A Looking Glass for Persecutors, Illustration – To the reader
Viou here his Shadowe whose Laborious Quill
By Sacred Chymistry doth Balm Distill
To Calm ye Persecuting Spirits Rage
And mixe Delight with Profitt in each Page
Walter Binneman sculp
A Looking-glass FOR PERSECUTORS; CONTAINING Multitudes of EXAMPLES of God's Severe, but Righteous JUDGMENTS, upon bloody and merciless Haters of his Children in all Times, from the beginning of the World to this present Age. COLLECTED Out of the Sacred Scriptures, and other Ecclesiastical Writers, both Ancient and Modern.
By Sam. Clarke, Minister.
God judgeth the Righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every Day: If he turn not, he will whet his Sword: He hath bent his Bow, and made it ready: He hath also prepared for him the Instruments of Death: He ordaineth his Arrows against the Persecutors,
Psal. 7. 11, 12, 13.
London, Printed for William Miller, at the Sign of the Gilded Acorn, near the little North Door in St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1674.
TO THE Christian Reader.
I Know well that this is a very tender Subject about which I am now writing. For,
—The Ancients made
Divine Revenge to be a Child of Night,
Shut to the Earth, but ope' to Heavens sight.
There are two sorts of Persons which err about the Judgments of God: The one of such who will not take any notice of them, be they never so plain and conspicuous. Of such the Prophet complains, Esay 26. 11. Lord, when thy Hand is lifted up, they will not see: but they shall see. These are stupid, and blockish Persons: For (saith the Prophet, verse 9.) When thy Judgments are in the Earth, the Inhabitants of the World will (or at least should) learn Righteousness. The other sort are of such as are too Critical, and censorious in judging of God's Providential Dispensations, as if they were punishments for sin, when God hath other excellent ends in them: This was the fault of Christ's Disciples, John 9. 2. When they saw a man that was blind from his Birth: Master (say they) Who did sin? This Man, or his Parents, that he was born blind? To whom our Saviour answered, Neither hath this Man sinned, nor his Parents: But that the Works of God should be made manifest in him.
But notwithstanding these Errors, both on the Right and Left Hand, there must be an humble, sober, and prudent taking notice of God's Judgments that we may make a right construction of them. The Apostle St. Paul, having recorded the dreadful Examples of God's wrath upon the sinful Israelites in the Wilderness (1 Cor. 10. 5. &c.) concludes (verse 11.) Now all these things happened unto them for Ensamples: And they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the World are come. God himself also hath appointed the recording and observation of such Judgments, That all Israel may hear, and fear, and do no more any such wickedness, Deut. 13. 11.
Obj. But do we not often see, that great and violent Persecutors live long, and prosper in the World, as if they rather merited a reward, than procured God's wrath against them for it?
Ans. It's true. 1. God's Judgments upon many Persecutors are more spiritual, and so less conspicuous, and visible to the eye of the World: As when God gives them up to blindness of mind, hardness of heart, a cauterized conscience, and a reprobate sence, which of all other Judgments are the most dreadful, Hos. 4. 17.
2. All the while they escape with impunity, they are but treasuring up wrath against the Day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous Judgment of God, Rom. 2. 5. For it's a righteous thing with God to recompence tribulation to them that trouble and persecute his People, 2 Thes. 1. 6. Hence, Job 31. 3. Is not destruction to the wicked? And a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity? God doth record and register such wicked mens sins against the Day of Judgment. He writes them in a Book with a Pen of Iron, and the Point of a Diamond, Jer. 17. 1. He seals them up in a Bag, Job 14. 17. As a Clerk of the Assizes seals up the Indictments, and at the Assizes opens his Bag, and produceth them, Deut. 32. 34.
Yet God in all Ages hath taken some of these Persecutors, and hung them up in Chains, as Spectacles of his wrath, for a warning unto others. And howsoever such, by reason of God's patience and forbearance, may dream of impunity; yet let them know that Judgments are never nearer than when they are least feared. A great Càlm is many times the fore-runner of a Storm, when men cry Peace, Peace, then comes sudden and swift destruction, 1 Thes. 5. 3. When Agag said in his Heart, Surely the bitterness of Death is past▪ then came Samuel and hewed him in pieces. When the Old World was eating, drinking, buying, building, Persecuting, and snorting in security; then came the Flood, and destroyed them: When men be at case in Sion, there is a Wo denounced against them, Amos 6. 1. to the 8. When men look at Judgments as a far off, then God will defer no longer, Ezek. 12. 27. 28. When the Philistins met together to be merry and to sport themselves with Sampson, (whose eyes they had put out) he brought the House upon their Heads, and slew them all.
