Presence of mind to get out of a Plunge and upon the suddain to Unravel the Knots and Intricacies of a Perplexed business argues a Head and a Heart made for great things It is a kind of Ecstacy and Inspiration a Beam of Divine light darting in upon Reason and exalting it to a Pitch of Operation beyond its natural and accustomed measures and perhaps there was never any Person in the World remarkably and heroically great without some such kind of Enthusiasm that is such a mighty Principle as at certain times raised him up to strange unaccountable heights of Wit and Courage And therefore whosoever He is who in the strength of such a Spirit can look the most menacing dangers in the face and when the state of all Things about Him seems desperate can yet bear his great Heart above despair such an one for the most part makes fortune it self bend and fall down to him difficulties vanish and dangers fly before Him so much is Victory the Claim of the Valiant and success the Birth-right of the Bold And this is the second way by which Providence gives Salvation unto Kings 3. God saves and delivers Soveraign Princes by disposing of Events and Accidents in a strange Concurrence for their Advantage and preservation Nothing indeed is or can be properly Accidental to God but Accidents are so called in respect of the Intention or Expectation of second Causes when things fall out beside their Knowledge or design And there is nothing in which Providence so much Triumphs over and as I may so say laughs at the Profoundest Wisdom of Men as in the stable certain Knowledge and disposal of all Casual Events In respect of which the Clearest mortal Intellect is wholly in the Dark And upon this Account as loose as these Events seem to hang upon one another yet they are all knit and linked together in a firm Chain and the highest link of that Chain as the Poets speak most truely and Philosophically though in a fable is fastened to Iupiter's Chair that is it is held and managed by an Unerring Providence the Chain indeed may wave and shake this way and that way but still the hand that holds it is steady and the Eye that Guides it Infallible Now nothing has so Powerful an Influence upon the great Turns of Affairs and the Lives and Fortunes of great Persons as the little unobserved unprojected Events of things For could any thing be greater than the Preservation of a great Prince and his next Heir to the Crown together with his Nobles and the Chief of his Clergy from certain imminent and prepared destruction And was not all this effected by a pityful small Accident in the mistake of the superscription of a Letter Did not the oversight of one syllable preserve a Church and a State too And might it not be truly said of that Contemptible Paper that it did Caesarem vehere fortunam Caesaris and that the Fate of three Kingdoms was wrapt and sealed up in it A little Error of the Eye a misguidance of the hand a slip of the foot a starting of an Horse a suddain mist or a great shower or a Word undesignedly cast forth in an Army has turned the stream of Victory from one side to another and thereby disposed of the fortune of Empires and whole Nations No Prince ever returns safe out of a Battle but may remember how many Blows and Bullets have gone by Him that might as Easily have gone through Him and by what little odd unforeseeable Chances Death has been turned aside which seemed in a full ready and direct Career to have been posting to him All which Passages if we do not acknowledge to have been Guided to their Respective Ends and Effects by the Conduct of a Superior and a Divine Hand we do by the same Assertion Casheir all Providence strip the Almighty of his Noblest Prerogative and make God not the Governour but the meer Spectator of the World And thus much for the third way The Fourth By which God saves and delivers Sovereign Princes is by wonderfully inclining the Hearts and Wills of Men to a Benign Affection towards them Hearts and Wills are things that Princes themselves cannot Command and yet the only Things in the strength of which they do Command For the Heart is the grand spring of Action and He who governs that part does by Consequence Command the whole But now this is the incommunicable Prerogative of God who and who only can either by Power or by Knowledge reach the Heart For as it is said Prov. 21.1 That the Heart of the King is in God's hand and that as the Rivers of Water He turneth it which way soever He will So are the hearts of the People too which like a mighty stream or Torrent He turns this way or that way according to the Wise Counsels of his Providence For if He intends to advance a Prince they shall be a stream to bear Him up from sinking if to forsake or ruin a Prince they shall overflow and swell and rush in upon Him with such a furious ungoverned Tide as no Power or Arts of State shall be able to divert or to withstand God can turn the Hearts of a Nation suddainly and Irresistibly He has done so more than once or twice and may do so again Thus for instance when David fled before Absalom and was forced to leave the Royal City it was the General Affection of his People God touching their Hearts which brought Him back and Resettled Him in his Throne so that in 2 Sam. 19.14 