Lord God of Hosts;" [1] or rather of Jesus Christ himself, who says: " The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up." [2]
The pastor should also set forth the terrors denounced in the menaces of God's judgments menaces which declare that he will not suffer sinners to run their iniquitous career with impunity; but will chastise them with the fondness of a parent, or punish them with the rigour of a judge; and which, on another occasion, are thus expressed by Moses: " Thou shalt know that the Lord thy God is a strong and faithful God, keeping his covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments, unto a thousand generations; and repaying forthwith them that hate him, so as to destroy them without further delay, immediately rendering to them what they deserve." [3] " You will not," says Josue, " be able to serve the Lord; for he is a holy God, and mighty and jealous, and will not forgive your wickedness and sins. If you leave the Lord and serve strange gods, he will turn and will afflict you, and will destroy you." [4] The faithful are also to be taught, that the punishments here threatened await the third and fourth generation of the impious and wicked; not that the children are always visited with the chastisements due to the delinquency of their parents, but that, although they and their children may go unpunished, their posterity shall not all escape the wrath and vengeance of the Almighty. Of this we have an illustration in the life of king Josias: God had spared him for his singular piety, and allowed him to be gathered to the tomb of his fathers in peace, that his eyes might not behold the evils of the times that were to befall Judah and Jerusalem, on ac count of the wickedness of his father Manasseh; yet, after his decease, the divine vengeance so overtook his posterity, that even the children of Josias were not spared. [5]
The words of this commandment may perhaps seem to be at variance with the sentence pronounced by the prophet: " The soul that sins shall die;" [6] but the authority of St. Gregory, supported by the concurrent testimony of all the ancient fathers, satisfactorily reconciles this apparent contradiction: "Who ever," says he, " follows the bad example of a wicked father is also bound by his sins; but he, who does not follow the example of a wicked father, shall not at all suffer for the sins of the father. Hence it follows that a wicked son, who dreads not to superadd his own malice to the vices of his father, by which he knows the divine wrath to have been excited, is burdened not only with his own additional sins, but also with those of his wicked father. It is just that he who dreads not to walk in the footsteps of a wicked father, in presence of a rigorous judge, should be subjected in the present life to the punishment invoked by the crimes of his wicked parent." [7]
