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Post by Admin on Feb 8, 2024 16:46:29 GMT -5
Introduction
I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things
for me (Psalm 57. 2)
The greatness of God is a glorious and unsearchable mystery. ‘For
the Lord most high is terrible; he is a great king over all the earth’
(Ps. 47. 2). The condescension of the most high God to men is also a
profound mystery. ‘Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect
unto the lowly’ (Ps. 138. 6). But when both these meet together, as
they do in this Scripture, they make up a matchless mystery. Here we
find the most high God performing all things for a poor distressed
creature.
It is the great support and solace of the saints in all the distresses
that befall them here, that there is a wise Spirit sitting in all the
wheels of motion, and governing the most eccentric creatures and
their most pernicious designs to blessed and happy issues. And,
indeed, it were not worth while to live in a world devoid of God and
Providence.
How deeply we are concerned in this matter will appear by that great
instance which Psalm 57 presents us with. It was composed, as the
title notes, by David when he hid himself from Saul in the cave. It is
inscribed with a double title: ‘Al-taschith, Michtam of David.’ ‘Altaschith’ refers to the scope, and ‘Michtam’ to the dignity of the
subject-matter.
The former signifies ‘destroy not,’ or ‘let there be no slaughter,’ and
may either refer to Saul, concerning whom he gave charge to his
servants not to destroy him, or rather, it has reference to God, to
whom in this great exigency he poured out his soul in this passionate
ejaculation: ‘Al-taschith,’ ‘destroy not.’
The latter title ‘Michtam’ signifies ‘a golden ornament,’ and so is
suited to the choice and excellent matter of the Psalm, which much
more deserves such a title than do Pythagoras’ Golden Verses.
Three things are remarkable in the former part of the Psalm: his
extreme danger; his earnest address to God in that extremity; and
the arguments he pleads with God in that address.
His extreme danger is expressed in both the title and the body of the
psalm. The title tells us this psalm was composed by him when he
hid himself from Saul in the cave. This cave was in the wilderness of
Engedi among the broken rocks where the wild goats lived, an
obscure and desolate hole; yet even there the envy of Saul pursued
him (1 Sam. 24. 1, 2). And now he that had been so long hunted as a
partridge upon the mountains seems to be enclosed in the net. His
enemies were outside the cave, from which there was no other outlet.
Then Saul himself entered the mouth of this cave, in the sides and
creeks of which David and his men lay hidden, and they actually saw
him. Judge to how great an extremity and to what a desperate state
things were now brought. Well might he say: ‘My soul is among lions,
and I lie even among them that are set on fire’ (verse 4). What hope
now remained? What but immediate destruction could be expected?
Yet this does not frighten him out of his faith and duty, but between
the jaws of death he prays, and earnestly addresses himself to God
for mercy: ‘Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me’ (verse
1). This excellent psalm was composed by him when there was
enough to discompose the best man in the world. The repetition
notes both the extremity of the danger and the ardency of the
supplicant. Mercy, mercy, nothing but mercy, and that exerting itself
in an extraordinary way, can now save him from ruin.
The arguments he pleads for obtaining mercy in this distress are very
considerable. First, he pleads his reliance upon God as an argument
to move mercy. ‘Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me,
for my soul trusteth in thee; yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I
make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast’ (verse 1). This his
trust and dependence on God, though it is not an argument in
respect of the dignity of the act, yet it is so in respect of the nature of
the object, a compassionate God, who will not expose any that take
shelter under His wings; also in respect of the promise by which
protection is assured to them that fly to Him for sanctuary: ‘Thou
wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee,
because he trusteth in thee’ (Isa. 26. 3). Thus he encourages himself
from the consideration of that God in whom he trusts.
He pleads former experiences of His help in past distresses as an
argument encouraging hope under the present strait: ‘I will cry unto
God most high, unto God that performeth all things for me’ (verse 2).
In these words I shall consider two things: the duty resolved upon,
and the encouragement to that resolution.
The duty resolved upon: ‘I will cry unto God.’ Crying unto God is an
expression that denotes not only prayer, but intense and fervent
prayer. To cry is to pray in a holy passion; and such are usually
speeding prayers (Ps. 18. 6; Heb. 5. 7).
The encouragements to this resolution are taken from the
sovereignty of God: ‘I will cry unto God most high.’ Upon this he acts
his faith in extremity of danger. Saul is high, but God is the most
high, and without His permission he is assured Saul cannot touch
him. He had none to help, and if he had, he knew God must first help
the helpers or they cannot help him. He had no means of defense or
escape before him, but the Most High is not limited by means. This is
a singular prop to faith (Ps. 59. 9).
The experience of His Providence hitherto: ‘Unto God that
performeth all things for me.’
The word which we translate ‘performeth’ comes from a root that
signifies both to perfect, and to desist or cease. For when a business
is performed and perfected, the agent then ceases and desists from
working. To such a happy issue the Lord has brought all his doubtful
and difficult matters before; and this gives him encouragement that
He will still be gracious, and perfect that which concerns him now, as
he speaks: ‘The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me’ (Ps. 138.
8).
The Septuagint renders Psalm 57. 2: ‘The well-doer saving me,’ ‘who
profits or benefits me.’ And it is a certain truth that all the results
and issues of Providence are profitable and beneficial to the saints.
But the supplement in our translation well conveys the sense of the
text: ‘Who performeth all things.’ And it involves the most strict and
proper notion of Providence, which is nothing else but the
performance of God’s gracious purposes and promises to His people.
And therefore Vatabulus and Mius supply and fill up the room left by
the conciseness of the original with ‘which he hath promised,’ thus: ‘I
will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth the things
which he hath promised.’ Payment is the performance of promises.
Grace makes the promise, and Providence the payment.
Piscator fills it thus: ‘unto God that performeth his kindness and
mercy.’ But still it supposes the mercy performed to be contained in
the promise. Mercy is sweet in the promise, and much more so in the
providential performance of it to us.
Castalio’s supplement comes nearer to ours: ‘I will cry unto God
most high, unto God, the transactor of my affairs.’
But our English, making out the sense by a universal particle, is most
agreeable to the scope of the text. For it cannot but be a great
encouragement to his faith, that God had transacted all things, or
performed all things for him. This Providence that never failed him
in any of the straits that ever he met with (and his life was a life of
many straits) he might well hope would not fail him now, though this
were an extraordinary and matchless one.
Let us then bring our thoughts a little closer to this Scripture, and it
will give us a fair and lovely prospect of Providence in its universal,
effectual, beneficial and encouraging influence upon the affairs and
concerns of the saints.
The expression imports the universal interest and influence of
Providence in and upon all the concerns and interests of the saints. It
not only has its hand in this or that, but in all that concerns them. It
has its eye upon every thing that relates to them throughout their
lives, from first to last. Not only the great and more important, but
the most minute and ordinary affairs of our lives are transacted and
managed by it. It touches all things that touch us, whether more
nearly or remotely.
The text displays the efficacy of providential influences. Providence
not only undertakes but perfects what concerns us. It goes through
with its designs, and accomplishes what it begins. No difficulty so
clogs it, no cross accident falls in its way, but it carries its design
through it. Its motions are irresistible and uncontrollable; He
performs it for us.
And (which is sweet to consider) all its products and issues are
exceedingly beneficial to the saints. It performs all things for them.
’Tis true we often prejudge its works, and unjustly censure its
designs, and in many of our straits and troubles we say: ‘All these
things are against us’; but indeed Providence neither does nor can do
any thing that is really against the true interest and good of the
saints. For what are the works of Providence but the execution of
God’s decree and the fulfilling of His Word? And there can be no
more in Providence than is in them. Now there is nothing but good to
the saints in God’s purposes and promises; and, therefore, whatever
Providence does concerning them, it must be (as the text speaks) ‘the
performance of all things for them.’
And if so, how cheering, supporting and encouraging must the
consideration of these things be in a day of distress and trouble!
What life and hope will it inspire our hearts and prayers with when
great pressures lie upon us! It had such a cheering influence upon
the Psalmist at this time, when the state of his affairs was, to the eye
of sense and reason, forlorn and desperate; there was now but a
hair’s breadth (as we say) between him and ruin.
A powerful, enraged and implacable enemy had driven him into the
hole of a rock, and was come after him into that hole. Yet now, while
his soul is among lions, while he lies in a cranny of the rock,
expecting every moment to be drawn out to death, the reflections he
had upon the gracious performances of the Most High for him, from
the beginning to that moment, support his soul and inspire hope and
life into his prayers: ‘I will cry unto God most high, unto God that
performeth all things for me.’
From the text then you have this doctrine:—
It is the duty of the saints, especially in times of straits, to reflect
upon the performances of Providence for them in all the states and
through all the stages in their lives.
The Church, in all the works of mercy, owns the hand of God: ‘Lord,
thou also hast wrought all our works in (or for) us’ (Isa. 26. 12). And
still it has been the pious and constant practice of the saints in all
generations to preserve the memory of the more famous and
remarkable providences that have befallen them in their times as a
precious treasure. ‘If thou be a Christian indeed, I know thou hast, if
not in thy book, yet certainly in thy heart, a great many precious
favours upon record; the very remembrance and rehearsal of them is
sweet; how much more sweet was the actual enjoyment?’1 Thus
Moses, by divine direction, wrote a memorial of that victory obtained
over Amalek as the fruit and return of prayer, and built there an altar
with this inscription, Jehovah-nissi: ‘The Lord my banner’ (Exod. 17.
14, 15). Thus Mordecai and Esther took all care to perpetuate the
memory of that signal deliverance from the plot of Haman, by
ordaining the feast of Purim as an anniversary ‘throughout every
generation, every family, every province, and every city; that these
days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the
memorial of them perish from their seed’ (Esther 9. 28). For this end
you find Psalms indited, ‘to bring remembrance’ (Ps. 70, title). You
find parents giving suitable names to their children, that every time
they looked upon them they might refresh the memory of God’s
mercies (1 Sam. 1. 20). You find the very places where eminent
providences have appeared, given a new name, for no other reason
but to perpetuate the memorial of those sweet providences which so
refreshed them there. Thus Bethel received its name (Gen. 28. 19).
And that well of water where Hagar was seasonably refreshed by the
angel in her distress, was called Beer-laha-roi: ‘the well of him that
liveth and looketh on me’ (Gen. 16. 14). Yea, the saints have given,
and God has assumed to Himself new titles upon this very score and
account; Abraham’s Jehovah-jireh and Gideon’s Jehovah-shalom
were ascribed to Him for this reason. And sometimes you find the
Lord styles Himself ‘The God that brought Abraham from Ur of the
Chaldees’ or ‘The Lord God that brought them out of Egypt’ or again
‘The Lord that gathered them out of the north country’; reminding
them of the gracious providences which in all those places He had
wrought for them.
Now there is a twofold reflection upon the providential works of God.
One is entire and full, in its whole complex and perfect system. This
blessed sight is reserved for the perfect state. It is in that mount of
God where we shall see both the wilderness and Canaan, the glorious
kingdom into which we are come, and the way through which we
were led into it. There the saints shall have a ravishing view of it in
its entirety, and every part shall be distinctly discerned, as it had its
particular use, and as it was connected with the other parts, and how
effectually and orderly they all wrought to bring about that blessed
design of their salvation, according to the promise: ‘And we know
that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them
who are the called according to his purpose’ (Rom. 8. 28). For it is
certain, no ship at sea keeps more exactly by the compass which
directs its course, than Providence keeps by that promise which is its
cynosure and pole-star.2
The other sight is partial and imperfect which we have on the way to
glory, during which we only view it in its single acts, or at most, in
some branches and more observable series of actions.
Between these two is the same difference as between the sight of the
disjointed wheels and scattered pins of a watch, and the sight of the
whole united in one frame and working in one orderly motion; or
between an ignorant spectator who views some more observable
vessel or joint of a dissected body, and the accurate anatomist who
discerns the course of all the veins and arteries of the body as he
follows the various branches of them through the whole, and plainly
sees the proper place, figure and use of each, with their mutual
respect to one another.
O how ravishing and delectable a sight will it be to behold at one
view the whole design of Providence, and the proper place and use of
every single act, which we could not understand in this world! What
Christ said to Peter is as applicable to some providences in which we
are now concerned as it was to that particular action: ‘What I do,
thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter’ (John 13. 7).
All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were
sometimes so offended, and sometimes amazed, which we could
neither reconcile with the promise nor with each other, nay, which
we so unjustly censured and bitterly bewailed, as if they had fallen
out quite against our happiness, we shall then see to be to us, as the
difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, ‘the right way
to a city of habitation’ (Ps. 107. 7).
And yet, though our present views and reflections upon Providence
are so short and imperfect in comparison to that in heaven, yet such
as it is under all its present disadvantages, it has so much excellence
and sweetness in it that I may call it a little heaven, or as Jacob called
his Bethel, ‘the gate of heaven.’ It is certainly a highway of walking
with God in this world, and a soul may enjoy as sweet communion
with Him in His providences as in any of His ordinances. How often
have the hearts of its observers been melted into tears of joy at the
beholding of its wise and unexpected productions! How often has it
convinced them, upon a sober recollection of the events of their lives,
that if the Lord had left them to their own counsels they had as often
been their own tormenters, if not executioners! Into what and how
many fatal mischiefs had they precipitated themselves if Providence
had been as short-sighted as they! They have given it their hearty
thanks for considering their interest more than their importunity,
and not allowing them to perish by their own desires.
Footnotes
1. Baxter’s Saints’ Everlasting Rest.
2.‘When the records of eternity shall be exposed to view, all the
counsels and results of that profound wisdom looked into; how will it
transport when it shall be discerned: Lo, thus were the designs laid:
here were the apt junctures and admirable dependencies of things,
which, when acted upon the stage of time, seemed so perplexed and
intricate.’ (Howe, Blessedness of the Righteous.
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Post by Admin on Feb 8, 2024 16:47:59 GMT -5
The Evidence of Providence
Chapter 1: The Work of Providence for
the Saints
First, I shall undertake the proof and defense of the great truth that
the affairs of the saints in this world are certainly conducted by the
wisdom and care of special Providence. And in doing so I address
myself with cheerfulness to perform, as I am able, a service for that
Providence which has throughout my life ‘performed all things for
me,’ as the text speaks.
There is a twofold consideration of Providence, according to its
twofold object and manner of dispensation; the one in general,
exercised about all creatures, rational and irrational, animate and
inanimate; the other special and peculiar. Christ has a universal
empire over all things (Eph. 1. 22); He is the head of the whole world
by way of dominion, but a head to the Church by way of union and
special influence (John 17. 2). He is ‘the Saviour of all men, especially
of those that believe’ (1 Tim. 4. 10). The Church is His special care
and charge. He rules the world for its good, as a head consulting the
welfare of the body.
Heathens generally denied Providence, and no wonder, since they
denied a God; for the same arguments that prove one will prove the
other. Aristotle, the prince of heathen philosophers, could not by the
utmost search of reason find out how the world originated, and
therefore concludes it was from eternity. The Epicureans did, in a
way, acknowledge a God, but yet denied a Providence, and wholly
excluded Him from any interest or concern in the affairs of the
world, as being inconsistent with the felicity and tranquillity of the
divine Being, to be diverted and cumbered with the care and labour
of government. This assertion is so repugnant to reason that it is a
wonder they did not blush at its absurdity; but I guess the reason,
and one of them (according to Cicero) speaks it out in broad
language: Itaque imposuistis cervicibus nostris sempiternum
dominum, quem dies & noctes timeremus. Quis enim non timeat
omnia providentem, & cogitantem, & animadvertentem, & omnia
ad se pertinere putantem, curiosum & plenum negotii Deum? (If
this is so you have yoked us to an eternal master, such as we would
fear day and night. For who would not be rrightened of a prying
busybody of a God who provides, plans and observes everything and
who considers that everything is his concern?) They foresaw that the
concession of a Providence would impose an eternal yoke upon their
necks, by making them accountable for all they did to a higher
tribunal, so that they must necessarily ‘pass the time of their
sojourning here in fear,’ while all their thoughts, words and ways
were strictly noted and recorded, for the purpose of an account by an
all-seeing and righteous God. They therefore laboured to persuade
themselves that what they had no mind for did not exist. But these
atheistical and foolish conceits fall flat before the undeniable
evidence of this so great and clear a truth.
Now my business here is not so much to deal with professed atheists
who deny the existence of God and consequently deride all evidences
brought from Scripture of the extraordinary events that fall out in
favour of that people that are called His, but rather to convince those
that professedly own all this, yet, never having tasted religion by
experience, suspect, at least, that all these things which we call
special providences to the stains, are but natural events or mere
contingencies. Thus, while they profess to own a God and a
Providence (which profession is but the effect of their education)
they do in the meantime live like atheists, and both think and act as
if there were no such things; and really, I fear this is the case with the
greater part of the men of this generation.
But if it were indeed so, that the affairs of the world in general, and
more especially those of the saints, were not conducted by divine
Providence, but, as they would persuade us, by the steady course of
natural causes, beside which, if at any time we observe any event to
fall out, it is merely casual and contingent, or proceeds from some
hidden and secret cause in nature – if this indeed were so, let them
that are tempted to believe it, give a rational answer to the following
questions:
How comes it to pass that so many signal mercies and deliverances
have befallen the people of God, above the power and against the
course of natural causes, to make way for which there has been an
obvious suspension and stop put to the course of nature?
It is most evident that no natural effect can exceed the power of its
natural cause. Nothing can give to another more than it has in itself,
and it is as clear that whatsoever acts naturally, acts necessarily. Fire
burns to the uttermost of its power; while waters overflow and drown
all that they can. Lions and other rapacious and cruel beasts,
especially when hungry, tear and devour their prey; and arbitrary
and rational agents also act according to the principles and laws of
their natures. A wicked man when his heart is fully set in him, and
his will stands in a full bent of resolution, will certainly, if he has
power in his hand and opportunity to execute his conceived mischief,
give it vent, and perpetrate the wicked devices of his heart. Having
once conceived mischief, and ‘travailing in pain with it,’ according to
the course of nature, he must ‘bring it forth’ (Ps. 7. 14). But if any of
these inanimate, brute, or rational agents, when there is no natural
obstacle or hindrance, have their power suspended, and that when
the effect is near the birth and the design at the very point of
execution, so that though they would, yet cannot hurt; to what, do
you think, is this to be assigned and referred? Yet so it has often been
seen, where God’s interest has been immediately concerned in the
danger and evil of the event. The sea divided itself in its own channel,
and made a wall of water on each side, to give God’s distressed Israel
a safe passage, and that not in a calm, but when its waves roared (Isa.
