Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, [that] every one that findeth me shall slay me.
Ver. 14. From the face of the earth.] That is, of this earth, this country, my father's family; which in the next words he calls God's face, the place of his public worship, from the which Cain was here justly excommunicated. And surely St Jude's woe will light heavily upon all such as, going in the way of Cain, and not willing to hear of their wicked ways, do wilfully absent themselves from the powerful preaching of the word. They that will not hear the word, shall hear the rod. Mic 6:9 Yea, a sword shall pierce through their souls, as it did Cain's here; in whom was fulfilled that of Eliphaz; - "A dreadful sound was in his ears, lest in his prosperity the destroyer should come upon him. He believed not that he should return out of darkness, and he is waited for of the sword." Job 15:21-22
Every one that finds me shall slay me.] Quam male est extra legem viventibus! quicquid meruerunt semper expectant. a Fat swine cry hideously, if but touched or meddled with, as knowing they owe their life to them that will take it. Tiberius felt the remorse of conscience so violent, that he protested to the senate, that he suffered death daily; whereupon Tacitus makes this good note, Tandem facinora et flagitia in supplicium vertuntur. As every body hath its shadow appertaining to it, so hath every sin its punishment. And although they escape the lash of the law, yet "vengeance will not suffer them to live," Act 28:4 as the barbarians rashly censured St Paul, - to live quietly at least. Richard III., after the murder of his two innocent nephews, had fearful dreams and visions; insomuch that he did often leap out of his bed in the dark, and catching his sword, which, always naked, stuck by his side, he would go distractedly about the chamber, everywhere seeking to find out the cause of his own occasioned disquiet. b Polidor Virgil thus writes of his dream that night before Bosworth Field, where he was slain, that he thought that all the devils in hell pulled and hailed him in most hideous and ugly shapes; and concludes of it at last, "I do not think it was so much his dream, as his evil conscience that bred those terrors." It is as proper for sin to raise fears in the soul, as for rotten flesh and wood to breed worms. That worm that never dies is bred here in the froth of filthy lusts and flagitious courses, and lies gnawing and grubbing upon men's inwards, many times in the ruffe of all their jollity. This makes Saul call for a minstrel, Belshazzar for his carousing cups, Cain for his workmen to build him a city, others for other of the devil's drugs, to put on the pangs of their wounded spirits and throbbing consciences. Charles IX., after the massacre of France, could never endure to be awakened in the night without music, or some like diversion; he became as terrible to himself, as formerly he had been to others. c But above all, I pity the loss of their souls, who serve themselves as the Jesuit in Lancashire, followed by one that found his glove, with a desire to restore it him. But pursued inwardly with a guilty conscience, he leaps over a hedge, plunges into a deep pit behind it, unseen and unthought of, wherein he was drowned. d
a Petron.
b Daniel's Chron. continued by Trussel, 249.
c Thuan. lib. lvii.
d M. Ward's Sermon.