it is said of Him That he bowed the Hearts of all the Men of Judah even as the Heart of one Man so that they sent this word unto the King Return thou and all thy servants And just such another message did the Lords and Commons of England send our Banished David in the Year Sixty For what was it else which so gloriously restored the King Plots were nothing and Foreign Assistance less than nothing It was an Universal Invincible Current of the Peoples Wills and Affections that bore down all those Mountains of Opposition which so many Years had been raising up against Him and at length in spight of Guilt and Malice brought Him in free and unshackled absolute and victorious over the Heads of his Armed Enemies It was his Peoples Hearts which made their Hands useless to his Restoration On the other side when the greatest part of the Kingdom was rent from the House of David and Transferred to Ieroboam in 1 Kings 12.14 the Prophet expresly tells them That this thing was from God that is He by a secret over-ruling Energy upon the Hearts and Affections of the People took them off from one and enclined and carried them over to the other And it is often by this alone that the Great Lord of Lords and Controuler of Monarchs putteth down one and setteth up another He can raise Armies of Hearts to drive any King
a violent Flame cannot presently melt down a constant though a gentle heat will at length exhale It is our known Duty to fight and resist the Devil and we shall find that scarce any Temptation ever encounters the Soul without its second So then you see here the First Cause of this great Overthrow namely The Assault and Impression made from without by the Tempter which in the next place is rendred Effectual by the Impotence and Non-resistance of the Soul that is so opposed which peculiarly answers his threefold Opposition with three Contrary Qualifications First As First That it is frequently unprepared The Soul God knows is but seldom upon the Watch It s Spiritual Armour is seldom buckled on The Business the Cares and the Pleasures of the World draw it off from its own defence Business imploys Care distracts and Pleasure lulls it asleep And is this a Posture to receive an Enemy in An Enemy Cunning Watchful and Malicious An Enemy who never sleeps nor loyters nor overlooks an advantage Secondly As it is unprepared so it is also weak and feeble The Spirit says our Saviour is willing but the Flesh is weak And such is the Condition of Man in this World that much more of Flesh than Spirit goes to his Constitution Nay is not Grace it self described under the Weakness of smoaking Flax or a bruised Reed Of which how quickly is one Extinguished and how easily is the other broke Thirdly As it is both unprepared and weak so it is also inconstant Peter will die for his Master at one time and not many Hours after deny and forswear Him Steadfastness is the Result of strength and how then can Constancy dwell with weakness The greatest strength of the mind is in its Resolutions and yet how often do they Change Even in the weightiest concerns Men too frequently put them on and off with their Cloaths They deceive when they are most trusted suddainly starting and flying in pieces like a broken bow and like a bow again even when strongest they can hardly be kept always Bent. We see what fair and promising beginings some made Luke 8.13 They heard the Word they received it with joy but having not Root they believed only for a while and so in Time of Temptation fell away Constancy is the Crowning Vertue Matth. 10.22 He who endureth to the End shall be saved But then Constancy and Perseverance are the gift of God and above the Production of meer Nature it being no small Paradox to imagine that where the stock it self is slight and infirm any thing which grows out of it should be strong And thus having shewn the Threefold Impotence of the Soul answerable to the Threefold Opposition made against it by the Devil What can we conclude But that where Vnpreparedness is encountred with unexpected Force Weakness with Violence Inconstancy with Importunity there Destruction must needs be not the Effect of Chance but Nature and by the closest connexion of Causes unavoidable It now remains that in the Last place we shew wherein the Greatness of this fall consists The House fell and great was the Fall thereof In short it may appear upon these two accounts First That it is scandalous and diffuses a Contagion to others and a blot upon Religion A falling House is a bad Neighbour It is the Property of Evil as well as of Good to be Communicative We still suppose the Building here mentioned in the Text to have had all the Advantages of visible Representment all the Pomp and Flourish of external Ornament a Stately superstructure and a Beautyful appearance and therefore such an one must needs Perish as remarkably as it stood That which is seen afar off while it stands is heard of much further when it Falls An Eminent Professor is the concern of a Whole Profession As to Non-plus an Aristotle would look not only like a Slur to a particular Philosopher but like a Baffle to Philosophy it self The Devil will let a Man build and Practice high that he may at length fetch him down with the greater shame and so make even