WHEN God is exceedingly displeased with a people, it is not necessary, in order to their punishment, that He should bury them alive by an earthquake, or destroy them by lightening. If He only leaves them to themselves, withdraw His blessings from their counsels, and His restraint from their passions, their ruin follows on course, according to the necessary order and connection of causes and effects .....
IF God gives up a people to the way of their own hearts, they will, they must, perish! WHEN a general corruption of morals takes place, WHEN private interest extinguishes all sense of public virtue, WHEN a profligate and venal spirit has infected every rank and order of the state, WHEN presumptuous security and dissipation increase as danger approaches; WHEN, after repeated disappointments, contempt for God, and vain confidence in imagined resources of their own, grow bolder and stronger, THEN there is reason to fear that the sentence has already gone forth, and that the execution of it is at hand.
- John Newton, 1781
I have never read an uninspired article which seems to so accurately describe our nation at present. Mr. Newton shows our condition and the cause. I urge you to take this article home with you and read it slowly, considering each phrase carefully. For example, consider the meaning of a "profligate and venal spirit." It literally means a people ungoverned by morals, insensitive to principle, virtue and decency; a people who are given to reckless extravagance and excess. They are a people who would sell honor, integrity, decency, principle, even their very souls, to the highest bidder. They are hirelings for sale. They are, sad to say, the majority of the younger men and women in the United States. They are, apart from God's sovereign, free, effectual grace, you and I. (Deut. 18:9-14; I Corinth. 4:7; II Tim. 3:1-4:4).
Maurice Montgomery
Speaking of believers, John Newton said, "They are no longer their own; they would not be their own; it is their desire, their joy, their glory, to live to Him who died for them. He has won their hearts by His love, and made them a willing people n the day of His power."