The sinners of a nation are really the weakness of it. . . . Wicked men are they that betray nations and kingdoms, expose them to God’s wrath, and subject them to His judgments. Did Noah bring the flood upon the old world? Or did the wicked do it by their wickedness? Did Lot bring down fire from Heaven upon Sodom? Or did the Sodomites do it by their own lewdness? Did Jeremiah by his preaching, . . . and those few other godly in Jerusalem by their praying and weeping and mourning, bring on the captivity of that people? Or did not the people themselves, by their idolatry, their profaneness, their swearing, their Sabbath-breaking, their polluting God’s ordinances, their shedding innocent blood, etc.?

– John Collins

1632 – 1687