which is done, will render his salvation morally impossible, and thus will he remain if not absolutely, at least, morally abandoned.
" I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up." (Isa. v. 5.) Oh, what a punishment! When the master of the vineyard breaks down the hedge, and allows any one who may wish to enter the vineyard, both man and beast, it is a sign that he has abandoned it. When God abandons a soul, He does even this He takes away the hedge of fear, remorse of conscience, and leaves the soul in darkness, and then all the monsters of vice enter into the soul. " Thou makest darkness that it may be night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do move." (Ps. civ. 20.) And when the sinner is thus left in darkness, he will despise every thing, the grace of God, Paradise warnings; he will even laugh at his own damnation. "When the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt." (Prov. xviii. 3.)
God very often leaves the sinner without punishment in this life; but the shiner's greatest punishment often is, that he is not punished. " Let favour be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness." (Isa. xxvi. 10.) S. Bernard observes upon this text, " I do not desire this compassion, it is worse than any anger."
Oh, what a punishment is it, when God leaves the sinner to his sin, and when He appears to ask for no account of his sin, nor to be angry with him. " So will I make My fury toward thee to rest, and My jealousy shall depart from thee." (Ezek. xvi. 42.) And when He seems to leave him to follow all that he desires in this world; " So I gave them up unto their own heart's lusts, and let them follow their own imaginations." (Ps. lxxxi. 13.) Alas, for those miserable sinners who prosper in this life! It is a sign that God is waiting to make them the victims of His justice in the life to come. Jeremiah inquires, " Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? " (Jer. xii. I.) And then he answers, " Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter." (Jer. xii. 3.) There is no greater punishment, than when God permits a sinner to add sin to sin, according to what David says, " Let them fall from one wickedness to another; . . . . let them be wiped out of the book of the living." (Ps.
