452 / 674
432
THE
VATS
REFUGE
OF
SINNERS.
[DISC.
V$,
of
nature
resolves
to
destroy
:
When
he,
who
is
higher
than
the highest, and stronger
than the
strongest, shall
pronounce destruction
upon
rebels,
what creature
can
speak
deliverance
?
The
rocks and the mountains
obey
their Maker,
they
shiver
in pieces
at
the word
of
his
wrath, and
will
yield no
relief
to criminals
:
But
man,
rebellious man,
disobeys
his
Maker, and
calls to
the rocks
and mountains to pro-
tect
him.
Vain
hope, Oh
sinner
!
to
make the most
ex-
alted creatures your
friends, when
God, the Creator,
is
your
enemy.
These inanimate
things have never learned
disobedience
to
their
Maker, and,
rather than
screen
a
rebel
from
his
deserved
judgments, they
will offer them
selves as
instruments
of
divine vengeance.
2.
Rocks and mountains,
in
their
clefts
and dens and
caverns,
are
sometimes considered
as
places
of
secrecy
and concealment.
"
My
text
tells
us,
that
kings,
and
mighty
men,
the rich and the
free -man,
as well
as the
poor
and the
slave,
hid themselves
in
dens,
and
in
the
rocks of the mountains."
They
hoped there might be
some
secret corner,
whose thick shadows
and darkness
were sufficient to hide them, where the
judge
might
not
spy
or
find
them
out. Vain hope for sinners
to
hide
in
the
holes
of
the rocks,
and the deepest
caverns
of
the
mountains,
to escape the notice
of
that
God,
who
is
all
eye
and
all
ear, and
present
at
once in every place of
earth and
heaven
!
Eoolish
expectation
indeed,
to
avoid
the notice
of
the
Son
of
God,
"
whose
eyes
are
as
a
flame
of
fire
;''
Rev.'
i.
14.
and shoot
through the
earth;,
and
its
darkest
caves
!
Read the
cxxxix.
PMlm,
Oh sinner
!
and
then
think,
if
it.be
possible to
flee
from
the
eye
of
G.od,
and
to hide
thyself
in the clefts
of
the rock, where
his
hand shall
not
find
thee
IIe
has
already
"beset
thee
behind and be-
fore,
and
his
hand already compasses
thee
round about
in
all thy
paths.
Darkness.itself
cannot cover thee
:
The
night
shines
as
the
day before
him,
and scatters
light
round
about
the criminal,
that
would hide
himself
from
the
wrath
of
God. Ask
Jeremy
the prophet, and he
shall tell thee,
that "
none
can
hide himself
in
secret
places, where
God
shall
not
see him,
the
God
who
fills-
heaven and earth
;"
Jer.
xxiii.
24.
He
shall
hunt
ob-
satiate
sinners
from every
mountain, and out
of
the holes