Jeremiah 3:1-3

It is the uniform custom of human life, that, if a woman prove unfaithful to her husband, and the thing be notorious and publicly known, by her open departure from him, never is she permitted to return to him again. There are none such compassionate husbands among men as to allow it. But, saith the Lord, with me things shall not be so. I will receive my Church, though she hath set up her idols in every place of her iniquity. Reader! do pause I beseech you, and admire the abundant grace of the Lord. In all things, his ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts. Jesus indeed seems to take occasion from the unworthiness of our poor fallen nature, to display and magnify the riches of his grace. Isaiah 55:8; Romans 5:20. The Arabian in the wilderness is a fine image, to illustrate the earnestness with which Israel had revolted from the Lord. It had been, not the casual inadvertency of temptation, but the deliberate purpose and contrivance of the heart.