51. 15). The fire, when blown up to the most intense and vehement
flame, had no power to singe one hair of God’s faithful witnesses,
when at the same instant it had power to destroy their intended
executioners at a greater distance (Dan. 3. 22). Yea, we find it has
sometimes been sufficient to consume, but not to torment the body,
as in that known instance of blessed Bainham, who told his enemies:
‘The flames were to him as a bed of roses.’ The hungry lions put off
their natural fierceness and became gentle and harmless when
Daniel was cast among them for a prey. The like account we are given
of Polycarp, and Dionysius the Areopagite, whom the fire would not
touch, but stood after the manner of the shipman’s sail filled with the
wind about them.
Are these things according to the course and law of nature? To what
secret natural cause can they be ascribed? In like manner we find the
vilest and fiercest of wicked men have been withheld by an invisible
hand of restraint from injuring the Lord’s people. By what secret
cause in nature was Jeroboam’s hand dried up and made inflexible at
the same instant it was stretched out against the man of God (1 Kings
13. 4)? No wild beasts rend and devour their prey more greedily than
wicked men would destroy the people of God that dwell among them,
were it not for this providential restraint upon them. So the Psalmist
expresses his case in the words following my text: ‘My soul is among
lions, and I lie among them that are set on fire.’ The disciples were
sent forth ‘as sheep into the midst of wolves’ (Matt. 10. 16). It will not
avail in this case to object that those miraculous events depend only
upon Scripture testimony, which the atheist is not convinced by, for
beside all that may be alleged for the authority of that testimony
(which is needless to produce to men that own it), what is it less that
every eye sees or may see at this day? Do we not behold a weak,
defenceless handful of men wonderfully and otherwise
unaccountably preserved from ruin in the midst of potent, enraged
and turbulent enemies that fain would, but cannot, destroy them;
when as yet no natural impediment can be assigned why they
cannot?
And if this puzzle us, what shall we say when we see events produced
in the world for the good of God’s chosen, by those very hands and
means which were intentionally employed for their ruin? These
things are as much beside the intentions of their enemies as they are
above their own expectations; yet such things are no rarities in the
world. Was not the envy of Joseph’s brethren, the cursed plot of
Haman, and the decree procured by the envy of the princes against
Daniel, with many more of the same kind, all turned by a secret and
strange hand of Providence to their greater advancement and
benefit? Their enemies lifted them up to all that honour and
preferment they had.
How is it if the saints’ affairs are not ordered by a special divine
Providence that natural causes unite and associate themselves for
their relief and benefit in so strange a manner as they are found to
do?
It is undeniably evident that there are marvellous coincidences of
Providence, confederating and agreeing, as it were, to meet and unite
themselves to bring about the good of God’s chosen. There is a
similar face of things showing itself in several places at the same
time, whenever any work for the good of the Church is come upon
the stage of the world. As when the Messiah, the capital mercy, came
to the temple, then Simeon and Anna were brought there by
Providence as witnesses to it. So in Reformation work, when the
images were pulled down in Holland, one and the same spirit of zeal
possessed them in every city and town, that the work was done in a
night. He that carefully reads the history of Joseph’s advancement to
be the lord of Egypt may number in that story twelve remarkable acts
or steps of Providence by which he ascended to that honour and
authority. If but one of them had failed, in all likelihood the event
had done so too; but every one occurred in its order, exactly keeping
its own time and place. So in the Church’s deliverance from the plot
of Haman, we find no less than seven acts of Providence concurring
strangely to produce it, as if they had all met by appointment and
consent to break that snare for them, one thing so aptly suiting with
and making way for another that every careful observer must needs
conclude that this cannot be the result of accident but wise counsel.
Even as in viewing the accurate structure of the body of a man, the
figure, position, and mutual relationships of the several members
and vessels has convinced some, and is sufficient to convince all, that
it is the work of divine wisdom and power; in like manner, if the
admirable adaptation of the means and instruments employed for
mercy to the people of God are carefully considered, who can but
confess that as there are tools of all sorts and sizes in the shop of
Providence, so there is a most skilful hand that uses them, and that
they could no more produce such effects of themselves than the axe,
saw, or chisel can cut or carve a rough log into a beautiful figure
without the hand of a skilful artificer?
We find, by manifold instances, that there certainly are strong
combinations and predispositions of persons and things to bring
about some issue and design for the benefit of the Church, which
they themselves never thought of. They hold no conference, they do
not communicate their counsels to each other, yet meet together and
work together as if they did, which is as if ten men should all meet
together at one place, and in one hour, about one and the same
business, and that without any previous appointment between
themselves. Can any question that such a meeting of means and
instruments is certainly, though secretly, over-ruled by some wise
invisible agent?
If the concerns of God’s people are not governed by a special
Providence, how is it that the most apt and powerful means
employed to destroy them are rendered ineffectual, while weak,
contemptible means employed for their defence and comfort are
crowned with success?
This could never be if things were wholly swayed by the course of
nature. If we judge by that rule, we must conclude that the more apt
and powerful the means are, the more successful and prosperous
they must needs be; and where they are inept, weak, and
contemptible, nothing can be expected of them. Thus reason lays it,
according to the rules of nature, but Providence crosses its hands, as
Jacob did in blessing the sons of Joseph, and orders quite contrary
issues and events. Such was the mighty power and deep policy used
by Pharaoh to destroy God’s Israel, that to the eye of reason it was as
impossible to survive it as for crackling thorns to abide unconsumed
amidst devouring flames. By this emblem their miraculous
preservation is expressed; the bush was all in a flame, but not
consumed (Exod. 3. 2). The heathen Roman emperors, who made
the world tremble and subdued the nations under them, employed
all their power and policy against the poor, naked, defenceless
Church, to ruin it, yet could not accomplish it (Rev. 12. 3, 4). O the
seas of blood that heathen Rome shed in the ten persecutions! yet the
church lives. And when the dragon gave his power to the beast, (Rev.
13. 2) that is, the state of Rome became antichristian, O what
slaughters were made by the beast in all his dominions, so that the
Holy Ghost represents him as drunken with the blood of the saints
(Rev. 17. 6). And yet all will not do; the gates, that is, the powers and
policies of hell, cannot prevail against it. how manifest is the care
and power of Providence herein! Had half that power been employed
against any other people, it had certainly swallowed them up
immediately, or, in the hundredth part of the time, worn them out.
How soon was the Persian monarchy swallowed up by the Grecian,
and that again by the Roman! Diocletian and Maximinus, in the
height of their persecutions, found themselves so baffled by
Providence that they both resigned the government and lived as
private men. But in this wonderful preservation God makes good
that promise: ‘Though I make a full end of all nations, yet will I not
make a full end of thee’ (Jer. 30. 11), and ‘No weapon formed against
thee shall prosper’ (Isa. 54.17).
On the contrary, how successful have weak and contemptible means
been made for the good of the Church! Thus in the first planting of
Christianity in the world, by what weak and improbable instruments
was it done! Christ did not choose the eloquent orators, or men of
authority in the courts of kings and emperors, but twelve poor
artisans and fishermen; and these not sent together in a troop, but
some to take one country to conquer it, and some another. The most
ridiculous course, in appearance, for such a design as could be
imagined, and yet in how short a time was the Gospel spread and the
Churches planted by them in the several kingdoms of the world! This
the Psalmist foresaw by the Spirit of prophecy when he said: ‘Out of
the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, to still
the enemy and the avenger’ (Ps. 8. 2). At the sound of rams’ horns
Jericho is delivered into the hands of Israel (Josh. 6. 20). By three
hundred men, with their pitchers and lamps, the huge host of Midian
is discomfited (Judges 6. 19). The Protestants besieged in Beziers in
France are delivered by a drunken drummer who, going to his
quarters at midnight, rang the alarm-bell of the town, not knowing
what he did; and just then their enemies were making their assault.
And as weak and improbable means have been blessed with success
to the Church in general, so to the preservation of its particular
members also. A spider, by weaving her web over the mouth of an
oven, shall hide a servant of Christ, Du Moulin, from his enemies,
who took refuge there in that bloody Parisian massacre. A hen shall
sustain another many days at the same time by lodging her egg every
day in the place where he had hid himself from the cut-throats.
Examples might be easily multiplied, but the truth is too plain and
obvious to the observation of all ages to need them. And can we but
acknowledge a divine and special Providence overruling these
matters, when we see the most apt and potent means for the
Church’s ruin frustrated, and the most silly and contemptible means
granted success and prospered for its good?
If all things are governed by the course of nature and force of
natural causes, how then comes it to pass that, like a bowl when it
strikes another, men are turned out of the way of evil, along which
they were driving at full speed?
Good men have been going along the way to their own ruin, and did
not know it; but Providence has met them in the way and preserved
them by strange diversions, the meaning of which they did not
understand till the event revealed it. When Paul lay bound at
Caesarea, the high priest and chief of the Jews request Festus that he
might be brought bound to Jerusalem, having laid wait in the way to
kill him; but Festus, though ignorant of the plot, utterly refuses it,
and chooses rather to go with them to Caesarea and judge him there.
By this diversion their bloody design is frustrated (Acts 25. 3, 4).
Possidonius, in the life of Augustine, tells us that the good father,
going to teach the people of a certain town, took a guide with him to
show him the way. The guide mistook the usual road and unwittingly
took a by-path, by which means Augustine escaped ruin by the hands
of the bloody Donatists who, knowing his intention, waylaid him to
kill him on the road.
And as memorable and wonderful are those rubs and diversions
wicked men have met with in the way of perpetrating the evils
conceived and intended in their own hearts. Laban and Esau came
against Jacob with mischievous purposes, but no sooner are they
come near him but the shackles of restraint are immediately clapped
upon them both, so that their hands cannot perform their
enterprises. Balaam runs greedily, for reward, to curse Israel, but
meets with an unexpected check at his very outset; and though that
did not stop him, he tried every way to do them mischief, yet he still
finds himself fettered by an effectual bond of restraint that he can in
no way shake off (Num. 22. 25, 28). Saul, the high priest’s
bloodhound, breathes out threatenings against the Church, and goes
with a bloody commission towards Damascus, to hale the poor flock
of Christ to the slaughter; but when he comes near the place he
meets an unexpected stop on the way, by which the mischief is not
only diverted, but he himself is converted to Christ (Acts 9. 1-4). Who
can fail to see the finger of God in these things!
If there is not an over-ruling Providence ordering all things for the
good of God’s people, how comes it to pass that the good and evil
which is done to them in this world is accordingly repaid into the
bosoms of them that are instrumental therein?
How clear is it to every man’s observation, that the kindnesses and
benefits any have done to the Lord’s people have been rewarded with
full measure into their bosoms! The Egyptian midwives refused to
obey Pharaoh’s inhuman command, and saved the male children of
Israel; for this ‘the Lord dealt well with them and built them houses’
(Exod. 1. 21). The Shunammite was hospitable and careful for Elisha,
and God recompensed it with the desirable enjoyment of a son (2
Kings 4. 9, 17). Rahab hid the spies, and was exempted from the
destruction of Jericho (Heb. 11. 31). Publius, the chief man of the
island of Melita, courteously received and lodged Paul after his
shipwreck; the Lord speedily repaid him for that kindness, and
healed his father, who lay sick at that time of a bloody flux and fever
(Acts 28. 7, 8).
In like manner, we find the evils done to God’s people have been
repaid by a just retribution to their enemies. Pharaoh and the
Egyptians were cruel enemies to God’s Israel, and designed the ruin
of their poor innocent babes; and God repaid it in smiting all the
first-born of Egypt in one night (Exod. 12. 29). Haman erected a
gallows fifty cubits high for good Mordecai, and God so ordered it
that he himself and his ten sons were hanged on it. And indeed it was
but meet that he should eat the fruit of that tree which he himself
had planted (Esther 7. 10). Ahithophel plots against David, and gives
counsel like an oracle how to procure his fall; and that very counsel,
like an overcharged gun, recoils upon himself, and procures his ruin.
Seeing his good counsel rejected (good politically, not morally), it
was now easy for him to guess the outcome, and so his own fate (2
Sam. 17. 23).
Charles IX most inhumanly made the very canals of Paris flow with
Protestant blood, and soon after he died miserably, his blood flowing
from all parts of his body. Stephen Gardiner, who burnt so many of
God’s dear servants to ashes, was himself so scorched up by a terrible
inflammation that his very tongue was black and hung out of his
mouth, and in dreadful torments he ended his wretched days.
Maximinus, that cruel emperor, who set forth his proclamation
engraven in brass for the utter abolishing of the Christian religion,
was speedily smitten like Herod with a dreadful judgment, swarms of
lice preying upon his entrails, and causing such a stench that his
physicians could not endure to come near him, and for refusing to do
so were slain. Hundreds of like instances might easily be produced to
confirm this observation. And who can but see by these things that
‘verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth!’
Yea, so exact have been the retributions of Providence to the enemies
of the Church, that not only the same persons, but the same
members, that have been the instruments of mischief, have been
made the subjects of wrath. The same arm which Jeroboam stretched
out to smite the prophet, God smites. The emperor Aurelian, when
he was ready to subscribe the edict for the persecution of the
Christians, was suddenly cramped in his knuckles that he could not
write. Greenhill, in his exposition upon Ezekiel 11. 13, tells his
hearers that there was one then present in the congregation who was
an eye-witness of a woman scoffing at another for purity and holy
walking, who had her tongue stricken immediately with the palsy,
and died of it within two days. Henry II of France, in a great rage
against a Protestant counsellor, committed him to the hands of one
of his nobles to be imprisoned, and that with these words, that ‘he
would see him burned with his own eyes.’ But, mark the righteous
providence of God, within a few days after, the same nobleman, with
a lance put into his hands by the king, did at a tilting march run the
said king into one of his eyes, from which he died.
Yea, Providence has made the very place of sinning the place of
punishment: ‘In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth,
shall dogs lick thy blood’ (1 Kings 21. 19); and it was exactly fulfilled
(2 Kings 9. 26). Thus Tophet is made a burying-place for the Jews,
till there was no room to bury; and that was the place where they had
offered up their sons to Moloch (Jer. 7. 31, 32). The story of
Nightingale is generally known, which Foxe relates, how he fell out of
the pulpit and broke his neck, while he was abusing that Scripture (1
John 1. 10). And thus the Scriptures are made good by Providence.
‘Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein; and he that rolleth a stone, it
shall return upon him’ (Prov. 26. 27), and ‘with what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured to you again’ (Matt. 7. 2).
If any shall still say that these things may fall out accidentally, and
that many thousands of the Church’s enemies have died in peace,
and their end been like other men, we answer with Augustine: ‘If no
sin were punished here, no Providence would be believed; and if
every sin should be punished here, no judgment would be expected.’
But, that none may think these events to be merely casual and
accidental, we shall enquire yet further.
If these things are merely accidental, how is it that they square and
agree so exactly with the Scriptures in all particulars?
We read: ‘Can two walk together except they be agreed?’ (Amos 3. 3).
If two men travel along one road, it is likely they are agreed to go to
the same place. Providences and Scriptures go all one way, and if
they seem at any time to go different or opposite ways, be sure they
will meet at the journey’s end. There is an agreement between them
so to do.
Does God miraculously suspend the power of natural causes? Why,
this is no accidental thing, but what harmonizes with the Word
‘When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and
through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest
through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame
kindle upon thee’ (Isa. 43. 2).
Do natural causes unite and associate themselves for the good of
God’s people? Why, this is no more than what is contained in the
promises, and is but the fulfilling of that Scripture: ‘All is yours, for
ye are Christ’s’ (1 Cor. 3. 22); that is, the use, benefit and service of
all the creatures is for you, as your need shall require.
Are the most apt and powerful means employed for their ruin
frustrated? Who can but see the Scriptures fulfilled in, and
expounded by such providences (see Isa. 8. 8-10; 54. 15-17;
expounded by 2 Kings 18. 17, etc.)!
Do you see at any time a rub of Providence diverting the course of
good men from falling into evil, or wicked men from committing
evil? How loudly do such Providences proclaim the truth and
certainty of the Scriptures, which tell us that ‘the way of man is not in
himself, neither is it in him that walketh to direct his steps’ (Jer. 10.
23), and that ‘a man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth
his steps’ (Prov. 16. 9)!
Do you see adequate retributions made to those that injure or
befriend the people of God? Why, when you see all the kindness and
love they have shown the saints returned with interest into their
bosoms, how is it possible but you must see the accomplishment of
these Scriptures in such providences! ‘But the liberal soul deviseth
liberal things, and by liberal things he shall stand’ (Isa. 32. 8; 2 Cor.
9. 6).
And when you see the evils men have done, or intended to do to the
Lord’s people, recoiling upon themselves, he is perfectly blind that
does not see the harmony such providences bear with such
Scriptures as Psalm 7. 14-16; 9. 16; and 140. 11, 12.
O what exact proportions do providences and Scriptures hold! Little
do men take notice of it. Why did Cyrus, contrary to all rules of state
policy, freely dismiss the captives, except to fulfil the Scripture (Isa.
45. 13)? So that it was well observed by one that, ‘as God hath
stretched out the expansum or firmament over the natural; so he
hath stretched out his Word over the rational world.’ And as the
creatures on earth are influenced by those heavenly bodies, so are all
creatures in the world influenced by the Word, and do infallibly fulfil
it, when they design to thwart it.
If these things are contingent, how is it that they fall out so
remarkably in the nick of time, which makes them so greatly
observable to all that consider them?
We find a multitude of providences so timed to a minute, that had
they occurred just a little sooner or later, they had mattered little in
comparison with what now they do. Certainly, it cannot be chance,
but counsel, that so exactly works in time. Contingencies keep to no
rules.