a Christian an Argument against Christianity The subduing of any soul is a Conquest but of such an One a Triumph A signal Professor cannot Perish without a Train and in his very Destruction his Example is Authentick Secondly The Greatness of the Fall here spoken of appears also in this That such an One is hardly and very rarely recovered He whose House falls has not usually either Riches or Heart to build Another It is the Business of a Life once to build God indeed can cement the Ruins and heal the Breaches of an Apostate Soul but usually a shipwrack'd Faith and a defloured Conscience admit of no Repair Like the Present time which when once gone never returns What may be within the Compass of Omnipotence the Secret of a Decree or the Unlimited Strains of Extraordinary Grace is not here disputed But as it would be Arrogance for us Men to define the Power of Grace so it is the Height of Spiritual Prudence to observe its Methods And upon such Observation we shall find that the Recovery of such Apostates is not the Custom but the Prerogative of Mercy A Man is ruin'd but once A miscarriage in the New-Birth is dangerous and very Fatal it generally proves to pass the Critical Seasons of a defeated Conversion And thus I have at length dispatched what 〈◊〉 at first proposed Now the Words themselves being as I said before Christ's application of His Own Sermon cannot be improved into a Better and consequently need not into Another except what their own natural Consequence does suggest and that is What our Saviour Himself intimates elsewhere Namely That he who is about to build would first sit down and consider what it is like to cost him For building is Chargeable especially if a Man lays out his Money like a Fool Would a Man build for Eternity that is in other words Would he be Saved Let him consider with himself what charges he is willing to be at that he may be so Nothing under an Universal sincere Obedience to all the Precepts of the Gospel can entitle him to the Benefits of it and thus far and deep he must go if he will lay his Foundation true It is in hard and a Rocky work I confess but the difficulty of laying it will be abundantly recompenced by the Firmness of it when it is laid But it is a sad and mortifying Consideration to think upon what false and sinking Grounds or rather upon what Whirlepools and Quicksands many venture to build Some you shall have amusing their Consciences with a set of Phantastical New-Coin'd Phrases such as Laying hold on Christ getting into Christ and rolling themselves upon Christ and the like by which if they mean any Thing else but obeying the Precepts of Christ and a Rational hope of Salvation thereupon which it is certain that generally they do not mean it is all but
why Christ's sufferings could not be Penal since Punishment in the very Nature and Essence of it imports a Relation to Sin To this I answer That Punishment does indeed import an Essential Relation to Sin but not of Necessity to the Sin of the Person upon whom it is inflicted as might be evinced by innumerable Instances as well as undeniable reasons If it be replyed that God has declared that the Soul that Sins shall die I answer That this is only a Positive Law according to which God declares he will proceed in the ordinary course of his Providence but it is not of Natural and Eternal Obligation so as Universally to bind God in all cases but that he may when he Pleases deal otherwise with his Creature But this will receive further light from the Discussion of the third and last General head to which we now proceed Namely 3. The ground and Cause of this suffering which was God's Propriety in and relation to the Persons for whom Christ suffered specified in these words My People For the Transgression of my People was He stricken If it be here asked upon what account the Persons here spoken of were denominated and made God's People I answer that they were so by an Eternal Covenant and Transaction between the Father and the Son by which the Father upon certain Conditions to be performed by the Son consigned over some Persons to him to be His People For our better understanding of which we are to observe that the business of Man's Redemption proceeds upon a two-fold Covenant First An Eternal Covenant made between the Father and the Son by which the Father agreed to give both Grace and Glory to a certain Number of Sinners upon Condition that Christ would assume their Nature and pay down such a Ransom to his Justice as should both satisfy for their Sin and withal Merit such a measure of Grace as should effectually Work in them all things necessary to their Salvation And this Covenant may be properly called a Covenant of suretiship or Redemption Upon which alone and not upon any Covenant made between God and Men in their own Persons is built the Infallibility of the future Believing Repenting and finally Persevering of such as Christ from all Eternity undertook to make his People Secondly The other is a Covenant made in time and actually enter'd into by God and Men by which God on his part Promises to Men Eternal Salvation upon Condition of Faith and Repentance on Theirs And this is called in Scripture the second Covenant or the Covenant of Grace and stands opposed to