When a sinful church or people have passed the utmost bounds of divine patience and forbearance, they shall fall into such abominable, crying sins and provocations as shall render the utmost vengeance beneath their deserts. So Josephus affirms of this generation, after they had rejected and slain the Lord Christ, that they fell into such a hell of provoking abominations, that if the Romans had not come and destroyed them, God would have sent fire and brimstone upon them from heaven, as he did on Sodom. And we may, by the way, observe from hence, -- It is a dangerous thing to live in the times of declining churches, when they are hastening unto their fatal period in judgments- such as will inevitably befall them all and every one.