How remarkable to this purpose were the tidings brought to Saul,
that ‘the Philistines have invaded the land’ (1 Sam. 23. 27), just as he
was ready to grasp the prey! The angel calls to Abraham, and shows
him another sacrifice just when his hand was giving the fatal stroke
to Isaac (Gen. 22. 10, 11). A well of water is shown to Hagar just when
she had left the child, as not able to see its death (Gen. 21. 16, 19).
Rabshakeh meets with a blasting providence, hears a rumour that
frustrated his design, just when ready to make an assault upon
Jerusalem (Isa. 37. 7, 8). So when Haman’s plot against the Jews was
ripe, and all things ready for execution, ‘on that night could not the
king sleep’ (Esth. 6. 1). When the horns are ready to gore Judah,
immediately carpenters are prepared to fray them away (Zech. 1. 18-
21).
How remarkable was the relief of La Rochelle by a shoal of fish that
came into the harbour when they were ready to perish with famine,
such as they never observed before, nor after that time! Mr Dod
could not go to bed one night, but has a strong impulse to visit,
though unseasonably, a neighbour gentleman, and just as he came
there, he meets him at his door, with a halter in his pocket, just going
to hang himself. Dr Tate and his wife, in the Irish rebellion, were
flying through the woods with a sucking-child, which was just ready
to expire. The mother going to rest it upon a rock, puts her hand
upon a bottle of warm milk, by which it was preserved. A good
woman, from whose mouth I received it, being driven to a great
extremity, all supplies failing, was exceedingly plunged into
unbelieving doubts and fears, not seeing where supplies should come
from; when, lo! in the nick of time, turning over some things in a
chest, unexpectedly she lights upon a piece of gold, which supplied
her present needs till God opened another door of supply. If these
things fall out by accident, how is it they come in the very nick of
time so exactly, as that it is become proverbial in Scripture, ‘In the
mount of the Lord it shall be seen’ (Gen. 22. 14)?
Lastly, were these things accidental and contingent, how can it be
that they should fall out so immediately upon and consonantly to
the prayers of the saints? So that in many providences they are able
to discern a very clear answer to their prayers, and are sure they
have the petitions they asked (1 John 5. 15).
Thus the sea divided itself just at the time of Israel’s cry to heaven
(Exod. 14. 10). So signal a victory is given to Asa immediately at the
time of that passionate cry to heaven: ‘Help us, O Lord our God’ (2
Chron. 14. 11, 12). Ahithophel goes and hangs himself, just at the
time of that prayer of distressed David (2 Sam. 15. 31). Haman falls
and his plot is broken, just at the time of the fast kept by Mordecai
and Esther (Esth. 4. 16). Our own Speed, in his History of Britain,
tells us that Richard I besieged a castle with his army; they offered to
surrender if he would save their lives; he refuses, and threatens to
hang them all. Upon this an arbalester3 charged his bow with a
square arrow, making first his prayer to God that he would direct the
shot and deliver the innocent from oppression; it struck the king
himself, from which he died, and they were delivered. Abraham’s
servant prayed for success; and see how it was answered (Gen. 24.
45). Peter was cast into prison, and prayer was made for him by the
Church, and see the event (Acts 12. 5, 6, 7, 12). I could easily add to
these the wonderful examples of the return of prayers which was
observed in Luther, and Dr Winter in Ireland, and many more; but I
judge it needless because most Christian have a stock of experience
of their own, and are well assured that many of the providences that
befall them are, and can be no other than the return of their prayers.
And now who can be dissatisfied in this point that wisely considers
these things? Must we not conclude that ‘he withdraweth not his eyes
from the righteous’ (Job 36. 7) and that ‘The eyes of the Lord run to
and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the
behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards him’ (2 Chron. 16. 9).
His providences proclaim Him to be a God who hears prayer.
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Post by Admin on Feb 8, 2024 16:50:17 GMT -5
Chapter 2: Our Birth and Upbringing
Having proved that the affairs of the saints in this world are certainly
conducted by the wisdom and care of a special Providence, my next
work is to show you in what affairs and concerns of theirs the
Providence of God more especially appears, or what are the most
remarkable performances of Providence for them in this world.
And here I am not led directly by my text to speak of the most
internal and spiritual performances of Providence immediately
related to the souls of His people, though they all relate to their souls
mediately and eventually, but of the more visible and external
performances of Providence for them. It is not to be supposed that I
should touch all these – they are more than the sands – but what I
aim at is to discourse to you on some more special and more
observable performances of Providence for you.
To start with, let us consider how well Providence has performed the
first work that ever it did for us: in our formation and protection in
the womb. Certainly this is a very glorious and admirable
performance; it is that which the Psalmist admires: ‘My substance
was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously
wrought in the lowest parts of the earth’ (139. 15). The womb is so
called for this reason, that as skilful artists, when they have some
choice piece in hand, perfect it in private, and then bring it into the
light for all to gaze at; so it was here. Two things are admirable in
this performance of Providence for us.
First, the rare structure and excellent composition of the body. ‘I am
wonderfully made’; that word ruchampti is very full. The vulgate
renders it, ‘painted as with a needle,’ i.e., richly embroidered with
nerves and veins. O, the skilful workmanship that is in that one part,
the eye! How has it forced some to acknowledge a God upon the
examination of it! Providence, when it went about this work, had its
model or pattern before it, according to which it moulded every part,
‘In thy book all my members were written’ (verse 16). Have you an
integral perfection and fulness of members? It is because He wrote
them all in His book, or painted your body according to that exact
model which He drew of you in His own gracious purpose before you
had a being. Had an eye, an ear, a hand, a foot been wanting in the
plan, you had now been sadly aware of the defect. This world had
been but a dungeon to you without those windows, and you had
lived, as many do, an object of pity to others. If you have low
thoughts of this mercy, ask the blind, the deaf, the lame and the
dumb, the value and worth of those mercies, and they will tell you.
There is a world of cost bestowed upon your very body. You might
have been cast into another mould, and created a worm or a toad. I
remember Luther tells us of two cardinals riding in great pomp to the
Council of Constance, and by the way they heard a man in the fields
bitterly weeping and wailing. When they came to him they found him
intently viewing an ugly toad; and asking him why he wept so
bitterly, he told them his heart was melted with this consideration,
that God had not made him such a loathsome and deformed
creature. ‘This is what I love to weep at,’ said he; whereupon one of
them cries out: well said the father, ‘The unlearned will rise and take
heaven, and we with all our learning shall be cast into hell.’ No part
of the common lump was so figured and polished as man is. Galen
gave Epicurus a hundred years to imagine a more commodious
station, configuration or composition of any one member of a human
body. And if all the angels had studied to this day, they could not
have cast the body of man into a better mould.
And yet all this is but the enamelling of the case, or polishing the
casket in which the rare jewel lies. Providence has not only built the
house, but brought the inhabitant (I mean the soul) into the
possession of it. A glorious piece it is, that bears the very image of
God upon it, being all in all, and all in every part. How noble are its
faculties and affections! How nimble, various and indefatigable are
its motions! How comprehensive is its capacity! It is a companion for
angels, nay, capable of espousal to Christ and eternal communion
with God. It is the wonder of earth, and the envy of hell.
Suppose now (and why should you not suppose what you so
frequently behold in the world?) that Providence had so permitted
and ordered it, that your soul had entered into your body with one or
two of its faculties wounded and defective. Suppose its
understanding had been cracked; what a miserable life you would
have lived in this world, being capable of neither service nor comfort.
And truly, when I have considered those works of Providence, in
bringing into the world in all countries and ages some such
spectacles of pity; some deprived of the use of reason and differing
from beasts in little more than shape and figure; and others, though
sound in their understandings, yet deformed or defective in their
bodies, monstrous, mis-shapen and loathsome creatures; I can
resolve the design of this Providence into nothing else but a
demonstration of His sovereign power; unless they are designed as
foils to set off the beauty of other rare and exquisite pieces, and
intended to stand before your eyes and monitors of God’s mercy to
you, that your hearts, as often as you behold them, might be melted
into thankfulness for distinguishing favour to you.
Look then, but not proudly, upon your outside and inside. See and
admire what Providence has done for you, and how well it has
performed the first service that ever it did for you in this world. And
yet, this was not all it did for you. Before you saw this world, it
preserved you, as well as formed you in the womb, else you had been
as those embryos Job speaks of ‘which never saw light’ (3. 16).
Abortives go for nothing in the world, and there are multitudes of
them. Some never had a reasonable soul breathed into them, but
only the rudiments and rough draft of a body; these come not into
the account of men, but perish as the beast does. Others die in, or
shortly after they come out of the womb, and though their life was
but a moment, yet that moment entails an eternity upon them. Had
this been your case, as it is the case of millions, then, supposing your
salvation, yet you had been utterly unserviceable to God in the world;
none had been the better for you, nor you the better for any in the
world. You had been utterly incapable of all that good which
throughout your life you have either done to others or received from
others.
And if we consider the nature of that obscure life we lived in the
womb, how small an accident, had it been permitted by Providence,
could have extinguished our life, like a bird in the shell? We cannot
therefore but admire the tender care of Providence over us, and say
with the Psalmist: ‘Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb’
(139. 13): and not only so, ‘But thou art he that took me out of the
womb’ (22. 9). He preserved you there to the fulness of time and,
when that time was come, brought you safely through manifold
hazards into that place in the world which He from eternity prepared
for you.
Another great performance of Providence for the people of God
respects the place and time of their birth. And truly, this is no small
concern to every one of us, but of vast consequence, either to our
good or evil, though it is little considered by most men. I am
persuaded the thoughts of few Christians penetrate deep enough into
this Providence, but slide too slightly and superficially over an abyss
of much mercy, rich and manifold mercy wrapped up in this gracious
performance of Providence for them.
Ah friends! can you think it an indifferent thing into what part of the
world the womb of nature has cast you out? Does nothing depend
upon what spot of the creation, or in what age of the world, your lot
has fallen? It may be you have not seriously thought about this
matter. And because this point is so seldom touched, I will therefore
dive a little more particularly and distinctly into it, and endeavour to
warm your affections with a representation of the many and rich
benefits you owe to this one performance of Providence for you.
We will consider it under a double respect or relation, as it respects
your present comfort in this world, and as it relates to your eternal
happiness in the world to come.
This performance of Providence for you very much concerns your
present comfort in this world. All the rooms in this great house are
not alike pleasant and commodious for the inhabitants of it. You read
of ‘the dark places of the earth,’ which ‘are full of the habitations of
cruelty’ (Ps. 74. 20); and many such dismal places are found in the
habitable earth. What a vast tract of the world lies as a waste
wilderness!
Suppose your mothers had brought you forth in America, among the
savage Indians, who herd together as brute beasts, are scorched with
heat, and starved with cold, being naked, destitute and defenceless.
How poor, miserable, and unprovided with earthly comfort and
accommodations are many millions of the inhabitants of this world!
What mercies do you enjoy in respect of the amenity, fertility,
temperature, and civility of the place of your habitation? What is it
but a garden enclosed out of a wilderness? I may without partiality or
vanity say, God has, even upon temporal accounts, provided you with
one of the healthiest, pleasantest, and in all respects the best
furnished room in all the great house of this world. Hear what our
own chronicler says of it: ‘It is the fortunate island, the paradise of
pleasure, the garden of God; whose valleys are like Eden, whose hills
are as Lebanon, whose springs are as Pisgah, whose rivers are as
Jordan, whose wall is the ocean, and whose defence is the Lord
Jehovah.’
You are here provided with necessary and comfortable
accommodations for your bodies, that a great part of the world are
unacquainted with. It is not with the poorest among us, as it is said
to be with the poor Russians, whose poverty pinches and bites with
such sharp teeth that their poor cry at the doors: ‘Give me and cut
me! give me and kill me!’
Do not say that the barbarous nations excel you in that they possess
the mines of silver and gold, which it may be you think enough to
make up for all other inconveniences of life. Alas, poor creatures!
better had it been for them if their country had brought forth briars
and thorns, instead of gold, silver, and precious stones; for this has
been the occasion of ruining all their other comforts in this world,
this has invited their cruel avaricious enemies among them, under
whose servitude they groan and die without mercy, and thousands of
them have chosen death rather than life on the terms they enjoyed it.
And why might not your lot have fallen there as well as where it is?
Are not they made of the same clay and endowed with as good a
nature as yourselves? O what a distinction has divine mercy made,
where nature made none! Consider, ungrateful man, you might have
fallen into some of those regions where a tainted air frequently cloys
the jaws of death, where the inhabitants differ very little from the
beasts in the manner of their living; but God has provided for you,
and given the poorest among us far better accommodations of life
than the greatest among them are ordinarily provided with. O what
Providence has done for you!
But all that I have said is very inconsiderable in comparison with the
spiritual mercies and advantages you here enjoy for your souls. O
this is such an advantageous cast of Providence for you as obliges you
to a thankful acknowledgment of it to all eternity. For let us here
make but a few suppositions in the case before us, and the glory of
Providence will shine like a sunbeam full in your faces.
Suppose it had been your lot to have fallen in any of those vast
continents possessed by pagans and heathens at this day, who bow
down to the stock of a tree, and worship the host of heaven. This is
the case of millions, and millions of millions, for pagan idolaters, as
that searching scholar, Brerewood, informs us, do not only fill the
circumference of nine hundred miles in Europe, but almost the one
half of Africa, more than the half of Asia, and almost the whole of
America.
O how deplorable had your case been if a pagan idolatress had
brought you forth, and idolatry had been sucked in with your
mother’s milk! Then, in all probability, you had been at this day
worshipping devils, and racing at full speed in the direct road to
damnation, for these are the people of God’s wrath: ‘Pour out thy
fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that
call not upon thy name’ (Jer. 10. 25). How dreadful is that
imprecation against them, which takes hold of them and all that is
theirs! ‘Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast
themselves of idols’ (Ps. 97. 7).
Or suppose your lot had fallen among Mahometans, who next to
pagans spread over the greatest tract of the earth, for though Arabia
bred that unclean bird, yet that cage could not long contain him; for
not only the Arabians, but the Persians, Turks, and Tartans, do all
bow down their backs under that grand impostor. This poison has
dispersed itself through the veins of Asia, over a great part of Africa,
even the circumference of seven thousand miles, and does not stop
there, but has tainted a considerable part of Europe also.
Had your lot fallen here, O what unhappy men and women had you
been, notwithstanding the natural amenity and pleasantness of your
native soil! You had then adored a grand imposter, and died in a
fool’s paradise. Instead of God’s living oracles, you had been, as they
now are, deceived to your eternal ruin with such fond, mad and wild
dreams, as whoso considers would think the authors had more need
of manacles and fetters than arguments or sober answers.
Or if neither of these had been your lot, suppose you had been
emptied by the womb of nature into this little spot of the earth which
is Christianized by profession, but nevertheless for the most part
overrun by popish idolatry and anti-christian delusions. What
unhappy men and women had you been had you sucked a Popish
breast! for his people are to be the subjects of the vials of God’s wrath
to be poured out successively upon them (Rev. 16), and the
Scriptures in round and plain language tell us what their fate must
be: ‘And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed
not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness’ (2 Thess. 2. 11,
12).
Nay, you might have fallen into the same land in which your
habitation now is, and yet have had no advantage by it as to
salvation, if He that chose the bounds of your habitation had not also
graciously ‘determined the times’ for you (Acts 17. 26).
Suppose your lot had fallen where it is, during the pagan state of
England, where for many hundred years were gross and vile
idolators. Thick darkness overspread the people of this island and, as
in other countries, the devil was worshipped, and his lying oracles
zealously believed.
The shacking of the top of Jupiter’s oak in Dodona, the cauldron
smitten with the rod in the hand of Jupiter’s image, the laurel and
fountain in Daphne: these were the ordinances on which the poor,
deluded wretches waited. So in this nation they worshipped idols
also. The sun and moon were adored for gods, together with many
abominable idols which our ancestors worshipped and whose
memorials are not to this day quite obliterated among us.
Or suppose our lot had fallen in those later miserable days in which
Queen Mary sent so many hundreds to heaven in a fiery chariot,
when the poor Protestants skulked up and down in holes and woods
to preserve themselves from popish inquisitors, who, like blood-
hounds, hunted up and down through all the cities, towns and
villages of the nation, to seek out the poor sheep of Christ for a prey.
But such has been the special care of Providence towards us, that our
turn to be brought upon the stage of this world was graciously
reserved for better days, so that if we had had our own option, we
could not have chosen for ourselves as Providence has done. We are
not only furnished with the best room in this great house, but before
we were put into it, it was swept with the broom of national
Reformation from idolatry, yea, and washed by the blood of martyrs
from popish filthiness, and adorned with Gospel lights, shining in as
great lustre in our days, as ever they did since the apostles’ days. You
might have been born in England for many ages, and not have found
a Christian in it; yea, and since Christianity was here owned, and not
have met a Protestant in it. O what an obligation has Providence laid
you under, by such a merciful performance as this for you!
If you say: ‘All this indeed is true, but what is this to eternal
salvation? Do not multitudes that enjoy these privileges eternally
perish notwithstanding them; yea, and perish with an aggravation of
sin and misery beyond other sinners?’
True, they do so, and it is very sad that it should be so; but yet we
cannot deny this to be a very choice and singular mercy, to be born in
such a land, and at such a time. For let us consider what helps for
salvation men here enjoy, beyond what they could enjoy had their lot
fallen according to the forementioned suppositions.
Here we enjoy the ordinary means of salvation, which elsewhere men
are denied and cut off from. So that if any among the heathen are
saved and brought to Christ, it must be in some miraculous or
extraordinary way, for ‘how shall they believe in him of whom they
have not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher?’ (Rom.
10. 14). Alas! were there a desire awakened in any of their hearts
after a Gospel-discovery of salvation, which ordinarily is not nor can
be rationally supposed, yet, poor creatures, they might travel from
sea to sea to hear the Word, and not find it; whereas you can hardly
miss the opportunities of hearing the Gospel. Sermons meet you
frequently, so that you can scarcely shun or avoid the ordinances and
instruments of your salvation. And is this nothing? Christ even forces
Himself upon us.
