chastised as free and a son, that needs to be disciplined.” Correction serves to the latter for a probation and reformation, to the former for a scourge and a punishment.
XXXII. To obtain a clear view of the whole subject in a small compass, it is necessary to state two distinctions respecting it. The first is, that wherever there is vindictive punishment, there also is a manifestation of the curse and wrath of God, which he always withholds from believers. Chastisement, on the contrary, is, as the Scripture teaches us, both a blessing of God, and a testimony of his love. This difference is sufficiently marked in every part of the Divine word. For all the afflictions which the impious endure in the present life, are represented to us as constituting a kind of antechamber of hell, whence they already have a distant prospect of their eternal damnation; and they are so far from being reformed, or receiving any benefit from this, that they are rather prepared by such preludes for that most tremendous vengeance which finally awaits them. On the contrary, the Lord repeatedly chastises his servants, yet does not deliver them over to death;(1762) wherefore they confess that the strokes of his rod were highly beneficial and instructive to them. As we every where find that the saints bore these corrections with resignation of soul, so they always earnestly deprecated punishments of the former kind. Jeremiah says, “O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not upon thy name.”(1763) And David: “O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.”(1764) Nor is it any objection to this, that the Lord is frequently said to be angry with his saints, when he chastises them for their sins. As in Isaiah: “O Lord, I will praise thee; though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me.”(1765) Habakkuk also: “In wrath remember mercy.”(1766) And Micah: “I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him.”(1767) Which reminds us, not only that those who are justly punished, receive no advantage from murmuring, but that the faithful derive a mitigation of their sorrow from a consideration of the intention of God. For on the same account he is said to profane his own inheritance, which, however, we know, he never will profane.(1768) That relates not to the design or disposition of God in punishing, but to the vehement sense of sorrow experienced by those who suffer any of his severity. He not only distresses his believing people with no small degree of rigour, but sometimes wounds them in such a manner, that they seem to themselves to be on the brink of infernal destruction. Thus he declares, that they have deserved his wrath; and this in order that they may be displeased with themselves in their distresses, may be influenced by a greater concern to appease God, and may hasten with solicitude to implore his pardon; but in this very procedure he exhibits a brighter testimony of his clemency than of his wrath. The covenant still remains which was made with us in our true Solomon, and the validity of which he, who cannot deceive, has declared shall never be diminished: “If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my commandments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes. Nevertheless, my loving‐kindness will I not utterly take from him.”(1769) To assure us of this loving‐kindness, he says, that the rod with which he will chastise the posterity of Solomon, and the stripes he will inflict on them, will be “the rod of men, and the stripes of the children of men.”(1770) While by these phrases he signifies moderation and lenity, he also implies that those who feel his hand exerted against them cannot but be confounded with an extreme and deadly horror. How much he observes this lenity in chastising his Israel, he shows by the prophet: “I have refined thee, (says he,) but not with silver;(1771) for thou wouldst have been wholly consumed.” Though he teaches him that chastisements serve to purify him, yet he adds that he so far moderates them, that they may not exceed what he is able to bear. And this is highly necessary; for the more a man reveres God and devotes himself to the cultivation of piety, he is so much the more tender to bear his wrath. For though the reprobate groan under his scourges, yet because they consider not the cause, but rather turn their backs both on their sins and on the Divine judgments, from this carelessness they contract an insensibility; or because they murmur and resist, and rebel against their judge, that furious impetuosity stupefies them with madness and rage. But believers, admonished by the Divine corrections, immediately descend to the consideration of their sins, and, stricken with fear and dread, resort to a suppliant deprecation of punishment. If God did not mitigate these sorrows, with which wretched souls torment themselves, they would be continually fainting, even under slight tokens of his wrath.