worse than those ten persecutions, may justly doubt where is charity?
_Obsecro vos quales hi demum Christiani!_ Are these Christians? I beseech
you tell me: he that shall observe and see these things, may say to them as
Cato to Caesar, _credo quae de inferis dicuntur falsa existimas_, "sure I
think thou art of opinion there is neither heaven nor hell." Let them
pretend religion, zeal, make what shows they will, give alms, peace-makers,
frequent sermons, if we may guess at the tree by the fruit, they are no
better than hypocrites, epicures, atheists, with the [4625]"fool in their
hearts they say there is no God." 'Tis no marvel then if being so
uncharitable, hard-hearted as we are, we have so frequent and so many
discontents, such melancholy fits, so many bitter pangs, mutual discords,
all in a combustion, often complaints, so common grievances, general
mischiefs, _si tantae in terris tragoediae, quibus labefactatur et misere
laceratur humanum genus_, so many pestilences, wars, uproars, losses,
deluges, fires, inundations, God's vengeance and all the plagues of Egypt,
come upon us, since we are so currish one towards another, so respectless
of God, and our neighbours, and by our crying sins pull these miseries upon
our own heads. Nay more, 'tis justly to be feared, which [4626]Josephus
once said of his countrymen Jews, "if the Romans had not come when they did
to sack their city, surely it had been swallowed up with some earthquake,
deluge, or fired from heaven as Sodom and Gomorrah: their desperate malice,
wickedness and peevishness was such." 'Tis to be suspected, if we continue
these wretched ways, we may look for the like heavy visitations to come
upon us. If we had any sense or feeling of these things, surely we should
not go on as we do, in such irregular courses, practise all manner of
impieties; our whole carriage would not be so averse from God. If a man
would but consider, when he is in the midst and full career of such
prodigious and uncharitable actions, how displeasing they are in God's
sight, how noxious to himself, as Solomon told Joab, 1 Kings, ii. "The Lord
shall bring this blood upon their heads." Prov. i. 27, "sudden desolation
and destruction shall come like a whirlwind upon them: affliction, anguish,
the reward of his hand shall be given him," Isa. iii. 11, &c., "they shall
fall into the pit they have digged for others," and when they are scraping,
tyrannising, getting, wallowing in their wealth, "this