Here, in this age of the world, the common prejudices against
Christianity are removed by the advantage it has of a public
profession among the people, and protection by the laws of the
country. Whereas were your habitation among Jews, Mahometans,
or heathen idolaters, you would find Christ and Christianity the
common odium of the country, every one defying and deriding both
name and thing, and such yourselves likely had been, if your birth
and education had been among them. For you may observe that
whatever is traditionally delivered down from father to son, every
one is fond of and zealous in its defence. The Jews, heathens and
Mahometans are at this day so tenacious of their errors that, with
spitting, hissing, and clapping of hands, and all other signs of
indignation and abhorrence, they chase away all others from among
them.
Is it not then a special mercy to you to be cast into such a country
and age, where, as a learned divine observes, the true religion has the
same advantages over every false one, as in other countries they have
over it? Here you have the presence of precious means, and the
absence of soul-destroying prejudices—two signal mercies.
Here, in this age of the world, Christianity confronts you as soon as
you are capable of any sense or impressions of religion upon you;
and so, by an happy anticipation, blocks up the passages by which a
false religion would else certainly enter. Here you suck in the first
notions and principles of Christianity, even with the mother’s milk,
and certainly such a prepossession is a choice advantage. Quo semel
est imbuta, recens servabit odorem testa diu. (For many a day the
pot will keep the scent of that which first it held, when freshly
baked.) ‘Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old,
he will not depart from it’ (Prov. 22. 6).
Here you have, or may have, the help and assistance of Christians to
direct your way, resolve your doubts, support your burdens and help
you through those difficulties that attend the new birth. Alas! if a
poor soul had any beginnings or faint workings and stirrings after
Christ and true religion in many other countries, the hand of every
man would presently be against him, and none would be found to
relieve, assist or encourage, as you may see in that example of
Galeacius. The nearest relations would, in that case, prove the
greatest enemies, the country would quickly hoot at him as a
monster and cry: ‘Away with the heretic to the prison or stake.’
Whether these eventually prove blessings to your souls or not,
certain I am that in themselves they are singular mercies, and helps
to salvation that are denied to millions besides you. So that if Plato
when he was near his death could bless God for three things, viz.,
that he was a man and not a beast, that he was born in Greece, and
that he was brought up in the time of Socrates, much more cause
have you to admire Providence, that you are men and not beasts; that
you were born in England, and that you are brought up in Gospel
days. This is a land the Lord has espied for you, as the expression is
(Ezek. 20. 6), and concerning it you have abundant cause to say, as
in another case the Psalmist does: ‘The lines are fallen unto me in
pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage’ (16. 6).
Another performance of Providence which must be carefully noticed
and weighed is the designation of the stock and family out of which
we should spring and rise. And truly this is of special consideration,
both as to our temporal and eternal good. For whether the famlies in
which we grew up were great or small in Israel, whether our parents
were of the higher or lower class and rank among men, yet if they
were such as feared God and wrought righteousness, if they took any
care to educate you religiously and train you up ‘in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord,’ you are bound to reckon it among your chief
mercies, that you sprang from the loins of such parents, for from this
spring a double stream of mercy rises to you.
First, temporal and external mercies to your outward man. You
cannot but know that as godliness entails a blessing, so wickedness
and unrighteousness a curse upon posterity. An instance of the
former you have in Genesis 17. 18-20; on the contrary you have the
threatening, Zechariah 5. 4, and both together in this passage: ‘The
curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked; but he blesseth the
habitation of the just’ (Prov. 3. 33). True it is that both these imply
the children’s treading in the steps of their parents (Ezek. 18), but
how frequently is it seen that wicked men breed their children vainly
and wickedly; so that as it is said of Abijam: ‘and he walked in all the
sins of his father, which he had done before him’ (1 Kings 15. 3); and
so the curse is entailed from generation to generation. To escape this
curse is a choice providence.
But especially take notice what a stream of spiritual blessings and
mercies flows from this Providence to the inner man. O, it is no
common mercy to descend from pious parents. Some of us do not
only owe our natural life to them, as instruments of our beings, but
our spiritual and eternal life also. It was no small mercy to Timothy
to be descended from such progenitors (2 Tim. 1. 5), nor to
Augustine that he had such a mother as Monica, who planted in his
mind the precepts of life with her words, watered them with her
tears, and nourished them with her example. We will a little more
particularly inspect this mercy, and in so doing we shall find
manifold mercies contained in it.
What a mercy was it to us to have parents that prayed for us before
they had us, as well as in our infancy, when we could not pray for
ourselves? Thus did Abraham (Gen. 15. 2) and Hannah (1 Sam. 1. 10,
11), and probably some here are the fruits and returns of their
parents’ prayers. This was that holy course they continued all their
days for you, carrying all your concerns, especially your eternal ones,
before the Lord with their own; and pouring out their souls to God so
affectionately for you, when their eye-strings and heart-strings were
breaking. O put a value upon such mercies, for they are precious. It is
a greater mercy to descend from praying parents than from the loins
of nobles. See Job’s pious practice (1. 5).
What a special mercy was it to us to have the excrescences of
corruption nipped in the bud by their pious and careful discipline!
We now understand what a critical and dangerous season youth is,
the wonderful proclivity of that age to every thing that is evil. Why
else are they called youthful lusts (2 Tim. 2. 22)? When David asks:
‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?’ it is plainly enough
implied in the very question that the way he takes lies through the
pollutions of the world in his youth (Ps. 119. 9). When you find a
David praying that God would ‘not remember the sins of my youth’
(Ps. 25. 7), and a Job bitterly complaining that God ‘made me to
possess the iniquities of my youth’ (13. 26), surely you cannot but
reflect with a very thankful heart upon those happy means by which
the corruption of your nature was happily prevented, or restrained in
your youth.
And how great a mercy was it that we had parents who carefully
instilled the good knowledge of God into our souls in our tender
years? How diligent was Abraham in this duty (Gen. 18. 19), and
David (1 Chron. 28. 9)! We have some of us had parents who might
say to us, as the apostle: ‘My little children of whom I travail in birth
again until Christ be formed in you’ (Gal. 4. 19). As they longed for us
before they had us and rejoiced in us when they had us, so they could
not endure to think that when they could have us no more, the devil
should. As they thought no pains, care or cost too much for our
bodies, to feed them, clothe and heal them; so did they think no
prayers, counsels, or tears, too much for our souls, that they might be
saved. They knew a parting time would come between them and us,
and did strive to make it as easy and comfortable to them as they
could, by leaving us in Christ and within the blessed bond of His
covenant.
They were not glad that we had health and indifferent whether we
had grace. They felt the miseries of our souls as much as of our
bodies; and nothing was more desirable to them than that they might
say in the great day: ‘Lord, here am I and the children which thou
hast given me.’
And was it not a special favour to us to have parents that went before
us as patterns of holiness, and beat the path to heaven for us by their
examples? They could say to us: ‘those things ye have heard and seen
in me, do’ (Phil. 4. 9); and ‘be ye followers of me, as also I am of
Christ’ (1 Cor. 11. 1). The parents’ life is the child’s copy. O. it is no
common mercy to have a fair copy set before us, especially in the
moulding age; we saw what they did, as well as heard what they said.
It was Abraham’s commendation, ‘that he commanded his children,
and his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord.’ And such
mercies some of us have had also.
Ah, my friends, let me beg you that you will take special notice of this
Providence which so graciously wrought for you; and that your
hearts may be more thoroughly warmed in the sense of it, compare
your condition with others, and seriously consider the following.
How many children there are among us that are drawn headlong to
hell by their cruel and ungodly parents, who teach them to curse and
swear as soon as they can speak! Many families there are in which
little other language is heard but what is the dialect of hell. These,
like the old logs and small spray, are preparing for the fire of hell,
where they must burn together. Of such children that Scripture will
one day be verified, except they repent: ‘He shall go to the
generatioin of his fathers; they shall never see light’ (Ps. 49. 19).
And how many families there are, though not so profane, who yet
breed up their children vainly and sensually, and take no care what
becomes of their souls, if they can but provide for their bodies (Job
21. 11)! If they can but teach them to carry their bodies, no matter if
the devil actuate their souls. If they can but leave them lands or
monies, they think they have very fully discharged their duties. O,
what will the language be with which such parents and children shall
greet each other at the judgment-seat, and in hell for ever!
And how many there are who are more sober and yet hate the least
appearances of godliness in their children! Instead of cherishing,
they do all that they can to break bruised reeds and quench smoking
flax, to stifle and strangle the first appearances and offers they make
towards Christ! They would rather accompany them to their graves
than to Christ, doing all that in them lies, Herod-like, to kill Christ in
the cradle! Ah, sirs, you little know what a mercy you enjoy or have
enjoyed in godly parents and what a good lot Providence cast for you
in this affair of your bodies and souls.
If any shall say this was not their case, they had little help
heavenward from their parents, so such I reply as follows.
If you had little furtherance, yet own it as a special providence that
you had no hindrance; or, if you had opposition, yet admire the grace
of God in plucking you out by a wonderful distinguishing hand of
mercy from among them and keeping alive the languishing sparks of
grace amidst the floods of opposition. And learn from hence, if God
give you a posterity of your own, to be so much the more strict and
careful of family duties, by how much you have acutely felt the want
of it in yourselves.
But seeing such a train of blessings, both as to this life and that to
come, follow upon an holy education of children, I will not dismiss
the point till I have discharged my duty in exhorting parents and
children to their duties.
And first for you that are parents, or to whom the education of
children is committed, I beseach you mind the duty which lies on
you. That I may effectually press it, consider how near the relation is
between you and your children, and therefore how much you are
concerned in their happiness or misery. Consider but the Scripture
account of the dearness of such relation, expressed by longings for
them (Gen. 15. 2; 30. 1, 2), by our joy when we have them, as Christ
expresses it (John 16. 21), the high value set on them (Gen. 42. 38),
the sympathy with them in all their troubles (Mark 9. 22) and by our
sorrow at parting (Gen. 37. 35). Now shall all this be to no purpose?
For to what purpose do we desire them before we have them, rejoice
in them when we have them, value them so highly, sympathize with
them so tenderly, grieve for their death so excessively, if in the
meantime no care be taken what shall become of them to eternity?
Consider how God has charged you with their souls, as well as
bodies, and this appears by precepts directly laid upon you (Deut. 6.
6, 7; Eph. 6. 4) and by precepts laid on them to obey you (Eph. 6. 1),
which plainly implies your duty as well as expresses theirs.
What shall comfort you at the parting time, if they die through your
neglect in a Christless condition? O this is the cutting consideration:
My child is in hell, and I did nothing to prevent it! I helped him
there. Duty discharged is the only root of comfort in that day.
If you neglect to instruct them in the way of holiness, will the devil
neglect to instruct them in the way of wickedness? No, no, if you will
not teach them to pray, he will teach them to curse, swear and lie. If
ground be uncultivated, weeds will spring up.
If the season of their youth is neglected, how little probability is there
of any good fruit afterwards? Youth is the moulding age (Prov. 22. 6).
How few are converted in old age? A twig is brought to any form, but
grown limbs will not bend.
You are instrumental causes of all their spiritual misery, and that by
generation and imitation. They lie spiritually dead of the plague
which you brought home among them: ‘Behold, I was shapen in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive [or warm] me’ (Ps. 51. 5).
There is none in the world so likely as you to be instruments of their
eternal good. You have peculiar advantages that no one else has;
such as the interest you have in their affections; your opportunities
to instil the knowledge of Christ into them, being daily with them
(Deut. 6. 7); your knowledge of their character. If therefore you
neglect, who shall help them?
Again, the consideration of the great day should move your bowels of
pity for them. O remember that text: ‘And I saw the dead small and
great stand before God’ (Rev. 20. 12). What a sad thing will it be, to
see your dear children at Christ’s left hand? O friends, do your
utmost to prevent this misery. ‘Knowing the terror of the Lord, we
persuade men.’
And you, children, especially you that sprang from religious parents,
I beseech you, obey their counsels, and tread in the steps of their
pious examples. To press this, I offer the following considerations:
Your disobedience to them is a resisting of God’s authority:
‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord’ (Eph. 6. 1). There is the
command; your rebellion therefore runs higher than you think. It is
not man, but God that you disobey; and for your disobedience God
will punish you. It may be their tenderness will not suffer them, or
you are grown beyond their correction. All they can do is to complain
to God, and if so, He will handle you more severely than they could
do.
Your sin is greater than the sin of young heathens and infidels; and
so will your account be also. O better, if a wicked child, that you had
been the offspring of savage Indians, nay, of beasts, than of such
parents. So many counsels disobeyed, hopes and prayers frustrated,
will turn to sad aggravations.
It is usual with God to retaliate men’s disobedience to their parents
in kind; commonly our own children shall pay us home for it. I have
read in a grave author of a wicked wretch that dragged his father
along the house. The father begged his mot to drag him beyond such
a place, for, said he, I dragged my father no further. Oh, the sad, but
just retributions of God!
And for you in whose hearts grace has been planted by the blessings
of education, I beseech you to admire God’s goodness to you in this
providence. O what a happy lot has God cast for you! How few
children are partakers of your mercies!
See that you honour such parents; the tie is double upon you so to
do. Be you the joy of their hearts, and comfort of their lives, if they
are alive. If not, yet still remember the mercy while you live, and
tread in their pious path, that you and they may both rejoice together
in the great day, and bless God for each other to all eternity.
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Post by Admin on Feb 8, 2024 16:52:12 GMT -5
Chapter 3: The Work of Conversion
In nothing does Providence shine forth more gloriously in this world
than in ordering the occasions, instruments and means of conversion
of the people of God. However skilfully its hand had moulded your
bodies, however tenderly it had preserved them and however
bountifully it had provided for them; if it had not also ordered some
means or other for your conversion, all the former favours and
benefits it had done for you had meant little. This, O this, is the most
excellent benefit you ever received from its hand. You are more
indebted to it for this, than for all your other mercies. And in
explaining this performance of Providence, I cannot but think your
hearts must be deeply affected. This is a subject which every gracious
heart loves to steep its thoughts in. It is certainly the sweetest history
that ever they repeated; they love to think and talk of it. The places
where, and instruments by whom this work was wrought are
exceedingly endeared to them for the work’s sake, yea, endeared to
that degree, that, for many years after, their hearts have melted when
they have but passed occasionally by those places or but seen the
faces of those persons that were used as instruments in the hand of
Providence for their good. As no doubt but Jacob’s Bethel was ever
after that night sweet to his thoughts (Gen. 48. 3), so other saints
have had their Bethels as well as he. O blessed places, times, and
instruments! O the deep, the sweet impressions, never to be erased
out of the memory or heart, that this Providence has made upon
those on whom it wrought this blessed effect at years of discretion,
and in a more perceptible way!
But lest any poor soul should be discouraged by the display of this
Providence because he cannot remember the time, place,
instruments and manner when and by which conversion work was
wrought, I will therefore premise this necessary distinction, to
prevent injury to some, while I design benefit to others.
Conversion, as to the subjects of it, may be considered two ways;
either as it is more clearly wrought in person of riper years, who in
their youthful days were more profane and vile; or upon persons in
their tender years, into whose hearts grace was more imperceptibly
and indiscernibly instilled by God’s blessing upon pious education.
In the former sort, the distinct acts of the Spirit, illuminating,
convincing, humbling, drawing them to Christ and sealing them are
more evident and discernible. In the latter, these are more obscure
and confused. They can remember that God gave them an esteem
and liking of godly persons, care of duty and conscience of sin; but as
to the time, place, instruments and manner of the work, they can
give but a slender account of them. However, if the work is savingly
wrought in them, there is no reason they should be troubled because
the circumstances of it are not so evident to them as they are to
others. Let the substance and reality of the work appear and there is
no reason to afflict yourselves because of the lack of evidence of such
circumstance.
But where the circumstances as well as substance are clear to a man,
when we can call to remembrance the time when, the place where,
the instrument by whom that work was wrought, it must needs be
exceedingly sweet, and they cannot but yield a fresh delight to the
soul every time they are reflected upon.
There are many of the following occasions which, it may be, we took
for stragglers when they first befell us, but they proved scouts sent
out from the main body of Providence, which they make way for.
Now there are various things in those providences that respect this
work, which are exceedingly sweet and taking, as namely:
The wonderful strangeness and unaccountableness of this work of
Providence in casting us into the way and ordering the occasions,
yea, the minutest circumstances about this work. Thus you find that
the Eunuch, at that very instant when he was reading the prophet
Esaias, had an interpreter, one among a thousand that joins his
chariot just as his mind was by a fit occasion prepared to receive the
first light of the knowledge of Christ (Acts 8. 26-30).
And how strange was that change, however far it went, upon Naaman
the Syrian (2 Kings 5. 1-4)! that the Syrians in their incursion should
bright away this girl – likely her beauty was the inducement – and
she must be present to Naaman’s wife, and relate to her the power of
God that accompanied the prophet; though you find in that
particular case there had never been an instance given before (Luke
4. 27). Doubtless the whole of this affair was guided by the signal
direction of Providence.
So for the conversion of the Samaritans, it is observed that Christ
must needs go that way (John 4. 4) – it lay just in the road between
Judea and Galilee – and at the sixth hour, i.e., high noon, he rests
himself upon Jacob’s well, still seeming to have no other design but
his own refreshment by sitting and drinking there. But O what a train
of blessed providences follow this which seemed but an accidental
thing! First the woman of Samaria and then many more in that city
are brought to believe in Christ (verses 29 and 41).
it is noted by Melchior Adams in the Life of Junius how much of an
atheist he was in his younger years; but in order to bring about his
conversion to God, first, a wonderful preservation of his life in a
public tumult at Lyons in France must take place, which forces from
him the acknowledgment of a Deity. Then his father sends for him
home and with much gentleness persuades him to read the
Scriptures. He lights upon the first of John, and with it he feels a
divine supernatural majesty and power seizing his soul, which
brought him over by a complete conversion to Jesus Christ. Thus, as
the woman of Tekoa told David, does God devise means to bring
back His banished (2 Sam. 14. 14).
Lavater tells us that many Spanish soldiers, going into the wars of
Germany, were there converted to Christ, by going into the cities and
towns where godly ministers and Christians were.
Robert Bolton, though an excellent scholar, yet in his younger years
he was a very irreligious person and a jeerer of holy men; but being
cast into the company of godly Mr Peacock was by him brought to
repentance and proved a famous instrument in the Church of Christ.