Now God executes Judgments upon some wicked Persecutors; but these are but Praeludia futuri Judicii, Tokens and fore-runners of that Great and General Judgment. Some are now punished (saith one) as the Old World, Sodom, Egypt, Jerusalem, &c. that we may know that there is a Providence taking notice of all: Yet all are not punished, that we may know there is a Judgment to come, to which the wicked are reserved, 2 Pet. 2. 10. Here God's way is in the Clouds, we see not the reason of many things, but then his Justice and Righteousness shall be gloriously apparent to all the World, Rev. 2. 5. Here they live longest, many times, that deserve not to live at all, Job 21. 7. The Israelites are oppressed whilst the Egyptians live at ease. Good David is in want, and persecuted, whilst wicked Nabal abounds. Sion is oft Captive to Babylon: But there is another Day, and another reckoning, when all shall be set to Rights: When the Righteous shall rejoyce, and the wicked shall mourn, Esay 65. 13, 14. God will not alwayes suffer his Jewels to be trampled in the Dirt under the feet of Pride and Malice; but he will vindicate the injuries that are now done unto them, Luke 18. 7. Now men curse, but Christ will then receive such, with a Come ye Blessed of my Father, &c. Matth. 25. 34.
O how singularly foolish than are you, that seek to root out, and to rid the Saints out of the World, as the Heathen Emperors did. These resemble the Stag in the Emblem, that fed upon the Leaves, which hid him from the Hunter. And Sampson-like, by pulling down the Pillars, they bring the House upon their own Heads.
But I will enlarge no further. If (through God's Blessing) this little Book may prove useful to the deterring of wicked and malevolent spirits from all kinds of Persecution, though but in Words and Gestures, Esay 57. 3, 4. and to the encouraging of the Godly Persecuted, to bear their sufferings meekly, referring their cause wholly unto God, who saith, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord, Rom. 12. 19. I have mine end,
Who am Thy Friend and Servant to thy Faith Sam. Clarke. From my Study in Hammersmith, April 14. 1674.
God's Judgments UPON PERSECUTORS Recorded in the Books of the Old Testament.
THe first Persecutor and Murtherer was the Devil, as our Saviour Christ testifies▪ John 8. 44. He was a Murtherer from the Beginning: He murther'd the Souls (the most Noble and Divine part) of our First Parents, and in them of all their Posterity, had not God (of his infinite goodness and mercy) made a Balsom of the Blood of Christ, for the healing of that deadly wound. See the Devil's punishment for it, Gen. 3. 15.
2. The two first men that were born into the World were Cain and Abel; and long they had not lived together before Cain, when they were in the Field together, rose up against his Brother Abel, and slew him, Gen. 4. 8. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his Brothers Righteous, 1 John 3. 12. But the righteous God would not suffer him to go away with impunity. For saith God to him, Gen. 4. 12. When thou tillest the Ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A Fugitive and a Vagabond shalt thou be in the Earth; In which condition he suffered many Thousand Deaths (by reason of his Horrors and terrors of Conscience) before he came to die, as is implied, verse 14. From thy Face shall I be hid, and I shall be a Fugitive and a Vagabond in the Earth, and it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me.
3. Though the Scripture mentions particularly no other Persecution before the Flood, yet Gen. 6. 11. It's said, The Earth was corrupt before God, and the Earth was filled with Violence: which Violence certainly was chiefly practised by the wicked Cainites against the Church of God: For which Sin (among others) God brought that General Deluge which destroyed them all, Gen. 6. 13. God said unto Noah: The end of all Flesh is come before me: For the Earth is filled with violence through them: And behold I will destroy them with the Earth.
4. When the world was reduced to a very small number, yet then had Satan a wicked Ham to persecute and mock his godly aged Father; for which he was cursed, and his Posterity doomed to bondage and servitude, Gen. 19. 25, 26, 27. Cursed be Canaan: A Servant of Servants shall he be to his Brethren, &c.
5. In holy Abraham's Family there was a Persecuting Ishmael, as the Apostle Paul testifies, Gal. 4. 29. He that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit: But though he was Abraham's Son, God would not suffer this Sin to go unpunished: For, verse 30.—What saith the Scripture? Cast out the Bond-woman and her Son: For the Son of the Bond-woman shall not be Heir with the Son of the Freewoman. And sure it was no small punishment to be cast out of the Church of God, and not to be suffered to partake of the Blessings promised thereunto.
6. When the Church of God, the Children of Israel were in Egypt, they were Persecuted by Pharaoh King of Egypt, and his People, who set over them Taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens, Exod. 1. 11. thinking thereby to eat them up and wear them out: And when that prevailed not, they made them serve with rigor, and they made their Lives bitter with hard Bondage in Mortar, and in Brick, and in all manner of Service in the Field: all the Service wherein they made them serve, was with rigor, verse 13. 14. And when yet they still multiplied, the King commanded the Midwives, Siphra and Puah, when they did the Office of a Midwife to the Hebrew women, and saw them upon the Stools, if they were delivered of a Son, they should presently kill him, verse 15. 16. And when these Midwives neglected his commands, he charged all his People that every Son that was born to the Israelites, should be cast into the River Nilus, verse 22.
