fession of a former recovery), it is desperate; and
thine anger works, not only where the evidence is pregnant and without
exception (so thou sayest when it is said, that certain men in a city
have withdrawn others to idolatry, and that inquiry is made, and it is
found true; the city, and the inhabitants, and the cattle are to be
destroyed),[334] but where there is but a suspicion, a rumour, of such a
relapse to idolatry, thine anger is awakened, and thine indignation
stirred. In the government of thy servant Joshua, there was a voice,
that Reuben and Gad, with those of Manasseh, had built a new altar.[335]
Israel doth not send one to inquire, but the whole congregation gathered
to go up to war against them,[336] and there went a prince of every
tribe; and they object to them, not so much their present declination to
idolatry, as their relapse: _Is the iniquity of Peor too little for
us?_[337] an idolatry formerly committed, and punished with the
slaughter of twenty-four thousand delinquents. At last Reuben and Gad
satisfy them, that that altar was not built for idolatry, but built as a
pattern of theirs, that they might thereby profess themselves to be of
the same profession that they were, and so the army returned without
blood. Even where it comes not so far as to an actual relapse into
idolatry, thou, O my God, becomest sensible of it; though thou, who
seest the heart all the way, preventest all dangerous effects where
there was no ill meaning, however there were occasion of suspicious
rumours given to thine Israel of relapsing. So odious to thee, and so
aggravating a weight upon sin is a relapse. But, O my God, why is it so?
so odious? It must be so, because he that hath sinned and then repented,
hath weighed God and the devil in a balance; he hath heard God and the
devil plead, and after hearing given judgment on that side to which he
adheres by his subsequent practice;[338] if he return to his sin, he
decrees for Satan, he prefers sin before grace, and Satan before God;
and in contempt of God, declares the precedency for his adversary; and a
contempt wounds deeper than an injury, a relapse deeper than a
blasphemy. And when thou hast told me that a relapse is more odious to
thee, need I ask why it is more dangerous, more pernicious to me? Is
there any other measure of the greatness of my danger, than the
greatness of thy displeasure? How fitly and how fearfully hast thou
expressed my case in a storm at sea, if I rel