A scrap of paper, accidentally coming to view, has been used as an
occasion of conversion. This was the case of a minister in Wales, who
had two livings, but took little care of either. Being at a fair, he
bought something at a pedlar’s stall, and tore off a leaf of Mr Perkins’
Catechism to wrap it in, and reading a line or two in it, God sent it
home so as it did the work.
The marriage of a godly man into a carnal family has been ordered by
Providence for the conversion and salvation of many therein. Thus
we read in the life of that renowned English worthy, John Bruen, that
in his second match it was agreed that he should have one year’s diet
in his mother-in-law’s house. During his abode there that year the
Lord was pleased by this means graciously to work upon her soul, as
also upon his wife’s sister and half-sister, their brothers William and
Thomas Fox, with one or two of t he servants in that family.
The reading of a good book has been the means of bringing others to
Christ. And thus we find many of the German divines converted by
reading Luther’s books; yea, and what is more strange, Sleyden, in
his Commentary, tells us that Vergerius, though he were an eye and
ear witness to that doleful case of Spira, which one would think
should move a stone, yet still continued so firm to the pope’s interest
that when he fell into some suspicion among the cardinals he
resolved to purge himself by writing a book against the German
apostates. But while he read the Protestant books, out of no other
design but to confute them, while he is weighing the arguments, he is
himself convinced and brought to Christ. He, finding himself thus
overcome by the truth, imparts his conviction to his brother, also a
zealous papist. This brother deplores the misery of his case and seeks
to reclaim him; but Vergerius entreating him to weigh well the
Protestant arguments, he also yields, and so both immediately gave
themselves to preaching justification by the free grace of God
through the blood of Christ.
Yea, not only the reading of a book or hearing a minister, but, which
is most remarkable, the very mistake or forgetfulness of a minister
has been improved by Providence for this end and purpose.
Augustine, once preaching to his congregation, forgot the argument
which first he proposed and attacked the error of the Manichees
beside his first intention. By this discourse he converted one Firmus,
his hearer, who fell down at his feet weeping and confessing he had
lived a Manichee many years.
Another I knew who, going to preach, took up another Bible than
that he designed, in which, not only missing his notes but the chapter
also in which his text lay, was put to some loss thereby. But after a
short pause he resolved to speak on any other Scripture that might
be presented to him and accordingly read that text: ‘The Lord is not
slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness’ (2 Pet.
3. 9). And though he had nothing prepared, yet the Lord helped him
to speak both methodically and pertinently from it, by which
discourse a gracious change was wrought upon one in the
congregation who has since given good evidence of a sound
conversion and acknowledged this sermon to be the first and only
means thereof.
The accompanying of others in a neighbourly civil visit has been
overruled to the same end. Thus many of the Jews accompanied
Mary unto Bethany, designing only to manifest their civil respect, but
there they met Christ, saw the things which He did, and believed on
Him (John 11. 45).
Firmin4 tells us of one who had lived many years in a town where
Christ had been as clearly and as long preached as in any town in
England. This man, when he was about seventy-six years of age, went
to visit a sick neighbour. ‘A Christian friend of mine,’ says my author,
‘came to see him also, and finding this old man there, whom he
judged to be one that lived upon his own stock, civility, good works,
etc., he purposely fell into that discourse, to shew how many persons
lived upon their duties, but never came to Christ. The old man sitting
by the bedside heard him, and God was pleased to convince him that
he was such a person, who had lived upon himself without Christ to
that day; and would say afterwards, ‘Had I died before three-score
and sixteen, I had perished, for I knew not Christ.’
The committing of a godly man to prison has been the method of
Providence to save the soul of a poor keeper. So Paul was made a
prisoner to make his keeper a spiritual freeman (Acts 16. 27). The
like success had Dr Barnes in Queen Mary’s days, who afterwards
celebrated the Lord’s Supper in prison with his converted keeper.
The scattering of ministers and Christians by persecution from cities
and towns into the ignorant and barbarous parts of the country, has
been the way of Providence to find out and bring home some lost
sheep that were found there to Jesus Christ (Acts 8. 1, 4). The like
signal event has since followed upon the like scattering of godly
ministers, of which there are many outstanding instances at this day.
A servant running away from his master, probably out of no other
design but to live an idle life, yet falling into such places and
companies as Providence ordered in a design to him unknown, has
thereby been brought to be the servant of Christ. This was the very
case of Onesimus who ran away from his master Philemon to Rome,
where by a strange Providence, possibly a mere curiosity to see the
prisoners, he there falls into Paul’s hands, who begat him to Christ in
his bonds (Philemon 10-16).
Going to hear a sermon in jest has proved some men’s conversion in
earnest. The above-named Mr Firmin tells us of a notorious
drunkard whom the drunkards called ‘father’ that one day would
needs go to hear what Wilson said, out of no other design, it seems,
but to scoff at that holy man. But in the prayer before the sermon his
heart began to thaw, and when he read his text: ‘Sin no more, lest a
worse thing come unto thee’ (John 5. 14), he could not contain, and
in that sermon the Lord changed his heart, though so bitter an
enemy that the minister on lecture-days was afraid to go to church
before his shop door. ‘Lo, these are parts of his ways, but how small a
portion is known of him?’
The dropping of some grave and weighty word accidentally in the
presence of vain carnal persons, the death of a husband, wife or
child, a fit of sickness, with a thousand other such like occasions,
have been thus improved by Providence to the conversion of souls.
And no less remarkable and wonderful are the designs of Providence
in ordering the removals and governing the movements of ministers
from place to place, for the conversion of souls. Thus often it carries
them to places where they did not intend to go, God having,
unknown to them, some elect vessels there who must be called by the
Gospel.
Thus Paul and Timothy, a sweet and lovely pair, when they were
travelling through Phrygia and Galatia, were forbidden to preach the
Word in Asia, to which probably their minds inclined (Acts 16. 6),
and when ‘they essayed to go into Bithynia, the Spirit suffered them
not’ (verse 7). But a man of Macedonia, i.e., an angel in the shape or
habit of a man of that country, appeared to Paul in a vision and
prayed him saying: ‘Come over into Macedonia, and help us’ (verse
9), and there did God open the heart of Lydia.
I knew a pious minister, now with God, who, falling in his study upon
a very rousing subject, intended for his own congregation, was
strongly moved, when he had finished it, to go to a rude, vile, profane
people about five miles off and first preach it to them. After many
wrestlings with himself, not being willing to quench any motion that
might be supposed to come from the Spirit of God, he obeyed and
went to this people, who had then no minister of their own and few
durst come among them. And there did the Lord, beyond all
expectation, open a door, and several profane ones received Christ in
that place and engaged this minister to a weekly lecture among them,
in which many souls were won to God.
the same holy man at another time, being upon a journey, passed by
a company of vain persons, who were wrestling upon a green near
the road. Just as he came near the place one of them had thrown his
antagonist and stood triumphing in his strength and activity. this
good man rode up to them, and turning his speech to this person,
told him: ‘Friend, I see that you are a strong man, but let not the
strong man glory in his strength: you must know that you are not to
wrestle with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, and
spiritual wickednesses. How sad will it be that Satan should at last
trip up the heels of your hope, and give you an eternal overthrow!’
After about a quarter of an hour’s serious discourse upon this
subject, he left them and went on his journey, but this discourse
made such an impression, that the person had no rest till he confided
his trouble to a godly minister, who wisely following the work upon
his soul, saw at last the blessed issue thereof in the gracious change
of the person, of which he afterwards gave the minister a joyful
account. O how unsearchable are the methods of Providence in this
matter!
Nay, what is yet more wonderful, the Providence of God has
sometimes ordered the very malice of Satan and wickedness of men
as an occasion of eternal good to their souls. A very memorable
example of this I shall here give the reader, faithfully relating what,
not many years past, occurred in my own observation in this place, to
the astonishment of many spectators.
In the year 1673, there came into this port5 a ship of Poole, in her
return from Virginia. In this ship was one of that place, a lusty young
man of twenty-three years of age, who was surgeon in the ship. This
person in the voyage fell into a deep melancholy, which the devil
greatly improved to serve his own design for the ruin of this poor
man. However, it pleased the Lord to restrain him from any attempts
upon his own life until he arrived here. But shortly after his arrival,
upon the Lord’s day, early in the morning, being in bed with his
brother, he took a knife prepared for that purpose and cut his own
throat, and then leapt out of the bed, and though the would was deep
and large, yet thinking it might not soon enough dispatch his
wretched life, desperately thrust it into his stomach and so lay
wallowing in his own blood till his brother awakening made a cry for
help. Hereupon a physician and a surgeon coming in, found the
wound in his throat mortal, and all they could do at present was only
to stitch it and apply a plaster with the design rather to enable him to
speak for a little while than with any expectation of cure; for before
that, he breathed through the wound and his voice was inarticulate.
In this condition I found him that morning, and apprehending him
to be within a few minutes of eternity, I laboured to work upon his
heart the sense of his condition, telling him I had but little time to do
anything for him, and therefore I desired him to let me know what
his own apprehensions of his present condition were. He told me he
hoped in God for eternal life. I replied that I feared his hopes were
ill-grounded, for the Scripture tells us: ‘No murderer hath eternal life
abiding in him.’ But this was self-murder, the grossest of all murders,
and insisting upon the aggravation and heinousness of the fact, I
perceived his vain confidence began to fall and some meltings of
heart appeared in him. He then began to lament with many tears his
sin and misery and asked me if there might yet be hope for one that
had destroyed himself and shed his own blood. I replied, the sin
indeed is great but not unpardonable, and if the Lord gave him
repentance unto life, and faith to apply to Jesus Christ, it should be
certainly pardoned to him. Finding him unacquainted with these
things, I explained to him the nature and necessity of faith and
repentance, which he greedily sucked in and with great vehemence
cried to God that He would work them upon his soul, and intreated
me also to pray with him and for him that it might be so. I prayed
with him and the Lord thawed his heart exceedingly in that duty.
Loth he was to part with me, but the duties of the day necessitating
me to leave him, I briefly summed up what was most necessary in my
parting counsel to him and took my leave, never expecting to see him
more in this world. But beyond my own and all men’s expectation, he
continued all that day and panted most ardently after Jesus Christ.
No discourses pleased him but Christ and faith, and in this frame I
found him in the evening. He rejoiced greatly to see me again and
intreated me to continue my discourses upon these subjects; and
after all told me: ‘Sir, the Lord has given me repentance for this sin;
yea, and for every other sin. I see the evil of sin now, so as I never
saw it before. O, I loathe myself; I am a vile creature in my own eyes!
I do also believe; Lord, help my unbelief. I am heartily willing to take
Christ upon His own terms. One thing only troubles me. I doubt this
bloody sin will not be pardoned. Will Jesus Christ apply His blood to
me, that have shed my own blood?’ I told him Christ shed His blood
even for them that with wicked hands had shed the blood of Christ,
and that was a sin of deeper guilt than his. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I will cast
myself upon Christ. Let him do by me what he will.’ And so I parted
with him that night.
Next morning the wounds were to be opened, and then the opinion
of the surgeons was that he would immediately expire. Accordingly,
at his desire, I came that morning and found him in a most serious
frame. I prayed with him, and then the wound in his stomach was
opened, and by this time the ventricle itself was swollen out of the
orifice of the wound and lay like a livid discoloured tripe upon his
body and was also cut through; so that all concluded it was
impossible for him to live. However they stitched the wound in the
stomach, enlarged the orifice and fomented it, and wrought it again
into his body, and so stitching up the skin, left him to the disposal of
Providence.
But so it was that both the deep wound in his throat and this in his
stomach healed, and the more dangerous wound sin had made upon
his soul, was, I trust, effectually healed also. I spent many hours with
him in that sickness, and, after his return home, received this
account from Mr Samuel Hardy, a minister in that town, part of
which I shall transcribe.
Dear Sir,
I was much troubled at the sad providence in your own, but did
much rejoice that he fell into such hands for his body and soul. You
have taken much pains with him, and I hope to good purpose. I
think, if ever a great and thorough work were done such a way, it is
now, and if never the like, I am persuaded now it is. Never grow
weary of such good works. One such instance is, methinks, enough
to make you to abound in the work of the Lord all your days. . . .
O how unsearchable are the ways of Providence in leading men to
Christ! Let none be encouraged by this to sin that grace may abound.
These are rare and singular instances of the mercy of God, and such
as no presumptuous sinner can expect to find. It is only recited here
to the honour of Providence, which works for the recovery of sinners
in ways that we do not understand.
As Providence order very strange occasions to awaken and arouse
souls at first, so it works no less wonderfully in carrying on the
work to perfection. This it does in two ways.
First, by quickening and reviving dying convictions and troubles for
sin. Souls, after their first awakening, are apt to lose the sense and
impression of their first troubles for sin; but Providence is vigilant to
prevent it, and effectually prevents it. Sometimes Providence directs
the minister to some discourse or passage that shall fall as pat as if
the case of such a person had been studied by him and designedly
spoken to. How often have I found this in the cases of many souls
who have professed they have stood amazed to hear the very
thoughts of their hearts revealed by the preacher, who knew nothing
of them! Sometimes Providence directs them to some proper rousing
Scripture that suits their present case, and sometimes permits them
to fall into some new sin which awakens all their former troubles
again and puts a new efficacy and activity into the conscience. The
world is full of instances of all these cases, and because most
Christians have experience of these things in themselves, it will be
needless to recite them here. Search but a few years back, and you
may remember that, according to this account, at least in some
particulars, Providence ordered the matter with you. Have you not
found some rod or other prepared by Providence to rouse you out of
your security? Why, this is so common a thing with Christians that
they many times presage an affliction coming from the frames they
find their own hearts in.
Secondly, Providence gives great assistance to the work of the Spirit
upon the soul, by ordering, supporting, relieving and cheering
means, to prop up and comfort the soul when it is over-burdened
and ready to sink in the depths of troubles. I remember Mr Bolton
gives us one instance which fits both these cases, the reviving of
convictions, and seasonable supports in the depths of troubles. It is
of a person that by convictions had been fetched off from his wicked
companions and entered into a reformed course of life. But after this,
through the enticement of his old companions, the subtlety of Satan
and corruption of his own heart, he again relapsed into the ways of
sin. Then was providentially brought to his view that Scripture,
Proverbs 1. 24-26. This renewed his trouble, yea, aggravated it to a
greater height than ever, insomuch that he could scarcely think, as it
seems by the relation, his sin could be pardoned. But in this
condition that text, Luke 17. 4, was presented to him, which sweetly
settled him in a sure and glorious peace.
Nor can we here forget that miraculous work of Providence, in a time
of great extremity, which was wrought for that good gentlewoman
Mrs Honeywood, who under a deep and sad desertion, refused and
put off all comfort, seeming to despair utterly of the grace and mercy
of god. A worthy minister being one day with her and reasoning
against her desperate conclusions, she took a Venice-glass from the
table and said: ‘Sir, I am as sure to be damned as this glass is to be
broken’, and therewith threw it forcibly to the ground. But to the
astonishment of both, the glass remained whole and sound, which
the minister taking up with admiration, rebuked her presumption
and showed her what a wonder Providence had wrought for her
satisfaction, and it greatly altered the attitude of her mind. ‘How
unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!’
(Rom. 11. 33). ‘Lo, these are parts of his ways, but how little a portion
is heard of him!’ (Job 26. 14).
And now let me expostulate a little with your soul, reader. Have you
been duly aware of your obligation to Providence for this inestimable
favour? O what it has done for you! There are various kinds of
mercies conveyed to men by the hand of Providence, but none like
this; in all the treasury of its benefits none is found like this. Did it
cast you into the way of conversion, and order the means and
occasions of it for you, when you little thought of any such thing?
How dear and sweet should the remembrance of it be to your soul!
methinks it should astonish and melt you every time you reflect upon
it. Such mercies should never grow stale or look like common things
to you, for do but seriously consider the following particulars.
How surprising was the mercy which Providence performed for you
in that day! Providence had a design upon you for your eternal good,
which you did not understand. The time of mercy was now fully
come; the decree was now ready to bring forth that mercy, with
which it had gone big from eternity, and its gracious design must be
executed by the hand of Providence, so far as concerned the external
means and instruments. How aptly did it cause all things to fall in
with that design, though you did not know the meaning of it? Look
over all the before-mentioned examples, and you will see the blessed
work of conversion begun upon those souls, when they minded it no
more than Saul did a kingdom that morning he went out ‘to seek his
father’s asses’ (1 Sam. 9. 3, 20). Providence might truly have said to
you in that day, as Christ said to Peter: ‘What I do thou knowest not
now, but thou shalt know it hereafter’ (John 13. 7). God’s thoughts
are not as our thoughts; but as the heavens are higher than the earth
so are His thoughts higher than ours, and His ways than our ways.
Little did Zacchaeus think when he climbed up into the sycamore
tree to see Christ as He passed that way what a design of mercy
Christ had upon him, who took thence the occasion of becoming both
his Guest and Saviour (Luke 19. 5-8). And as little did some of you
think what the aim of Providence was when you went, some out of
custom, others out of curiosity, if not worse motives to hear such a
sermon. O how stupendous are the ways of God!
What a distinguishing and seasonable mercy was ushered in by
Providence in that day! It brought you to the means of salvation in a
good hour. In the very nick of time, when the angel troubled the
waters, you were brought to the pool (John 5. 4). Now the accepted
day was come, the Spirit was in the ordinance or providence that
converted you, and you were set in the way of it. It may be you had
heard many hundred sermons before, but nothing would stick till
now, because the hour was not come. The Lord did, as it were, call in
the word for such a man, such a woman, and Providence said: ‘Lord,
here he is, I have brought him before thee.’ There were many others
under that sermon that received no such mercy. You yourselves had
heard many before, but not to that advantage, as it is said: ‘And
many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and
none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian’ (Luke 4. 27).
So there were many poor, unconverted souls beside you under the
Word that day, and it may be, to none of them was salvation sent that
day but to you. O blessed Providence that set you in the way of mercy
at that time!
What a weighty and important mercy was providentially directed to
your souls that day. There are mercies of all sizes and kinds in the
hands of Providence to dispense to the sons of men. Its left hand is
full of blessings as well as its right. It has health and riches, honours
and pleasures, as well as Christ and salvation to dispense. The world
is full of its left hand favours, but the blessings of its right hand are
invaluably precious and few there be that receive them. It performs
thousands of kind offices for men; but among them all, this is the
chiefest, to lead and direct them to Christ. For consider, of all
mercies, this comes through most and greatest difficulties (Eph. 1.