7. And when God sent Moses into Egypt to deliver his People out of the House of Bondage, Pharaoh raged more against them: He caused Straw to be taken from them, and yet the number of Bricks to be continued; and when that task was not done, the Officers of the Children of Israel were cruelly beaten, Exod. 5. 14. But the Justice of God slept not all this while: They had shed the Blood of the People of God, and God turned all their Waters into Blood: They had killed all the Males of the Israelites, and God's destroying Angel killed all their first-born: They had drowned Multitudes in the River, and Pharaoh and his Army were all drowned in the Red Sea.
Poena venit gravior quo magè sora venit.
Justice though slowly, yet doth surely tread,
And strikes with Iron though she walks with Lead.
8. Saul the first King of Israel was a cruel Persecutor of David, and the Priests of the Lord; of whom (upon a false suggestion) he slew fourscore and five Persons that did wear a linnen Ephod; and not satisfied with their Blood, he went to Nob, the City of the Priests, and smote it with the Edg of the Sword, both Men and Women, Children and Sucklings, and Oxen, and Asses, and Sheep, 1 Sam. 22. 18, 19. But see the end: His Country being invaded by the Philistins, he goes to the Witch of Endor, where he complained to the Devil in Samuel's Mantle, that God had forsaken him when he was sore distressed by the Philistins, and answered him no more, neither by Prophets, nor by Dreams, 1 Sam. 28. 15. And a few dayes after, when he had lived to see his Army routed, three of his Sons slain, and himself sorely wounded, in despair he fell upon his own Sword, and died, 1 Sam. 31. 1, 2, 3, 4.
9. Asa (though a good King) being reproved by the Prophet Hanani, for relying upon the King of Syria, and not upon the Lord his God, was wrath with him, and put him in Prison, and oppressed some of the People at the same time, 2 Chron. 16. 7, 10. But God would not suffer this Sin to go unpunished: For, verse 12. He was diseased in his Feet (probably of the Gout,) and his disease was exceeding great, which in the end took away his Life.
10. King Ahab persecuted the Prophet Micaiah, who dealt plainly and faithfully with him, and sent him to Amon the Governour of the City, and to Joash the King's Son, saying, Put this fellow in the Prison, and feed him with Bread of affliction, and with water of affliction, until I return in Peace, 2 Chron. 18. 26. But notwithstanding all his Policy in disguising himself, he was slain in that Battle, verse 33. 34.
11. Jesabel his Wife slew the Prophets of the Lord, 1 Kings 18. 13. and persecuted Elijah: But Jehu being made King when he was come to Jezreel, Jezabel painted her Face, and tired her Head, and looking out to Jehu said, Had Zimri peace that slew his Master? Jehu seeing her, commanded her to be thrown down out of the window, which was accordingly done by some of her own Servants; By the fall she was slain, and trampled under Horses feet, and her Body was torn, and devoured by Dogs, 2 Kings 9. 30, 33, 35.
12. Manasse persecuted the Ancient and Noble Prophet Isaiah, (who probably was of the Royal Blood) for his free reproofs for all his wickedness, who thereupon caused him to be sawn in sunder with a wooden Saw (as Josephus saith:) But not long after the Lord brought upon him the Captains of the Host of the King of Assyria, who took Manasse among the Thorns, and bound him in Fetters, and carried him to Babylon, where he was cast into a Dungeon, 2 Chron. 33. 11.
13. The wicked Jews grievously persecuted the Prophet Jeremiah: First, they smote him with the Tongue, Jerem. 18. 18. Come, say they, Let us devise devises against Jeremiah—Come and let us smite him with the Tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his Words. Afterwards Pashur the Priest, smote him, and put him in the Stocks; whereupon Jeremiah denounced this Judgment against him: The Lord hath not called thy Name Pashur, but Magormissabib. For thus saith the Lord, I will make thee a terror to thy self, and to all thy Friends, and they shall fall by the Sword of their Enemies, and their Eyes shall hehold it.—And thou Pashur and all that are in thine House shall go into Captivity, and thou shalt come to Babylon, and their thou shalt die, Jerem. 20. 2, 3, 4, 6. Which grievous threatnings were without all question performed.
14. After this the Priests, and the Prophets, and all the People took Jeremiah, and said, Thou shalt surely die, Jer. 26. 8. To whom Jeremiah said, As for me, Behold, I am in your Hand: Do with me as seemeth good unto you: But know ye for certain, that if you put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent Blood upon your self, and upon this City, and upon the Inhabitants thereof, &c. verse 14, 15.
