Third kind of petitionary prayer—the imprecatory 3/3

(1.) Matter of comfort to the saints against those direful imprecations which the wicked world belcheth out against them.  The saints in this sense are a cursed people.  The wicked make the greatest part of the world; the church is a little flock, but her enemies a huge herd; and these cannot wish well to the saints.  Cain, as Luther saith, will hate and kill Abel to the end of the world; the same spirit that was in him remaineth in his seed.  Sometimes when the church of God flourisheth, and hath the sun of outward pros­perity on her side, they may cry hosanna in the crowd—as Shimei, when David was going up the hill of honour, then he could worship the rising sun, and crouch to him whom he had bitterly cursed in his distress—but when ‘they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly’ in their heart, Ps. 62:4.  A wicked man cannot wish well to a saint as a saint, as, on the contrary, a saint cannot bless the wicked as such.  ‘Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the Lord,’ Ps. 129:8.  They do, indeed, desire their conver­sion, and therein wish them well, but in the wicked way they are in at present they cannot bless them.  So the wicked can desire the saints should come over to their party, do as they do, and then they would ap­plaud and hug them.  But, let the saints keep close to God, and refuse to run into riot and excess with them, and they are sure to meet with their curse and imprecation; it is not their unblamable and peaceable will free them from their wrath and fury.  ‘I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me,’ Jer. 15:10. But fear not, thou who art a saint, their imprecations. This is but anathema secundum dici; like false fire in the pan of an uncharged gun, it gives a crack but hurts not.  God’s blessing will cover thee from their curse; ‘Let them curse, but bless thou,’ Ps. 109:28.  When the viper flew out of the fire upon Paul’s hand, the bar­barians looked that he should presently drop down dead, but it proved no such matter.  Thus the ene­mies of God and his people have looked one genera­tion after another, when the church, that hath been always laden with their curses, should perish under them; but it lives yet to walk over the graves of all those that have wished it ill.  Alas, poor wretches! what is your imprecation worth?  Truly as your bles­sing can do no good, so neither your curse any hurt, till you can get God to set his seal and say amen to it; which is impossible for you to obtain.

           Did our Saviour so sharply rebuke the rash request of his disciples, calling for fire to fall on them whom they thought deserved it? and will he gratify the lust of your devilish wrath and fury against his own dear people, by pouring on them what you auda­ciously, yea blasphemously, desire of him?  Will nothing serve you but to have God your executioner to hang whom you condemn? and those no other than his dear children, and for nought else but because they dare not be as wicked as yourselves?  Go bid the tender mother imbrue her hands in the blood of her sweet babe, that even now came out of her womb, and now lies at her breast; or the husband betray and deliver the wife of his bosom into the hands of murderers that wait for her life.  Would these be an errand to make the messenger that brings them welcome to loving mother or husband?  But if any such anomalies in nature’s grammar and monsters among men were to be found, yet remember he is a God thou solicitest whose nature is unchange­able and covenant with his people inviolable.  How was God courted by Balak and Balaam with altar after altar, from place to place!  But all to no purpose: ‘Nevertheless the Lord thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee,’ Deut. 23:5.  Never was any design carried on with more zeal and passionate desire to effect it than this; one would think that God had said enough to Balaam at first to make him sick of his enterprise, as a thing infeasible, Num. 22:12: ‘Thou shalt not go with them; thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed.’  But the liked the work and loved the wages, and therefore baffles his conscience, not telling the messengers all that God said to him, and they also report not all to Balak what Balaam said to them, so loath were both the work should fall: yet we see by the event, that they took but pains to lose their labour, nay worse, to lose themselves, for God made them, and him that set them on this work, to drink the curse which they would so fain have brewed for Israel.

           (2.) A word to the wicked.  Take heed that by your implacable hatred to the truth and church of God, yo do not engage her prayers against you.  These imprecatory prayers of the saints, when shot at the right mark, and duly put up, they are murdering pieces, and strike dead where they light.  ‘Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?  I tell you that he will avenge them speedily,’ Luke 18:7, 8.  They are not empty words—as the imprecations of the wicked poured into the air, and there vanish with their breath—but are received into heaven, and shall be sent back with thunder and lightning upon the pates of the wicked.  David’s prayer unravelled Ahithophel's fine-spun policy, and twisted his halter for him.  The prayers of the saints are more to be feared—as once a great person said and felt—than an army of twenty thousand men in the field.  Esther’s fast hastened Haman's ruin, and Hezekiah’s against Sennacherib brought his huge host to the slaughter, and fetched an angel from heaven to do the execution in one night upon them.