19, 20).
This is a spiritual mercy, excelling in dignity of nature all others,
more than gold excels the dirt under your feet (Rev. 3. 18). One such
gift is worth thousands of other mercies.
This is a mercy immediately flowing out of the fountain of God’s
electing love, a mercy never dropped into any but an elect vessel (1
Thess. 1. 4, 5).
This is a mercy that infallibly secures salvation; for as we may argue
from conversion to election, looking back, so from conversion to
salvation, looking forward (Heb. 6. 9).
Lastly, this is an eternal mercy, one which will stick by you when
father, mother, wife, children, estate, honours, health and life shall
fail you (John 4. 14).
O, therefore, set a special mark upon that Providence that set you in
the way of this mercy. It has performed that for you which all the
ministers on earth and angels in heaven could never have performed.
This is a mercy that puts weight and value into the smallest
circumstance that relates to it.
Footnotes
4. Giles Firmin (1614-97), Puritan minister of Shalford, Essex and
author of The Real Christian.
5. Dartmouth
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Post by Admin on Feb 8, 2024 16:53:56 GMT -5
Chapter 4: Our Employment
Another excellent performance of Providence, respecting the good of
both your bodies and souls, concerns that employment and calling it
has ordered for you in this world. It has not only an eye upon your
well-being in the world to come, but upon your well-being in this
world also, and that very much depends upon the station and
vocation to which it calls you.
Now the Providence of God with respect to our civil callings may be
displayed very takingly in the following particulars.
In directing you to a calling in your youth, and not permitting you
to live an idle, useless and sinful life, as many do who are but
burdens to the earth, the wens of the body politic, serving only to
disfigure and drain it, to eat what others earn. Sin brought in sweat
(Gen. 3. 19), but now, not to sweat increases sin. He that lives idly
cannot live honestly, as is plainly enough intimated (1 Thess. 4. 11,
12). But when God puts men into a lawful calling, in which the labour
of their hands or heads is sufficient for them, it is a very valuable
mercy; for in so doing they ‘eat their own bread’ (2 Thess. 3. 12).
Many a sad temptation is happily prevented, and they are ordinarily
furnished by it for works of mercy to others, and surely ‘it is more
blessed to give than to receive.’
In ordering you to such callings and employments in the world as
are not only lawful in themselves but most suitable to you. There are
many persons employed in sinful trades and arts, merely to furnish
other men’s lusts. They do not only sin in their employments, but
their very employments are sinful. They trade for hell, and are
factors for the devil. Demetrius and the craftsmen at Ephesus got
their estates by making shrines for Diana (Acts 19. 24, 25), i.e., little
cases or boxes with folding leaves, within which the image of that
idol sat enshrined. These were carried about by the people in
procession in honour of their idol. And at this day, how many wicked
arts and employments are there invented, and multitudes of persons
maintained by them, merely to gratify the pride and wantonness of a
debauched age!
Now to have an honest and lawful employment, in which you do not
dishonour God in benefiting yourselves, is no small mercy. But if it is
not only lawful in itself, but suited to your genius and strength, there
is a double mercy in it. Some poor creatures are engaged in callings
that eat up their time and strength, and make their lives very
uncomfortable to them. They have not only consuming and wasting
employments in the world, but such as allow them little or no time
for their general calling, and yet all this does but keep them and
theirs alive. Therefore, if God has fitted you with an honest
employment in which you have less toil than others, and more time
for heavenly exercises, ascribe this benefit to the special care of
Providence for you.
In settling you in such an employment and calling in the world, as
possibly neither yourselves nor parents could ever expect you
should attain to. There are among us such persons as, on this
account, are signally obliged to divine Providence. God has put them
into such a way as neither they nor their parents ever planned. For
look how the needle in the compass turns now this way, then that
way, and never ceases moving till it settles to the north point; just so
it is in our settlement in the world. A child is now designed for this,
then for that, but at last settles in that way of employment to which
Providence designed him. How strangely are things wheeled about
by Providence! Now what we or our parents, but what God designed
shall take place. Amos was very meanly employed at first, but God
designed him for a more honourable and comfortable calling (Amos
7. 14, 15). David followed the ewes, and probably never raised his
thoughts to higher things in the days of his youth; but God made him
the royal shepherd of a better flock (Ps. 78. 70, 71). Peter and Andrew
were employed as fishermen, but Christ calls them from that to a
higher calling, to be ‘fishers of men’ (Matt. 4. 18, 19). Pareus, when
he was fourteen years old, was by the instigation of his stepmother
placed with an apothecary; but Providence so wrought that he was
taken off from that and fitted for the ministry, in which he became a
fruitful and eminent instrument to the Church. James Andreas was,
by reason of his father’s inability to keep him at school, designed for
a carpenter, but was afterwards, by the persuasion of friends and
assistance of the church-flock, sent to Stuttgart, and thence to the
University, and so attained to a very eminent station of service to the
Church. A master builder, Oecolampadius, was by his father
designed for a merchant; but his mother, by urgent entreaties,
prevailed to keep him at school, and this man was a blessed
instrument in the reformation of religion. I might easily cite
multitudes of such instances, but a taste may suffice.
In securing your estates from ruin. ‘Hast thou not made an hedge
about him, and all that he hath?’ (Job 1. 10). This is the enclosure of
Providence, which secures to us what by its favour we acquire in the
way of honest industry.
In making your calling sufficient for you. It was the prayer of Moses
for the tribe of Judah: ‘Let his hands be sufficient for him’ (Deut. 33.
7), and it is no small mercy if yours be so to you. Some there are that
have work, but not strength to go through with it; others have
strength, but no employment for it. Some have hands, and work for
them; but it is not sufficient for them and theirs. If God bless your
labours, so as to give you and yours necessary supports and comfort
in the world by it, it is a choice providence, and with all thankfulness
to be acknowledged.
If any that fear God shall complain that, although they have a calling,
yet it is a hard and laborious one, which takes up too much of their
time which they would gladly employ in other and better work, I
answer that it is likely that the wisdom of Providence foresaw this to
be the most suitable and proper employment for you; and if you had
more ease and rest, you might have more temptations than now you
have. The strength and time which is now taken up in your daily
labours, in which you serve God, might otherwise have been spent
upon such lusts in which you might have served the devil.
Moreoever, hereby it may be your health is the better preserved, and
natural refreshments made the sweeter to you. ‘The sleep of a
labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the
abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep’ (Eccl. 5. 12).
And as to the service of God, if your hearts are spiritual, you may
enjoy much communion with God in your very employments, and
you have some intervals and respites for that purpose. Have you not
more spare hours than you employ to that end?
‘But all my labours will scarcely suffice to procure me and mine the
necessaries of life. I am kept short and low to what others are, and
this is a sad affliction.’
Though the wisdom of Providence has ordered you a lower and
poorer condition than others, yet consider how many there are that
are lower than you in the world. You have but little of the world, yet
others have less. Read the description of those persons (Job 30. 4,
etc.). If God has given you but a small portion of the world, yet if you
are godly He has promised never to forsake you (Heb. 13. 5).
Providence has ordered that condition for you which is really best for
your eternal good. If you had more of the world than you have, your
heads and hearts might not be able to manage it to your advantage. A
small boat must have but a narrow sail. You have not lacked hitherto
the necessities of life, and are commanded ‘having food and raiment
(though none of the finest) to be therewith content.’ ‘A little that a
righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked’ (Ps. 37.
16): better in the acquisition, sweeter in the fruition, and more
comfortable in the account.
Well then, if Providence has so disposed of you all, that you can eat
your own bread, and so advantageously directed some of you to
employments that afford, not only necessities for yourselves and
families, but a surplus of works of mercy to others, and all this
brought about for you in a way you did not plan; let God be owned
and honoured in this providence. Will you not henceforth call Him:
‘My Father, the guide of my youth’ (Jer. 3. 4)? Surely it was the Lord
that guided you to settle as you did in those days of your youth; you
reap at this day, and may to your last day, the fruits of those early
providences in your youth.
Now see that you walk answerably to the obligations of Providence in
this particular; and see to it in the fear of God that you do not abuse
any of those things to His dishonour which He has wrought for your
comfort. To prevent this, I will here drop a few needful cautions, and
conclude this particular point.
Do not be slothful and idle in your vocations. It is said that Augustus
built an Apragapolis, a city void of business; but I am sure God never
erected any city, town or family to that end. The command to Adam
(Gen. 3. 19) no doubt reaches all his posterity, and Gospelcommands bind it upon Christians (Rom. 12. 11; 1 Thess. 4. 11). If
you are negligent, you cannot be innocent.
And yet do not be so intent upon your particular callings as to make
them interfere with your general calling. Beware you do not lose your
God in the crowd and hurry of earthly business. Mind that solemn
warning: ‘But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,
and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in
destruction and perdition’ (1 Tim. 6. 9). The inhabitants of Oenoe, a
dry island near Athens, bestowed much labour to draw in a river to
water it and make it fruitful. But when the sluices were opened, the
waters flowed so abundantly that it overflowed the island and
drowned the inhabitants. The application is obvious. It was an
excellent saying of Seneca: ‘I do not give, but lend myself to
business.’
Remember always the success of your callings and earthly
employments is by divine blessing, not human diligence alone. ‘But
thou shalt remember the Lord thy God; for it is he that giveth thee
power to get wealth’ (Deut. 8. 18). The devil himself was so far
orthodox as to acknowledge it: ‘Hast not thou made an hedge about
him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?
Thou hast blessed the work of his hands’ (Job 1. 10). Recommend
therefore your affairs to God in prayer. ‘Delight thyself also in the
Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy
way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass’
(Ps. 37. 4, 5). And do not meddle with that which you cannot
recommend to God in prayer for a blessing.
Be well satisfied in that station and employment in which Providence
has placed you, and do not so much as wish yourself in another. ‘Let
every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called’ (1 Cor. 7.
20). Providence is wiser than you, and you may be confident it has
suited all things better to your eternal good than you could do had
you been left to your own option.
Chapter 5: Family Affairs
That Providence has a special hand in our marriage is evident both
from Scripture assertions and the acknowledgments of holy men,
who in that great event of their lives have still owned and
acknowledged the directing hand of Providence. Take an instance of
both. The Scripture plainly asserts the dominion of Providence over
this affair: ‘A prudent wife is from the Lord’ (Prov. 19. 14). ‘Whoso
findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord’
(Prov. 18. 22). So for children: ‘Lo, children are an heritage of the
Lord; and the fruit of the womb is his reward’ (Ps. 127. 3).
And it has ever been the practice of holy men to seek the Lord for
direction and counsel, when they have been changing their
condition. No doubt but Abraham’s encouragement in that case was
the fruit of prayer. His pious servant also, who was employed in that
affair, did both earnestly seek counsel of God, and thankfully
acknowledge His gracious providence in guiding it (Gen. 24. 7, 12,
26, 27).
The same we may observe in children, the fruit of marriage (1 Sam. 1.
20; Luke 1. 13, 14). Now the Providence of God may be in various
ways displayed for the engaging of our hearts in love to the God of
our mercies.
There is very much of Providence seen in appointing the parties for
each other. In this the Lord often goes beyond our thoughts and
plans; yea, and often crosses men’s desires and designs to their great
advantage. Not what they expect, but what His infinite wisdom
judges best and most beneficial for them takes place. Hence it is that
probabilities are so often dashed, and things remote and utterly
improbable are brought about, in very strange and unaccountable
methods of Providence.
There is much of Providence seen in the harmony and agreeableness
of temperaments and dispositions, from which a very great part of
the tranquillity and comforts of our lives results. Or at least, though
natural temperament and education did no so much harmonize
before, yet they do so after they come under the ordinance of God:
‘And they shall be one flesh’ (Gen. 2. 24). Not one only in respect of
God’s institution, but one in respect of love and affection, that those
who so lately were mere strangers to each other are now endeared to
a degree beyond the nearest relations in blood: ‘Therefore shall a
man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they
shall be one flesh.’
But Providence is especially remarkable in making one instrumental
to the eternal good of the other: ‘What knowest thou, O wife,
whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man,
whether thou shalt save thy wife?’ (1 Cor. 7. 16). Hence is that grave
exhortation to the wives of unbelieving husbands to win them by
their conversation, which should be to them instead of an ordinance
(1 Pet. 3. 1).
Or if both are gracious, then what singular assistance and mutual
help is hereby gained to the furtherance of their eternal good whilst
they live together ‘as heirs together of the grace of life’ (1 Pet. 3. 7). O
blessed Providence that directed such into so intimate relation on
earth, who shall inherit together the common salvation of heaven!
How much of Providence is seen in children, the fruit of marriage!
To have any posterity in the earth, and not be left altogether as a dry
tree; to have comfort and joy in them is a special providence,
importing a special mercy to us. To have the breaches made upon our
families repaired, is a providence to be owned with a thankful heart.
When God shall say to a man, as he speaks in another case to the
Church: ‘The children which thou shalt have after thou hast lost the
other, shall say again in thine ears: The place is too strait for me’
(Isa. 49. 20).
And these providences will appear more affectingly sweet and lovely
to you, if you but compare God’s allotments to you with what He has
allotted to many others in the world. For do but look around and you
will find multitudes unequally yoked, to the embittering of their
lives, whose relations are clogs and hindrances both in things
temporal and spiritual. Yea, we find an account in Scripture of
gracious persons, a great part of whose comfort in this world has
been split upon this rock. Abigail was a discreet and virtuous woman,
but very unsuitably matched to a churlish Nabal (1 Sam. 25. 25).
What a temptation to the neglect of a known duty prevailed upon the
renowned Moses by the means of Zipporah his wife (Exod. 4. 24, 25).
David had his scoffing Michal (2 Sam. 6. 20), and patient Job no
small addition to all his other afflictions from the wife of his bosom,
who should have been a support to him in the day of his troubles
(Job 19. 17).
No doubt but God sanctifies such rods to His people’s good. If
Socrates knew how to improve his affliction in his Xanthippe to the
increase of his patience, much more will they who converse with God
under all providences, whether sweet or bitter. Nevertheless this
must be acknowledged to be a sad stroke upon any person, and such
as maims them upon the working hand, by unfitting them for duty (1
Pet. 3. 7) and cuts off much of the comfort of life also.
How many there are who never enjoy the comfortable fruits of
marriage, but are denied the sight, or at least the enjoyment of
children! ‘Thus saith the Lord: Write this man childless’ (Jer. 22. 30),
or if they have children, yet cannot enjoy them: ‘Though they bring
up their children, yet will I bereave them that there shall not be a
man left’ (Hosea 9. 12), who only bear for the grave, and have their
expectations raised for a greater affliction to themselves.
And it is no rare or unusual thing to see children and near relations
the greatest instruments of affliction to their parents and friends, so
that after all their other sorrows and troubles in the world, nearest
relations bring up the rear of sorrows and prove greater griefs than
any other. O how many parents have complained with the tree in the
fable, that their very hearts have been riven asunder with those
wedges that were cut out of their own bodies! What a grief was Esau
to Isaac and Rebecca (Gen. 26. 34, 35)! what scourges were Absalom
and Amnon to David!
Well then, if God has set ‘the solitary in families’ (Ps. 68. 6), built a
house for the desolate, given you comfortable relations, which are
springs of daily comfort and refreshment to you, you are upon many
accounts engaged to walk answerably to these gracious providences.
And that you may understand wherein that decorum and agreeable
comportment with these providences consists, take up the sense of
your duty in these brief hints:
Ascribe to God the glory of all those providential works which yield
you comfort. You see a wise, directing, governing Providence, which
has disposed and ordered all things beyond your own plans and
designs: ‘The way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that
walketh to direct his steps’ (Jer. 10. 23). Not what you planned, but
what a higher counsel than yours determined is come to pass. Good
Jacob, when God had made him the father of a family, admired God
in the mercy. ‘For with my staff,’ said he, ‘I passed over this Jordan,
and now I am become two bands’ (Gen. 32. 10). And how this mercy
humbles and melts him! ‘I am not worthy of the least of all the
mercies, and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy
servant.’
Be exact in discharging the duties of those relations which so
gracious a Providence has led you into. Do not abuse the effects of so
much mercy and love to you. The Lord expects praise wherever you
have comfort. This aggravated David’s sin, that he should dare to
abuse so great love and mercy as God had shown him in his family
relations (2 Sam. 12. 7-9).
Use relations to the end Providence designed them. Walk together as
co-heirs of the grace of life; study to be mutual blessings to each
other; so walk in your relations that the parting day may be sweet.
Death will shortly break up the family; and then nothing but the
sense of duty discharged, or the neglects pardoned, will give comfort.
Another gracious performance of Providence for us is seen in making
provision from time to time for us and our families. I the rather put
these providences together in this place because I find the Scripture
does so. ‘Yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and maketh
him families like a flock’ (Ps. 107. 41).
You know the promises God has made to His people: ‘The young
lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not
want any good thing’ (Ps. 34. 10). And have you not also seen the
constant performance of it? Cannot you give the same answer, if the
same question were propounded to you, which the disciples did:
‘When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye
anything? and they said, Nothing’ (Luke 22. 35)? Can you not with
Jacob call him ‘the God which fed me all my life long’? (Gen. 48. 15).
Surely ‘he hath given meat unto them that fear him; he will ever be
mindful of his covenant’ (Ps. 111. 5).
To display this Providence we will consider it in the following
particulars:
The assiduity and constancy of the care of Providence for the saints.
His mercies ‘are new every morning’ (Lam. 3. 23). It is not just the
supply of one or two pressing needs, but all your wants, as they grow
from day to day through all your days. ‘The God which fed me all my
life long’ (Gen. 48. 15). The care of Providence runs parallel with the
line of life: ‘Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant
of the house of Israel, which are borne by me from the belly, which
are carried from the womb: and even to your old age I am he, and
even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear, even
I will carry, and will deliver you’ (Isa. 46. 3, 4). So that as God bade
Israel to remember ‘from Shittim unto Gilgal that ye may know the
righteousness of the Lord’ (Micah 6. 5), so would I persuade you,
reader, to record the ways of Providence, from first to last,
throughout your whole course to this day, that you may see what a
God He has been to you.
