Use 3

USE III.

Hence we must cautiously interpret those imprecations, which God's faithful prophets have sometimes used against impenitent sinners, on Scripture record. We shall find of them in the Psalms, and prophesy, of Jeremiah: and some are ready to make a wrong improvement of them, and justify their own passionate wishes against others by them. It may be said of them, that they were men of like passions; and all that is recorded concerning holy men in Scripture, is not commendable; some such expressions might be the boiling over of their corruption. But I suppose, there may be a better account given of them than so: namely, that they were men inspired, and delivered prophesies, and therefore did not declare their own desire (as least in such as were personal) but God's purpose, which they sometimes delivered in plain enunciations, sometimes in rhetorical imprecations, according as the Spirit of God suggested to them. Hence we find, that they were meanwhile praying and interceding with God for their people, and protesting their integrity in so doing: and God is put upon it more than once, to forbid Jeremiah from praying for that people.