if they were but little ones, he says, " God shall increase thy plagues," [1] adding others that are greater. And because the curse of God is not only in word but in deed, there is none of those that infringe His law that will be able to escape what Almighty God will inflict upon him, and finally all be overtaken with that last which Christ our Saviour shall pronounce at the day of judgment, [2] the terribleness of which has already been declared. The effects of these maledictions, the miserable people of the Jews had had experience of in their time, and many of them we experience in ours, which are all admonitions for our amendment; for the desire of this divine Lawgiver is not to entangle us in these maledictions, but to terrify us that we may keep His law, and be delivered from them.
Colloquy. — O most just Lawgiver, I confess that in very great justice "the heaven' should "be to me" of brass, and the ground " of iron," and that I deserve neither the favour of earth nor heaven! I deserve that Thou shouldst "stop" Thy "ears against" [3] my prayer, because I stopped mine against Thy law. I have drunk " iniquity like water," [4] and therefore it is right that malediction should enter "like water into" my "entrails." [5] But remember, O Lord, that Thou didst subject Thyself to the curses which the law cast upon Him who died crucified, [6] to deliver us from the curses that are threatened by the law. Apply to me, then, the fruit of Thy death, pardoning me the sins that I have committed against the law, and freeing me from the maledictions that I have deserved for them! Amen.
2. I may likewise consider the chastisements that Almighty God inflicts upon those that break the ten commandments of His law, as they are represented in the ten plagues of Egypt, [7] with which they are many times
