God is Slow to Punish
February 4, 2020
“CONSIDER first, the reason why so many persons become bolder every day in sinning. It is because God is slow to punish. If every time that a man uttered a blasphemous word he felt his tongue suddenly torn by cruel vermin, if his hands were withered as soon as he committed a theft, if whenever he was guilty of deception his intellect were clouded, if when any one falls into some shameful act of sensuality he were instantly covered with a disgusting leprosy, thinkest thou that there would be so many blasphemers, thieves, cheats, and dissolute persons in the world? It is because God is so slow to punish, because He is so longsuffering and silent, because He seems to take no notice, that men become so audacious: ‘Because sentence is not speedily pronounced against the evil, the children of men commit evils without any fear (Eccles. viii. 11).’ What monstrous wickedness; such persons are, indeed, “children of men,” and not of God. To sin deliberately because God is good! It is easy to see that such children cannot belong to God, since they are so entirely different from Him. They are children of perdition, for this is the meaning of the expression ‘children of men.’ ‘The Son of Man” is always used in the best sense in the Sacred Scriptures; but ‘children’ or ‘sons of men,’ always, or nearly always, in a bad sense. ‘O ye sons of men, how long will ye be dull of heart (Psalm iv. 3)?’ ‘The children of men have spoken vain things (Psalm xi. 3).’ Thou seest, therefore, that to abuse God’s mercy by sinning the more shamelessly, is to be in the number of the reprobate.”
