Page:MeditationsOnTheMysteriesOfOurHolyV1.djvu/293

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POINT II.

Secondly, I am to consider the maledictions that Almighty God pours out upon the breakers of His law, and the terrible punishments that He threatens to them both in this life and in the other.

1. This I may ponder, discoursing first of the terrible catalogue that Moses makes of these maledictions in two chapters of Deuteronomy, saying to the people that if they broke the law of Almighty God these maledictions should " come upon" them "and overtake n them. [1] "Cursed shalt thou be in the city, cursed in the field." " Cursed shall be the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy ground, the herds of thy oxen, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be in coming in, and cursed going out The Lord shall send upon thee famine and hunger, and a rebuke upon all the works that thou shalt do: until He consume and destroy thee quickly, for thy most wicked inventions by which thou hast forsaken me. May the Lord send the pestilence upon thee until He consume thee out of the land which thou shalt go in to possess. May the Lord afflict thee with miserable want, with the fever and with cold, with burning and with heat, and with corrupted air, and with blasting, and pursue thee till thou perish. Be the heaven that is over thee of brass, and the ground thou treadest on of iron. The Lord give thee dust for rain upon thy land, and let ashes come down from heaven upon thee till thou be consumed. The Lord make thee to fall down before thine enemies," " and be thy carcase meat for all the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the earth, and be there none to drive them away." 17 And in this manner he goes on with other horrible maledictions, which, after he has reckoned up, as

  1. Dent, xxvii. 15; et xxviii. 16, et seq.