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The anger of God is not a disturbing emotion of His mind, but a
judgment by which punishment is inflicted upon sin. His thought and
reconsideration also are the unchangeable reason which changes things;
for He does not, like man, repent of anything He has done, because
in all matters His decision is as inflexible as His prescience is
certain. But if Scripture were not to use such expressions as the
above, it would not familiarly insinuate itself into the minds of all
classes of men, whom it seeks access to for their good, that it may
alarm the proud, arouse the careless, exercise the inquisitive, and
satisfy the intelligent; and this it could not do, did it not first
stoop, and in a manner descend, to them where they lie. But its
denouncing death on all the animals of earth and air is a declaration of
the vastness of the disaster that was approaching: not that it
threatens destruction to the irrational animals as if they too had
incurred it by sin.
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