The seasonableness and opportuneness of its provisions for them,
for so runs the promise: ‘When the poor and needy seek water, and
there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear
them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them’ (Isa. 41. 17), and so
has the performance of it been. And this has been made good to
distressed saints sometimes in a more ordinary way, God secretly
blessing a little, and making it sufficient for us and ours. Job tells us
of ‘when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle’ (29. 4), i.e., his
secret blessing is in their tabernacles. It is by reason of this that they
subsist, but it is in an unaccountable way that they do so. And
sometimes in an extraordinary way it breaks forth for their supply.
So you find the cruse and barrel fail not (2 Kings 17. 9-14).
Samuel Clarke, in the life of that painstaking and humble servant of
Christ, John Foxe, records a memorable instance of Providence, and
it is this. Towards the end of King Henry VIII’s reign he went to
London, where he quickly spent what little his friends had given him,
or he had acquired by his own diligence, and began to be in great
want. As one day he sat in Paul’s Church, spent with long fasting, his
countenance thin and his eyes hallow, after the ghastly manner of
dying men, every one shunning a spectacle of so much horror, there
came to him one whom he had never seen before, who thrust an
untold sum of money into his hand, bidding him be of good cheer
and accept that small gift in good part from his country-man; and
that he should make much of himself, for that within a few days new
hopes were at hand, and a more certain condition of livelihood.
Three days after, the duchess of Richmond sent for him to live in her
house and be tutor to the earl of Surrey’s children, then under her
care.
Isaac Ambrose, a worthy divine, whose labours have made him
acceptable to his generation, in his epistle to the Earl of Bedford,
prefixed to his Last Things, gives a pregnant instance in his own
experience. His words are these: ‘For mine own part, however, the
Lord has seen cause to give me but a poor pittance of outward things,
for which I bless His name; yet in the income thereof, I have many
times observed so much of His peculiar providence, that thereby they
have been very much sweetened, and my heart has been raised to
admire His grace. When of late, under a hard dispensation, which I
judge not meet to mention, in which I suffered conscientiously, all
streams of wonted supplies being stopped, the waters of relief for
myself and family did run low. I went to bed with some staggerings
and doubtings of the fountain’s letting out itself for our refreshing;
but ere I did awake in the morning, a letter was brought to my
bedside, which was signed by a choice friend, Mr Antony Ash, which
reported some unexpected breakings out of God’s goodness for my
comfort.’ These are some of his lines: ‘Your God, who has given you a
heart thankfully to record your experiences of His goodness, does
renew experiences for your encouragement. Now I shall report one
which will raise your spirit toward the God of your mercies.’
Whereupon he sweetly concludes: ‘One morsel of God’s provision,
especially when it comes in unexpected, and upon prayer, when
wants are most, will be more sweet to a spiritual relish than all
former enjoyments were.’
The wisdom of Providence in our provisions. And this is seen in
proportioning the quantity, not satisfying our extravagant wishes,
but answering our real needs; consulting our wants, not our
wantonness. ‘But my God shall supply all your need’ (Phil. 4. 19), and
this has exactly suited the wishes of the best and wisest men, who
desired no more at His hand. So Jacob (Gen. 28. 20) and Agur (Prov.
30. 8, 9). Wise Providence considers our condition as pilgrims and
strangers, and so allots the provision that is needful for our passage
home. It knows the mischievous influence of fulness and excess upon
most men, though sanctified, and how apt it is to make them remiss
and forgetful of God (Deut. 6. 12) so that their heart, like the moon,
suffers an eclipse when it is at the full; and so suits and orders all to
their best advantage.
The wisdom of Providence is also greatly revealed in the manner of
dispensing our portion to us. It many times allows our wants to
pinch hard, and many fears to arise, with a design to magnify the
care and love of God in the supply (Deut. 8. 3). Providence so orders
the case, that faith and prayer come between our wants and supplies,
and the goodness of God may be the more magnified in our eyes
thereby.
And now let me beg you to consider the good hand of Providence that
has provided for, and suitably supplied you and yours all your days,
and never failed you hitherto. And labour to walk suitably to your
experience of such mercies. That you may do this, let me press a few
suitable cautions upon you.
Beware that you do not forget the care and kindness of Providence
which your eyes have seen in so many fruits and experiences. It was
God’s charge against Israel ‘that they soon forgat his works’ (Ps. 106.
13). A bad heart and a slippery memory deprive men of the comfort
of many mercies, and defraud God of the glory due for them.
Do not distrust Providence in future exigencies. Thus they did:
‘Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the
streams overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for
his people?’ (Ps. 78. 20). How unreasonable and absurd are these
queries of unbelief, especially after their eyes had seen the power of
God in such extraordinary works.
Do not murmur and complain under new straits. This is a vile
temper, and yet how natural to us when wants press hard upon us!
Ah, did we but rightly understand what the demerit of sin is, we
would rather admire the bounty of God than complain of the
straithandedness of Providence. And if we did but consider that there
lies upon God no obligation of justice or gratitude to reward any of
our duties, it would cure our murmurs (Gen. 32. 10).
Do not show the least discontent at the lot and portion Providence
carves out for you. O that you would be well pleased and satisfied
with all its appointments! Say: ‘The lines are fallen unto me in
pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage’ (Ps. 16. 6). Surely that
is best for you which Providence has appointed, and one day you
yourselves will judge it so to be.
Do not neglect prayer when straits befall you. You see it is
Providence dispenses all, you live upon it; therefore apply yourselves
to God in the times of need. This is evidently included in the promise
(Isa. 41. 17) as well as expressed in the command (Phil. 4. 6).
Remember God, and He will not forget you.
Do not worry your hearts with sinful cares. ‘Behold the fowls of the
air’ (Matt. 6. 26), says Christ; not the fowls at the door that are daily
fed by hand, but those of the air, that do not know where the next
meal is coming from; and yet God provides for them. Remember
your relation to Christ, and His engagements by promise to you, and
by these things work your hearts to satisfaction and contentment
with all the allotments of Providence.
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Post by Admin on Feb 8, 2024 16:55:40 GMT -5
Chapter 6: Preservation of the Saints
from Evil
A further great advantage and mercy the saints receive from the hand
of Providence is in their preservation from the snares and
temptations of sin, by its preventing care over them. That Providence
wards off many a deadly stroke of temptation and many a mortal
thrust which Satan makes at our souls is a truth as manifest as the
light that shines. This is included in that promise: God ‘will with the
temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it’
(1 Cor. 10. 13). Providence gives an outlet for the soul’s escape when
it is shut up in the dangerous straits of temptation. There are two
eminent ways by which the force and efficacy of temptation is broken
in believers. One is by the operation of internal grace. ‘The flesh
lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; so that ye
cannot do the things that ye would’ (Gal. 5. 17), i.e., sanctification
gives sin a miscarrying womb after it has conceived in the soul. The
other way is by the external working of Providence; and of this I
intend to speak here.
The Providence of God is the great barrier and hindrance to a world
of sin, which otherwise would break forth like an overflowing flood
from our corrupt natures. It prevents abundance of sin, which
otherwise wicked men would commit (Gen. 19. 11). The Sodomites
were greedily pursuing their lusts; God providentially hinders it by
smiting them blind. Jeroboam intends to smite the prophet;
Providence interposed and withered his arm (1 Kings 13. 4). Thus
you see, when wicked men have contrived and are ready to execute
their wickedness, Providence claps on its manacles ‘so that their
hands cannot perform their enterprise’ (Job 5. 12).
And so much corruption there remains in good men that they would
certainly plunge themselves under much more guilt than they do if
Providence did not take greater care of them than they do of
themselves. For though they make conscience of keeping themselves,
and daily watch their hearts and ways, yet such is the deceitfulness of
sin that if Providence did not lay blocks in their way, it would, more
frequently than it does, entangle and defile them. And this it does in
several ways.
Sometimes by stirring up others to interpose with seasonable
counsels, which effectually dissuade them from prosecuting an evil
design. Thus Abigail meets David in the nick of time, and dissuades
him from his evil purpose (1 Sam. 25. 34).
And I find it recorded, as on another account was noted before, of
that holy man Mr Dod, that being late at night in his study, he was
strongly moved, though at an unseasonable hour, to visit a
gentleman of his acquaintance. Not knowing what might be the
design of Providence in this, he obeyed and went. When he came to
the house, after a few knocks on the door, the gentleman himself
came to him and asked him whether he had any business with him.
Mr Dod answered, No; but that he could not be quiet till he had seen
him. O, Sir, replied the gentleman, you are sent of God at this hour,
for just now (and with that takes the halter out of his pocket) I was
going to destroy myself. And thus was the mischief prevented.
Sometimes by hindering the means and instruments, whereby the
evil itself is prevented. Thus, when good Jehoshaphat had joined
himself with that wicked King Ahaziah to build ships at Ezion-gaber
to go to Tarshish, God prevents the design by breaking the ships with
a storm (2 Chron. 20. 35-37).
We find also in the life of Mr Bolton, written by Mr Bagshaw, that
while he was in Oxford he had familiar acquaintance with Mr
Anderton, a good scholar, but a strong papist, who knowing Mr
Bolton’s natural gifts, and perceiving that he was in some outward
need, took this advantage and used many arguments to persuade
him to be reconciled to the Church of Rome, and to go over with him
to the English seminary, assuring him he should be furnished with
all necessities and have gold enough. Mr Bolton being at that time
poor in mind and purse, accepted the invitation, and a day and place
was appointed in Lancashire, where they should meet and take
shipping and be gone. But Mr Anderton did not come, and so he
escaped the snare.
Sometimes by laying some strong affliction upon the body, to
prevent a worse evil. And this is the meaning of: ‘I will hedge up thy
way with thorns’ (Hos. 2. 6). Thus Basil was a long time exercised
with a violent headache which he observed was used by Providence
to prevent lust. Paul had a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan
sent to buffet him; and this affliction, whatever it was, was ordained
to prevent pride in him (2 Cor. 12. 7).
Sometimes sin is prevented in the saints by the better information of
their minds at the sacred oracles of God. Thus, when sinful motions
began to rise in Asaph’s mind, from the prosperity of the wicked and
his own afflicted state, and grew to such a height that he began to
think all he had done in the way of religion was little better than lost
labour, he is set right again, and the temptation dissolved, by going
into the sanctuary, where God showed him how to take new
measures of persons and things, to judge them by their ends and
issues, not their present appearances (Ps. 73. 12, 13, 17).
And sometimes the Providence of God prevents the sins of His
people by removing them out of the way of temptations by death. In
this sense we may understand that text: ‘The righteous is taken away
from the evil to come’ (Isa. 57. 1), the evil of sin as well as sufferings.
When the Lord sees His people low-spirited and not able to grapple
with strong trials and temptations which are drawing on, it is for
them a merciful Providence to be released by death and set out of
harm’s way.
Now consider and admire the Providence of God, O ye saints, who
has had more care of your souls than ever you had of them. Had not
the Providence of God thus wrought for you in a way of prevention, it
may be you had this day been so many Magor Missabibs.6 How was
the heart of David melted under that preventing providence
aforementioned (1 Sam. 25. 32-34). He blesses the Lord, the
instrument and that counsel by which his soul was preserved from
sin. Do but seriously think of a few particulars about this case.
Think how your corrupt natures have often impetuously hurried you
on towards sin, so that all the inherent grace you had could not
withstand its force, if Providence had not prevented it in some such
way as you have heard. ‘But every man is tempted when he is drawn
away of his own lust, and enticed’ (James 1. 14). You found
yourselves but feathers in the wind of temptation.
How near you have been brought to the brink of sin, and yet saved by
a merciful hand of Providence. May you not say with one: ‘I was
almost in all evil’ (Prov. 5. 14), and ‘My feet were almost gone; my
steps had well nigh slipped’ (Ps. 73. 2). O merciful Providence that
stepped in so opportunely to your relief!
How many have been allowed to fall by the hand of temptations, to
the reproach of religion and wounding of their own consciences, so
far that they have never recovered their former peace again, but lived
in the world devoid of comfort to their dying day!
How woeful your case had been if the Lord had not mercifully saved
you from many thousand temptations that have assaulted you! I tell
you, you cannot estimate the mercies you possess by means of such
providences. Are your names sweet, and your consciences peaceful,
two mercies as dear to you as your two eyes? Why surely you owe
them, if not wholly yet in great measure, to the aids and assistances
Providence has given you all along the way you have passed through
the dangerous tempting world to this day.
Walk therefore suitably to this obligation of Providence also. And see
that you thankfully own it. Do not impute your escapes from sin to
accidents, or to your own watchfulness or wisdom.
See also that you do not tempt Providence on the other hand, by an
irregular reliance upon its care over you, without taking all due care
of yourselves. ‘Keep yourselves in the love of God’ (Jude 21); ‘Keep
thy heart with all diligence’ (Prov. 4. 23). Though Providence keep
you, yet it is in the way of your duty.
Thus you see what care Providence has had over your souls in
preventing the spiritual dangers and miseries that otherwise would
have befallen you in the way of temptations.
In the next place I will show you that it has been no less concerned
about your bodies, and with great tenderness it has carried them in
its arms through innumerable hazards and dangers also. ‘He that
keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep’ (Ps. 121. 4); ‘He is the
preserver of men’ (Job 7. 20). To display the glory of this Providence
before you, let us take into consideration the perils into which the
best of men sometimes fall, and the ways and means by which
Providence preserves them in those dangers.
There are many hazards into which we are often cast in this world.
The Apostle Paul gives us a general account of his dangers (2 Cor. 11.
26), and how great a wonder is it that our life has not been
extinguished in some of those dangers we have been in!
Have not some of us fallen, and that often, into very dangerous
sicknesses and diseases, in which we have approached to the very
brink of the grave (Job 33. 18, 21, 28), and have or might have said
with Hezekiah: ‘I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the
gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my hears’ (Isa. 38.
10)? Have we not often had the sentence of death in ourselves? and
our bodies at that time been like a leaky ship in a storm, as one7
aptly resembles it, that has taken in water on every side, till it was
ready to sink? Yet has God preserved, repaired and launched us out
again as well as ever. O what a wonder is it that such a crazy body
should be preserved so many years, and survive so many dangers!
Surely it is not more wonderful to see a Venice-glass8 pass from
hand to hand in continual use for forty or fifty years, and still to
remain whole, notwithstanding the many knocks and falls it has had.
If you enjoy health, or recover from sicknesses, it is because he puts
‘none of these diseases upon thee,’ or because he is ‘the Lord that
healeth thee’ (Exod. 15. 16).
How many deadly dangers has His hand resued some of you from in
those years of confusion and public calamity when the sword was
bathed in blood and made horrid slaughter, when, it may be, your
lives were often given you for a prey! This David put a special remark
upon: ‘O God the Lord, the strength of my salvation: thou hast
covered my head in the day of battle’ (Ps. 140. 7).
Beza, being in France in the first Civil War and there tossed up and
down for two and twenty months, recorded six hundred deliverances
from danger in that space, for which he solemnly gave God thanks in
his last testament. If the sword did not destroy you, it was because
God did not give it a commission to do so.
Many of you have seen wonders of salvation upon the deeps, where
the hand of God has been signally stretched forth for your rescue and
deliverance. This is elegantly expressed in Psalm 107. 23-27 (which I
have elsewhere9 expounded at large), concerning which you may say
in a proper sense what the Psalmist says metaphorically: ‘If it had
not been the Lord who was on our side, then the waters had
overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul’ (Ps. 124. 1, 4).
To see men that have spent so many years upon the seas,10 where
your lives have continually hung in suspense before you, attain to
your hears, when you could neither be reckoned among the living or
the dead, as seamen are not, O what cause have you to adore your
great Preserver! Many thousands of your companions are gone
down, and you are yet here to praise the Lord among the living. You
have bordered nearer to eternity all your days than others, and often
been in eminent perils upon the seas. Surely these and so many
salvations call aloud to you for most thankful acknowledgments.
What innumerable hazards and accidents, the least of which have cut
off others, has God carried us all through! I think I may safely say
your privative and positive mercies of this kind are more in number
than the hairs of your heads. Many thousands of these dangers we
never saw, nor were made particularly aware of, but though we did
not see them, our God did, and brought us out of danger before He
brought us into fear. Some have been evident to us, and those so
remarkable that we cannot think or speak of them to this day, but
our souls are freshly affected with those mercies.
It is recorded of our famous Jewel,11 that about the beginning of
Queen Mary’s reign, the inquisition taking hold of him in Oxford, he
fled to London by night; but providentially losing the road, he
escaped the inquisitors who pursued him. However, he fell that night
into another imminent hazard of life, for wandering up and down in
the snow, he fainted and lay starving in the way, panting and
labouring for life, at which time Latimer’s servant found and saved
him.
It would be easy to multiply examples of this kind; histories about
with them. But I think there are few of us but are furnished out of
our own experience abundantly; so that I shall rather choose to press
home the sense of these providences upon you, in order that you may
make a suitable return to the God of your mercies for them, than add
more instances of this kind. To this purpose I desire you seriously to
weigh the following particulars.
Consider what you owe to Providence for your protection, by which
your life has been protracted unto this day, with the usefulness and
comfort thereof. Look around in the world, and you may daily see
some in every place who are objects of pity, bereaved by sad
accidents of all the comforts of life, while in the meantime
Providence has tenderly preserved you. ‘He keepeth all his bones, not
one of them is broken’ (Ps. 34. 20). Is the elegant and comely
structure of your body unspoiled, your members not deformed, or
made so many seats of torment, neither the usefulness of any part
deprived? Why, this is because Providence never left its hold of you
since you came out of the womb, but with a watchful eye and tender
hand has guarded you in every place, and kept you as its charge.
Consider how every member which has been so tenderly kept, has
nevertheless been an instrument of sin against the Lord; and that
not only in the days of your unregeneracy, when you yielded ‘your
members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin’ (Rom. 6. 13),
but even since you gave them up in covenant unto the Lord as
dedicated instruments to His service; and yet how tender has
Providence been over them! You have often provoked Him to afflict
you in every part, and lay penal evil upon every member that has
been instrumental in moral evil. But O, how great have His
compassions been towards you, and His patience how wonderful!