15. When Jerusalem was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar's Army, King Zedekiah caused Jeremiah to be cast into Prison for foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, & the Captivity of Zedekiah, Jer. 32. 2, 3. &c. But God suffered him not to go unpunished. For not long after, the City (according to Jeremiah's Prophecy) was taken, & Zedekiah was, in his flight, overtaken, and carried to the King of Babylon, who slew his Sons before his eyes, & that that dreadful sight might be the last thing that he should ever see he immediatly put out his eyes, and bound him with Chains, and carried him to Babylon, Jer. 39. 5, 6, 7. And Zedekiah's Princes, & Nobles, who had smitten Jeremiah, and put him into Prison, Jer. 37. 15. & did afterwards cast him into a Dungeon, where he did stick in the mire, Jer. 38. 6. When the City was taken, they also being over-taken, were carried to the King of Babylon, who slew them all, Jerem. 38. 6.
16. Afterwards when the People were carried into Captivity, Jeremiah being (according to his own desire) left in the Land of Juda, he with the rest of the People, was carried perforce by Johanan, and some other wicked Captains into Egypt, unto whom he foretold that they should their perish by the Sword, and by the Famine, and by the Pestilence, for which plain and faithful dealing, they stoned him to Death (as Josephus reports:) But it was not long before Nebuchadnezzar came, and overcame the Egyptians, and plundered the Country, at which time those Predictions of Jeremy were fulfilled upon his Persecuting Enemies, Jerem. 43. 6, 7. and 44. 11, 12. &c.
17. And that the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Babylonish Captivity (which continued seventy Years) was in a special manner inflicted upon them for their crying sin of persecuting the Ministers and People of God, appears plainly, 2 Chron. 16. 17. Where it is said: They mocked the Messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his Prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his People, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought upon them the King of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the Sword in the House of their Sanctuary, and had no compassion upon Young Man, or Maiden, Old Man, or him that stooped for Age, &c.
18. During the Captivity, Haman the Agagite (a deadly Enemy to the Church and People of God) had got a Decree from King Ahasuerus, upon a certain Day to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish all Jews both Young and Old, little Children and Womon, and to take the spoil of them for a prey, Esther 3. 13. But God wonderfully defeated this design, preserved his People, and turned the Mischief intended against them, upon their Enemies Pates. For this wicked Haman was himself hanged upon the Gallows, fifty Cubits high, which he had prepared for Mordecay, Esther 7. 9. His ten Sons also were slain, Esther 9. 10. And all others that rose up against them.
19. Sometime after the return of the Jews from the Babylonish Captivity, Antiochus Epiphanes, or the Vile rather, was a cruel and merciless Persecutor of the Godly among them: But being in straits for want of mony, he went into Persia to gather up some: And being there, he heard that in a wealthy City, called Elymais, there was a very Rich Temple dedicated to Diana: Thither therefore he went, and besieged it; But the Inhabitants, sallying out, drave him away with great shame and loss: And when he came back to Babylon he heard of the overthrow of his Captains and Armies in Judaea: Which News (together with his late defeat) so wrought upon him, that he fell sick, and finding no hope of recovery, he called his most familiar Friends unto him, and told them that his Disease was violent and desperate, and that he was justly Plagued by God, with this grievous Sickness, for that he had tormented the People of the Jews, destroyed their Temple and committed horrible Sacrilege, and for contemning the Majesty of of God: But now he Vowed, that if it would please the Lord to receive him, he would become a Jew, and do many great things for the People of God: As also that he would go through all the known World to declare the power of God: Notwithstanding which (the Lord knowing his Hypocrisie) continued to plague him after a very grievous and terrible manner. For he had a remediless and incessant pain in his Bowels, and intollerable torments in all his inward parts. His Body bred abundance of Worms, which continually crawled out of the same: Yea, he so rotted above ground, that whole flakes of flesh fell from his Body, which was accompanied with such an intollerable stink that none were able to come near him, neither could he himself endure the same, which forced him to say, It is meet to submit to God, and for man which is mortal, not to set himself in competition with God. Thus this vile Person, who formerly in a proud and insolent manner had Protested that he would make Jerusalem a common burying place, and the Streets thereof to run with the blood of God's People, by God's just Judgment ended his life in extream misery in a Strange Land, upon the Mountains of Parata, near Babylon.
20. Probably under him it was that the Saints endured most of those Persecutions which are mentioned by the Apostle in that little Book of Martyrs, Heb. 11. 36, 37, 38. Others had trial of cruel mockings, and scourgings; yea, moreover of Bonds, and imprisonment. They were stoned: they were sawn asunder; were tempted; were slain with the Sword: They wandred about in Sheepskins, and Goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented: Of whom the World was not worthy: They wandred in Desarts, and Mountains, and in Dens, and Caves of the Earth.