Hell and destruction [are] before the LORD: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?
Ver. 11. Hell and destruction are before the Lord.] "Tophet is prepared of old"; and wherever it is, as it skills not curiously to inquire, - below us it seems to be, Rev 14:11 et ubi sit sentient qui curiosius quaerunt a - so it is most certain that "hell is naked before God, and destruction uncovered in his sight." Job 26:6 We, silly fishes, see one another jerked out of the pond of life by the hand of death; but we see not the frying pan and the fire that they are cast into, that "die in their sins," and refuse to be reformed. Cast they are into utter darkness. Mat 8:12 In tenebras ex tenebris infeliciter exclusi, infelicius excludendi. b Howbeit this thickest "darkness hideth not from God, but the light shineth as the day"; Psa 139:12 he perfectly knows the state of the dead and the damned. Oh that men knew more of it, and did believe in any measure that eternity of extremity that is there to be endured! Oh that they would be forewarned to flee from this wrath to come! Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end, those quatuor novissima! Deu 32:29 Utinam ubique de Gehenna dissereretur, saith Chrysostom. He that doth but hear of hell, is without any further labour or study taken off from sinful pleasures, saith Nyssen. But if a man had but one glimpse of it, it were enough, saith Bellarmine, to make him not only turn Christian and sober, but anchorite and monk; to live after the strictest rule that can be. But, alas! we cannot get men to think of it till they be plunged headlong into it.
“Esse aliquos manes, &c.
Vel pueri credunt nisi qui nondum aere levantur.”
- Juvenal.
No, though one should come from the dead to testify unto them, they would not be persuaded. Luk 16:31
How much more then the hearts of the children of men.] Though deep and deceitful, full of turnings and windings, Multae sunt in animo latebrae, multi recessus, saith Cicero, yet God can fathom and find them out. Jer 17:9-10 He searcheth the hearts and reins, which yet are the most remote and abstruse of all the entrails, covered from the eye of the anatomist with fat and flesh, &c. By "hearts and reins" understand thoughts and affections; the reins being the seat of the strongest affection, that which is for generation. Lo, these are pervious and patent to the eyes of God, yea, dissected, quartered, cleft in the backbone - as the apostle's word, τετραχηλισμενα Heb 4:13 signifies - how much more then their evil actions! These cannot possibly be hidden from God's all-seeing eye, though they dig deep to secure themselves, as those gunpowder traitors; though they throw thereupon wood, stones, and rubbish, all these to God would be but as spectacles to make their sins appear the greater, or as perspectives to multiply them. c
a Pareus, in loc.
b Augustin., Hom. 16.
c Lux altissima coeli occultum nihil esse sinit, latebrasque per omnes intrat. - Claudian.