Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time [that] I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.
Ver. 15. Were they at all ashamed] Their shamelessness was no small aggravation of their sin. Ita licet multas abominationes commiserunt Papistae sine verecundia, verecundari tamen non possunt, saith Dr John Raynolds. a Papists are frontless and shameless. Dr Story, for instance: - I see nothing, said he, before the parliament in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth, to be ashamed of, so less I see to be sorry for; but rather because I have done no more, &c.; wherein he said there was no default in him, but in the higher powers, who much against his mind had laboured only about the young and little sprigs and twigs, whiles they should have struck at the root and rooted it out, meaning thereby the Lady Elizabeth, whom also he afterwards daily cursed in his grace before his meal. And concerning his persecuting and burning the Protestants, he denied not but that he was once at the burning of an earwig (for so he termed it) at Uxbridge (Mr Denley, martyr), where he tossed a faggot at his face as he was singing psalms, and set a spiny evergreen bush of thorns under his feet, a little to prick him, &c. b
a De Idolat. Rom., p. 85.
b Acts and Mon., fol. 1925.