The bloodthirsty hate the upright: but the just seek his soul.
Ver. 10. The bloodthirsty hate the upright.] As Cain did Abel for his goodness, 1Jn 3:12 and as many bloody villains still, who bear about, and, so far as they dare, make use of Cain's club to knock on the head God's righteous Abels. All hatred is bloody, but especially the habit of hatred. No sight pleased Hannibal better than a ditch running over with man's blood. Nothing would satisfy Farnesius, the Pope's champion, but to ride his horse up to the skirts in the blood of the Lutherans. Charles IX of France, author of the Parisian Massacre, looking upon the dead carcase of the admiral, that stank by being long kept unburied, uttered this most stinking speech: Quam suaviter olet cadaver inimiei! - How sweet is the smell of an enemy's carcase! And the queen mother of Scotland, beholding the dead bodies of her Protestant subjects, whom she had slain in battle, said that she never saw a finer piece of tapestry in all her life.
But the just seek his soul.] In a good sense; as Psa 142:4 seek the salvation of it - as Christ did of his deadliest enemies; as Paul did of his countrymen the Jews, of whom five times he received forty stripes save one; 2Co 11:24 as the disciples did of those spiteful Pharisees, that had causelessly accused them; Matthew 15:2 ; Mat 15:12 as that martyr Master Saunders did. ‘My lord,' said he to Bishop Bonner, ‘you seek my blood, and you shall have it. I pray God you may be so baptized in it that you may hereafter loathe bloodsucking, and so become a better man.' a And another time, when Steven Gardiner, being prettily nipped and touched by the same Saunders, said, ‘Carry away this frenzy fool to prison'; he answered, that ‘he did give God thanks, which had given him at the last a place of rest and quietness, where he might pray for the bishop's conversion.' ‘If ye will not hear me speak for myself,' said another martyr, ‘then send me to my prison again among my toads and frogs, which will not interrupt me, while I pray to God for you.' b
a Acts and Mon., fol. 1358.
b Ibid.