that which is there called the First Covenant or the Covenant of Works Now by that Eternal Compact or Transaction between the Father and the Son of which alone we now speak was this Donation of a certain determinate number of Persons made to Christ to be his People by virtue of which Agreement or Transaction he was in the fullness of time to suffer for them and to accomplish the whole Word of their Redemption from first to last For to affirm that Christ dyed only to verify a Proposition That whosoever believed should be saved but in the mean time to leave the whole issue of things in reference to Persons so loose and undetermined That it was a Question whether ever any one should actually believe and very possible that none ever might and consequently that after Christ had suffered had been stricken and dyed for Transgression yet for any thing that he had done in all this he might never have had a People this certainly is a strange and new Gospel and such as the Doctrine of our Church seems utterly unacquainted with Having thus shewn the Foundation upon which the Persons here spoken of are called by the Prophet God's People Namely An Eternal Covenant in which God the Father and the Son mutually agreed upon the Terms of their Redemption We are now to observe that the same Thing that thus denominates and makes them God's People makes them under the same Relation to belong also to Christ and that not only upon the Account of his Nature that he was God but chiefly of his Office that he was their Mediator which capacity made him equally concerned in that Eternal Covenant He accepting and agreeing to those Terms that were proposed and offered him by the Father By His Acceptance of which he became both a Mystical head and a Surety to those for whom he so undertook And this Relation of his to them was the Cause why he both might be and actually was stricken by God for their Transgression without any Violation of the Divine Justice notwithstanding the perfect Innocence of his Person For to render it just to inflict a Punishment upon an Innocent Person instead of another either of these two Causes are sufficient First An intimate Conjunction between those Persons and that either Natural as between Father and Son or Political as between King and People and the like Or Secondly The Voluntary Consent and Will of an Innocent Person to undergo the Punishment due to the Nocent as it is between a Man and his Surety Accordingly from that Covenant by which the Father made over a certain number of Persons to the Son to be His People there arose this twofold Relation of Christ to them 1. Of a King to his People or of a Mystical Head to his Members so that Legally and Politically they suffered as really in Christ as the whole body suffers when the head is wounded or struck through with a dart 2. The other Relation is of a Surety so that the Satisfaction paid down by Christ to God's Justice for Sin is in estimation of Law as really accounted to be paid down by the Saints as if they had paid it in their own Persons And this is a further and withall a full answer to that objection formerly hinted from the Innocence of Christ's Person as if it rendered him uncapable of Punishment For his own free voluntary consent to be a Surety for Sinners and responsible for all that Divine Justice could charge them with Transferred the guilt and obligation from their Persons to his Own In a word the Compact between Christ and his Father made him a King a Mystical Head and also a Surety to some certain Persons and his being so made them His People and their being his People did upon that account make it both just and equitable for him to suffer and to be stricken for their Transgression which is the result of the Text and the Thing undertook by us to be proved I have now finished the several things proposed from the Text. In which having set before you how much Christ has suffered and all for our sakes I hope it will kindle the Workings of a pious Ingenuity in every one of our Breasts For I am sure if Christ's suffering for us were the Doctrine Gratitude should make our Readiness to suffer for Him the Application Christianity I shew was
exhibits himself to the Sons of Men is that he is King of Kings and that the Governours of the Earth are his Subjects Princes and Emperours his Vassals and Thrones his Footstools and Consequently that there is no Absolute Monarch in the World but One. And from the same also it follows that there is nothing which Subjects can justly expect from their Prince but Princes may expect from God And nothing which Princes Demand from their Subjects but God in a higher manner and by a better Claim requires from them Now the Relation between Prince and Subject essentially involves in it these two things First Obedience from the subject to all the Laws and just Commands of his Prince And accordingly as Kings themselves have a Soveraign over them so they have Laws over them too Laws which lay the same obligation upon Crowned heads that they do upon the meanest Peasant For no Prerogative can bar Piety No Man is too Great to be bound to be good He who weilds the Scepter and shines in the Throne has a great Account to make and a great Master to make it to And there is no Man sent