Numbers 14:28

Say unto them, [As truly as] I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:

Ver. 28. So will I do to you.] God took them at their words: so he may well do our desperate swearers, since the mercy they desire God to show is to damn them. This self-cursing seldom escapeth God's visible vengeance: witness those Jews of old, who cried, "His blood be on us," &c., besides many others of late that might be instanced. Mr Perkins tells of certain English soldiers in King Edward VI's time, who were cast upon the French shore by a storm, in which stress they went to prayer, that they might be delivered; but one soldier among the rest, instead of praying, cried out, Gallows take thy right, or claim thy due: when he came home he was hanged indeed. So was Sir Gervaise Ellowayes, Lieutenant of the Tower in King James' time, whose usual word at his playing at cards and dice had been, as he sorrowfully confessed at the gallows, I would I might be hanged if it be not so or so. a

a Looking glass for Malignants.