They
could only be written by men who believed that God hates sinners,
that his will is to destroy them on earth, and torture them for ever
after death.
We may impute, alas! what motives and thoughts we choose, in the
face of our Lord's own words, Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.
But we shall not be fair and honest in imputing, unless we first
settle what these men meant, in the words which they have actually
written. What did they mean by 'cursed' is the question. And that
we can only answer by the context of the Commination Service. And
that again we can only answer by seeing what it means in the Bible,
which the Reformers profess to follow in all their writings.
Now, what does the Bible mean by a curse, and cursing?--For we are
bound to believe, in all fairness, that the Reformers meant the
same, and neither more nor less. The text, I think, tells us
plainly enough. We know that its words came true. We know that the
Jews _did_ perish out of their native land, as the Author of this
book foretold, in consequence of doing that against which Moses
warned them. We know also that they did not perish by any
miraculous intervention of Providence: but simply as any other
nation would have perished; by profligacy, internal weakness, civil
war, and, at last, by foreign conquest.
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