Treating of thunder and
lightning, he compares them to bombs against the wicked, and
says that the thunderbolt is "an exhalation condensed and
cooked into stone," and that "it is not to be doubted that, of
all instruments of God's vengeance, the thunderbolt is the
chief"; that by means of it Sennacherib and his army were
consumed; that Luther was struck by lightning in his youth as a
caution against departing from the Catholic faith; that
blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking are the sins to which this
punishment is especially assigned, and he cites the case of
Dathan and Abiram. Fifty years later the Jesuit Stengel
developed this line of thought still further in four thick
quarto volumes on the judgments of God, adding an elaborate
schedule for the use of preachers in the sermons of an entire
year. Three chapters were devoted to thunder, lightning, and
storms. That the author teaches the agency in these of
diabolical powers goes without saying; but this can only act,
he declares, by Divine permission, and the thunderbolt is always
the finger of God, which rarely strikes a man save for his sins,
and the nature of the special sin thus punished may be inferred
from the bodily organs smitten.
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