name: “Without mercy: for I will not add any more to have mercy on the house of Israel.”[1] Now there is no sin so great that He is not ready to forgive at the first moment of repentance; but hereafter there will not be the least fault that He shall not examine and punish with all the strictness of His justice. Nothing shall remain unavenged:[2] every farthing must be paid; not an idle word shall be passed over or forgiven without satisfaction. Even the works of the just shall with difficulty be allowed to pass: “When I shall take a time,” says the Lord, “I will judge justices.”[3]
And the divine honor requires that. And this is but right; the divine honor requires that a time should come in which the severity of His justice shall be made manifest, as His other perfections are shown to the world. In the creation God showed His almighty power; for with one word, fiat, He made the universe out of nothing. In the government of the world He shows His admirable wisdom, for His providence has appointed many different states for men to live in. In the Redemption He shows His goodness and mercy, for He offered Himself as a Victim for the salvation of men, and was nailed to a cross for them, and the same mercy is daily made manifest in the patience with which He bears with sinners. His boundless magnificence and liberality He shows in heaven, where every momentary good work shall reap an eternal reward; His hatred and detestation of sin are made evident in the eternal hell, where He punishes even a momentary mortal sin of thought. It is His justice alone that has not been exhibited to the world hitherto. And God has appointed the last day of the world as the time for showing that special perfection to men; and therefore He calls it: The great day of the Lord; the day of wrath; the bitter day; the day of calamity, on which He shall judge all nations in His justice.
As also His mercy. The mercy of God itself requires that severity and merciless strictness in the judgment. Why? It has been and is still so often abused by men during life; and what is still more insulting to this divine attribute, sinners take occasion from it to offend God with all the more hardihood. Thus countless millions of sins are committed because God is infinitely good and merciful. Is it not right, then, that this insulted mercy and
