his justice, while they revelled in their common habitations ; those who, even under the open sky, could defy the Almighty, "could laugh at his threatenings, and mock the prophecies of his vengeance, now they can find no caverns deep or dark enough to hide them from his sight ; his lightnings penetrate the hardest rocks and shine into the deepest solitudes : There is no screen or shelter thick and strong enough to stand between God and them, and to cover and shield them ßr3
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