Consider what is the aim of Providence in all the tender care it has
manifested for you. Why does it protect you so assiduously, and
suffer no evil to befall you? Is it not that you should employ your
bodies for God, and cheerfully apply yourselves to that service He
has called you to? Doubtless this is the end and goal of these mercies;
or else to what purpose are they afforded you? Your bodies are a part
of Christ’s purchase, as well as your souls (1 Cor. 6. 19). They are
committed to the charge and tutelage of angels (Heb. 1. 14), who
have performed many services for them. They are dedicated by
yourselves to the Lord, and that upon the highest account (Rom. 12.
1). They have already been the subjects of many mercies in this world
(Ps. 35. 10), and shall partake of singular glory and happiness in the
world to come (Phil. 3. 21). And shall they not then be employed, yea,
cheerfully worn out, in His service? How reasonable it is they should
be so! Why are they so tenderly preserved by God, if they must not be
used for God?
Footnotes
6See Jer. 20. 3-4.
7T. Goodwin in his Aggravation of Sin against Mercy.
8A glass cup or goblet or rare purity and extreme sensitiveness.
9See The Seaman's Companion.
10A large proportion of Flavel's congregation at Dartmouth would
consist of seafaring people.
11John Jewel (1522-71), Bishop of Salisbury and author of the
famous Apology of the Church of England
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Post by Admin on Feb 8, 2024 16:57:15 GMT -5
Chapter 7: The Work of Sanctification
There is an eminent favour Providence bestows on the saints, which
has not yet been considered, and indeed is too little minded by us,
and that is the aid and assistance it gives the people of God in the
great work of mortification.
Mortification of our sinful affections and passions is one half of our
sanctification: ‘dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God’ (Rom. 6.
11). It is the great evidence of our interest in Christ (Rom. 6. 5-9; Gal.
5. 24). It is our safety in the hour of temptation. The corruptions in
the world are through lust (2 Peter 1. 4). Our instrumental fitness for
service depends much upon it (John 15. 2; 2 Tim. 2. 21). How great a
service to our souls therefore must that be, by which this blessed
work is carried on in them!
Now there are two means or instruments employed in this work. The
Spirit, who effects it internally (Rom. 8. 13), and Providence, which
assists it externally. The Spirit indeed is the principal agent, upon
whose operation the success of this work depends, and all the
providences in the world can never effect it without Him. But they
are secondary and subordinate means, which, by the blessing of the
Spirit upon them, have a great part in the work. How they are so
serviceable to this end and purpose, I shall now explain.
The most wise God orders the dispensations of Providence in a
blessed subordination to the work of His Spirit. There is a sweet
harmony between them in their distinct workings. They all meet in
that one blessed issue to which God has by the counsel of His will
directed them (Rom. 8. 28; Eph. 1. 11). Hence it is that the Spirit is
said to be in, and to order the motions of the wheels of Providence
(Ezek. 1. 20), and so they move together by consent. Now one great
part of the Spirit’s internal work being to destroy sin in the people of
God, see how conformable to His design external providences are
steered and ordered in the following particulars.
There is in all the regenerate a strong propensity and inclination to
sin, and in that lies a principal part of the power of sin. Of this Paul
sadly complains: ‘But I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law
of sin which is in my members’ (Rom. 7. 23): and every believer daily
finds it to his grief. O, it is hard to forbear those things that grieve
God. God has made a hedge about us, and fenced us against sin by
His laws; but there is a proneness in nature to break over the hedge,
and that against the very opposition of the Spirit of God in us. Now
see in this case the concurrence and assistance of Providence for the
prevention of sin. As the Spirit internally resists those sinful
inclinations, so Providence externally lays bars and blocks in our way
to hinder and prevent sin (Job 33. 17-19; Hosea 2. 6; 2 Cor. 12. 7).
There is many a bodily ailment inflicted on this very score, to be a
clog to prevent sin. O bear them patiently upon this consideration.
Basil was sorely grieved with an inveterate headache; he earnestly
prayed it might be removed; God removed it. No sooner was he freed
of this clog, but he felt the inordinate motions of lust, which made
him pray for his headache again. So it might be with many of us, if
our clogs were off.
At this point it may be asked whether it is proper for a gracious spirit
to forbear sin because of the rod of affliction? He has surely higher
motives and nobler principles than these. This is the attitude of a
carnal and slavish spirit!
Indeed it is so when this is the sole or principal restraint from sin,
when a man does not abhor sin because of the intrinsic filth, but only
because of the troublesome consequences and effects. But this is
vastly different from the case of the saints under sanctified
afflictions; for as they have higher motives and nobler principles, so
they have lower and natural feelings too; and these are, in their kind
and place, very useful to them.
Besides, you must know that afflictions work in another way upon
gracious hearts to restrain them from sin, or warn them against sin,
than they do upon others. It is not so much the smart of the rod
which they feel, as the token of God’s displeasure, which frightens
and scares them. ‘Thou renewest thy witnesses against me’ (Job 10.
17), and this is that which principally affects them. ‘O Lord, rebuke
me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure’ (Ps.
6. 1). ‘O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest
thou bring me to nothing’ (Jer. 10. 24): and surely this is no low and
common argument.
Notwithstanding this double fence of God’s command and preventive
afflictions, yet sin is too hard for the best of men; their corruptions
carry them through all to sin. And when it is so, not only does the
Spirit work internally, but Providence also works externally in order
to subdue them. The ways of sin are not only made bitter to them by
the remorse of conscience, but by those afflictive rods upon the
outward man, with which God also follows it; and in both these
respects I find that text expounded: ‘Whoso breaketh an hedge, a
serpent shall bite him’ (Eccles. 10. 8). If, as some expound it, the
hedge is the law of God, then the serpent is the remorse of
conscience, and the sharp teeth of affliction, which he shall quickly
feel, if he is one that belongs to God.
The design and aim of these afflictive providences is to purge and
cleanse believers from that pollution into which temptations have
plunged them. ‘By this, therefore, shall the iniquity of Jacob be
purged, and this is all the fruit to take away his sin’ (Isa. 27. 9). To
the same purpose is that place: ‘Before I was afflicted I went astray;
but now have I kept thy word’ (Ps. 119. 67). These afflictions have the
same use and end to our souls that frosty weather has upon those
clothes that are laid out to be bleached; they alter the hue and make
them whiter, which seems to be the allusion in those words: ‘And
some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge,
and to make them white’ (Dan. 11. 35).
And here it may be queried upon what account afflictions are said to
purge away the iniquities of the saints? Is it not unwarrantable and
very dishonourable to Christ, to attribute to affliction that which is
the peculiar honour of His blood?
It is confessed that the blood of Christ is the only fountain opened for
sin, and that no afflictions, however many or strong or continual they
are, can in themselves purge away the pollution of sin, as we see in
wicked men who are afflicted, and afflicted, and again afflicted; and
yet nevertheless sinful. And the torments of hell, however extreme,
universal and continual they are, yet shall never fetch out the stain of
one sin.
But it is still true that a sanctified affliction may, in the efficacy and
virtue of Christ’s blood, produce such blessed effects upon the soul.
Though a cross without a Christ never did any man any good, yet
thousands have been indebted to the cross, as it has wrought in the
virtue of His death for their good. And this is the case with those
souls that this discourse is concerned about.
We find the best hearts, if God bestow any comfortable enjoyment
upon them, too apt to be over-heated in their affections towards it,
and to be too much taken up with these outward comforts. This also
shows the great power and strength of corruption in the people of
God, and must by some means or other be mortified in them.
This was the case of Hezekiah whose heart was too much set upon
his treasures; so that he could not hide a vainglorious disposition
(Isa. 39. 2). Likewise good David (Ps. 30. 7) thought his mountain,
that is, his kingdom and the splendour and glory of his present state,
had stood so fast that it should never be moved.
How the same good man set his heart and affections upon his
beautiful son Absalom appears by the doleful lamentation he made at
his death, prizing him above his own life, which was a thousand
times more worth than he.
So Jonah, when God raised up a gourd for him to shelter him from
the sun, how excessively was he taken with it, and was exceedingly
glad of it!
But will God allow things to lie thus? Shall the creature purloin and
draw away our affections from Him? No, this is our corruption, and
God will purge it. And to this end He sends forth Providence to smite
those creatures on which our affections are either inordinately or
excessively set, or else to turn them into rods, and smite us with
them.
Is Hezekiah too much puffed up with his full exchequer? Why, those
very Babylonians to whom he boasted of it, shall empty it and make a
prey of it (Isa. 39. 6).
Is David hugging himself in a fond conceit of the stability of his
earthly splendour? Lo! how soon God beclouds all (Ps. 30. 7). Is
Absalom doted on, and crept too far into his good father’s heart?
This shall be the son of his sorrow, that shall seek after his father’s
life.
Is Jonah so carried away with his gourd? God will prepare a worm to
smite it (4. 6, 7).
How many husbands, wives and children has Providence smitten for
this very reason! It might have spared them longer, if they had been
loved more regularly and moderately. This has blasted many an
estate and hopeful project; and it is a merciful dispensation for our
good.
The strength of our unmortified corruption shows itself in our pride
and the swelling vanity of our hearts when we have a name and
esteem among men. When we are applauded and honoured, when we
are admired for any gift or excellence that is in us, this draws forth
the pride of the heart and shows the vanity that is in it. ‘As the fining
pot for silver, and the furnace for gold; so is a man to his praise’
(Prov. 27. 21); i.e., as the furnace will reveal what dross is in the
metal when it is melted, so will praise and commendations reveal
what pride is in the heart of him that receives them. This made a
good man say: ‘He that praises me, wounds me.’ And, which is more
strange, this corruption may be felt in the heart, even when the last
breath is ready to expire. It was the saying of one of the German
divines, when those about him recounted for his encouragement the
many services he had done for God, ‘Take away the fire, for there is
still the chaff of pride in me.’ To crucify this corruption Providence
takes off the bridle of restraint from ungodly men, and sometimes
permits them to traduce the names of God’s servants, as Shimei did
David’s. Yea, they shall fall into disesteem among their friends, as
Paul did among the Corinthians; and all this to keep down the
swelling of their spirits at the realization of those excellences that are
in them. The design of these providences is nothing else but to hide
pride from man. Yea, it deserves a special remark, that when some
good men have been engaged in a public and eminent work, and
have therein, it may be, too much sought their own applause, God
has withheld His usual assistance at such times from them, and
caused them so to falter in their work, that they have come off with
shame and pity at such times, however ready and prepared they have
been at other times. It would be easy to give various remarkable
examples to confirm this observation, but I pass on.
The corruption of the heart shows itself in raising up great
expectations to ourselves from the creature, and planning abundance
of felicity and contentment from some promising and hopeful
enjoyments we have in the world. This we find to have been the case
of holy Job in the days of his prosperity: ‘Then I said, I shall die in
my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand’ (29. 18). But how
soon were all these expectations dashed by a gloomy Providence, that
benighted him in the noontide of his prosperity. And all this was for
his good, to take off his heart more fully from creature expectations.
We often find the best men over-reckon themselves in worldly
things, and overact their confidences about them. They that have
great and well-grounded expectations from heaven, may have too
great and ungrounded expectations from the earth. But when it is so,
it is very usual for Providence to undermine their earthly hopes, and
convince them by experience how vain they are. Thus, in Haggai 1. 9,
the people’s hearts were intently set upon prosperous providences,
full harvests and great increase; while in the meantime no regard was
had to the worship of God and the things of His house; therefore
Providence blasts their hopes and brings them to little.
Corruption shows itself in dependence upon creature-comforts and
tangible props. O how apt are the best of men to lean upon these
things, and stay themselves upon them! Thus did Israel stay
themselves upon Egypt, as a feeble man would lean upon his staff;
but God allowed it both to fail them and wound them (Ezek. 29. 6-7).
So for individuals, how apt are they to depend upon their tangible
supports! Thus we lean on our relations, and the inward thoughts of
our hearts are that they shall be to us so many springs of comfort to
refresh us throughout our lives; but God will show us by His
Providence our mistake and error in these things. Thus a husband is
smitten, to draw the soul of a wife nearer to God in dependence upon
Him (1 Tim. 5. 5). So for children, we are apt to say of this or that
child, as Lamech of Noah, ‘This same shall comfort us’ (Gen. 5. 29);
but the wind passes over these flowers and they are withered, to
teach us that our happiness is not bound up in these enjoyments. So
for our estates, when the world smiles upon us, and we have got a
warm nest, how do we prophesy of rest and peace in those
acquisitions, thinking, with good Baruch, great things for ourselves;
but Providence by a particular or general calamity overturns our
plans (Jer. 45. 4, 5), and all this to turn our hearts from the creature
to God, who is our only rest.
Corruption shows its strength in good men by their adherence to
things below and their reluctance to go hence. This often proceeds
from the engaging enjoyments and pleasant experiences we have
here below. Providence mortifies this inclination in the saints by
killing those ensnaring comforts beforehand, making all or most of
our pleasant things to die before us. Or it embitters this world to us,
by the troubles of it, making life undesirable, through the pains and
infirmities we feel in the body, and so loosing our root for our more
easy fall by the fatal stroke.
Before I pass from this, I cannot but make a pause, and desire you
with me to stand in holy amazement and wonder at the dealings of
God with such poor worms as we are. Surely God deals familiarly
with me; His condescensions to His own clay are astonishing. All
that I shall note at present about it shall be under these three heads,
in which I find the matter of my present meditations summed up by
the Psalmist: ‘Lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him,
or the son of man that thou makest account of him!’ (144. 3). In this
Scripture you have represented the immense and transcendent
greatness of God, who is infinitely above us and all our thoughts.
‘Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the
Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou
do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is
longer than the earth, and broader than the sea’ (Job 11. 7-9). ‘The
heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him’ (2 Chron. 2. 6).
He is glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders’ (Exod.
15. 11). When the Scripture speaks of Him comparatively, see how it
expresses His greatness: ‘Behold, the nations are as the drop of a
bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he
taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient
to burn, nor the beats thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All
nations before him are as nothing; and they are accounted to him
less than nothing, and vanity (Isa. 40. 15-17). When the holiest men
have addressed Him, see with what humility and deep adoration they
have spoken of Him and to Him! ‘Who is me! for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
hosts’ (Isa. 6. 5). Nay, what respects the very angels of heaven have of
that glorious Majesty: ‘Each one had six wings; with twain he covered
his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
And one cried unto another, and said: Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of
hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory’ (verses 2 and 3).
Secondly, you have the baseness, vileness and utter unworthiness of
man, yea, the holiest and best of men, before God: ‘Verily every man
at his best state is altogether vanity’ (Ps. 39. 5). ‘Every man,’ take
where you will; and every man ‘in his best state,’ or ‘standing in his
freshest glory,’ is not only ‘vanity,’ but ‘altogether vanity,’ literally
‘every man is very vanity.’ For do but consider the best of men in
their extraction. ‘By nature the children of wrath even as others’
(Eph. 2. 3). The blood that runs in our veins is as much tainted as
theirs in hell.
Consider them in their constitution and natural disposition, and it is
no better, yea, in many there is worse disposition than in reprobates.
And though grace depose sin in them from the throne, yet, O what
offensive and God-provoking corruptions daily break out of the best
hearts.
Consider them in their outward condition, and they are inferior, for
the most part, to others. ‘I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes’ (Matt. 11. 25; cf. 1 Cor. 1. 26-28).
And now let us consider and marvel that ever this great and blessed
God should be so much concerned, as you have heard He is in all His
providences, about such vile, despicable worms as we are! He does
not need us, but is perfectly blessed and happy in Himself without
us. We can add nothing to Him: ‘Can a man be profitable unto God?’
(Job 22. 2). No, the holiest of men add nothing to Him; yet, see how
great account He makes of us. For does not His eternal electing love
show the dear account He made of us (Eph. 1. 4, 5)? How ancient,
how free, and how astonishing is this act of grace! This is that design
which all providences are in pursuit of, and will not rest till they have
executed.
Does not the gift of His only Son out of His bosom show this, that
God makes great account of this vile thing, man? Never was man so
magnified before. If David could say: ‘When I consider thy heavens,
the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast
ordained; what is man?’ (Ps. 8. 3, 4), how much more may we say,
‘When we consider Thy Son, that lay in Thy bosom, His infinite
excellence and unspeakable dearness to Thee, Lord, what is man,
that such a Christ should be delivered to death for him! for him, and
not for fallen angels (Heb. 2. 16), for him when in a state of enmity
with God (Rom. 5. 8).
Does not the assiduity of His providential care for us show His
esteem of us? ‘Lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day’ (Isa. 27.
3). ‘He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous’ (Job. 36. 7), no,
not a moment all their days; for if He did, a thousand mischiefs in
that moment would rush in upon them and ruin them.
Does not the tenderness of His providence show His esteem of us?
‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you’ (Isa. 66.
13). He comforts His own by refreshing providences, as an indulgent
mother her tender child. ‘As birds flying’ (Isa. 31. 5), viz., to their
nests when their young are in danger, so He defends His. No
parental tenderness in the creature can shadow forth the tender
affection of the Creator.
Does not the variety of the fruits of His providence show it? Our
mercies are ‘new every morning’ (cf. Ps. 40. 5; Lam. 3. 23). It is a
fountain from which do stream forth spiritual and temporal,
ordinary and extraordinary, public and personal mercies, mercies
without number.
Does not the ministry of angels in the providential kingdom show it?
‘Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them
who shall be heirs of salvation?’ (Heb. 1. 14).
Does not the providence of which this day12 calls us to celebrate the
memory, show the great regard God has for His people? O if not so,
why were we not given up ‘as a prey to their teeth?’ ‘If it had not been
the Lord who was on our side,’ then wicked men, compared to fire,
water, wild beasts, ‘had swallowed us up quick’ (Ps. 124). O blessed
be God for that teeming providence that has already brought forth
more than seventy years liberty and peace to the Church of God. I
suggest concerning this providence that you do by it as the Jews by
their Purim (Esth. 9. 27, 28), and the rather, because we seem now to
be as near danger by the same enemy as ever since that time. If such
a mercy as this is forgotten, God may say: ‘I will deliver you no more’
(Judges 10. 13).
Footnotes
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