into the World to Rule who is not sent also to Obey Secondly The other thing imported in this Relation is Protection Vouchsafed from the Soveraign to the subject Upon which account it is that as God with one hand gives a Law so with the other he Defends the Obedient And this is the highest Prerogative of Worldly Empire and the brightest Jewel in the Diadems of Princes that by being Gods immediate Subjects they are His immediate Care and intituled to his more Especial Protection that they have both an Omniscience in a peculiar manner to wake over them and an Omnipotence to support them And that they are not the Legions which they Command but the God whom they Obey who must both guard their Persons and secure their Regalia For it is He and He only who giveth Salvation unto Kings The Words of the Text with a little Variation run naturally into this one Proposition which containing in it the full sence of them shall be the subject of our following Discourse viz. That God in the Government of the World exercises a peculiar and extraordinary Providence over the Persons and Lives of Princes The Prosecution of which Proposition shall lie in these four things First To shew upon what account any Act of God's Providence may be said to be peculiar and extraordinary Secondly To shew how and by what means God does after such an extraordinary manner save and deliver Princes Thirdly To shew the Reasons why He does so And Fourthly And Lastly To draw something by way of Inference and Conclusion from the whole Of all which in their Order And First For the first of these which is to shew upon what account any Act of God's Providence may be said to be Peculiar and Extraordinary Providence in the Government of the World acts for the most part by the mediation of second Causes which though they proceed according to a Principle of Nature and a settled Course and Tenour of Acting supposing still the same Circumstances yet Providence acting by them may in several Instances of it be said to be extraordinary upon a threefold account As First When a thing falls out besides the Common and Usual Operation of its proper Cause As for instance it is usual and natural for a Man meeting his Enemy upon full advantage to prosecute that advantage against him and by no means to let him escape Yet sometimes it falls out quite otherwise Esau had conceived a mortal Grudge and Enmity against his Brother Iacob yet as soon as he meets Him he falls upon him in a very different way from that of Enemies and embraces him Ahab having upon Conquest got Benhadad his Inveterate Enemy into his hands not only spares his Life but treats him kindly and lets him go That a Brother unprovoked should hate and a stranger not obliged should love is against the usual Actings of the Heart of Man Yet thus it was with Ioseph and no doubt with many others in which and the like cases I conceive things so falling out may be said to come to pass by an Extraordinary Act of Providence it being manifest that the Persons concerned in them do not act as Men of the same Principles and Interests under the same Circumstances use to do For Interest we say will not lye nor make a Man false to Himself whatsoever it may make him to Others Secondly Providence may be said to Act Extraordinarily when a thing falls out beside or Contrary to the Design of expert politick and shrewd Persons contriving or Acting in it As when a Man by the utmost of his Wit and Skill projects the Compassing of such or such a thing fits means to his End lays Antecedents and Consequents directly and appositely for the bringing about his Purpose but in the Issue and Result finds all broken and baffled and the Event contrary to his Intention and the order of Causes and Counsels so studiously framed by him to produce an effect opposite to and destructive of the Design driven at by those Means and Arts. In this case also I say we may rationally acknowledge an Extraordinary Act of Providence For as much as the Man himself is made instrumental to the effecting of something perfectly against his own Will and Iudgment and that by those very ways and methods which in themselves were the most proper to prevent and the most unlikely to bring to pass such an Event The World all the while standing amazed at it and the Credit of the Politician sinking for that nothing seems to cast so just a Reproach even upon Reason it self as for Persons Noted for it to act as Notably against it Thirdly and Lastly Providence may be said to act in an Extraordinary way when a thing comes to pass visibly and apparently beyond the Power of the Cause immediately imployed in it As that a Man dumb all his Life before should on the suddain speak as it is said that the Son of Craesus did upon the fight of a Murther ready to have been Committed upon the Person of his Prince and Father That a small Company should rout and scatter an Army or in the Language of Scripture that one should chase an hundred and an hundred put Ten Thousand to flight That Persons of mean parts and little or no Experience should frustrate and over-reach the Counsels of old beaten through-paced Politicians These effects I say are manifestly above the Ability and stated way of working belonging the Causes from whence they flow Nevertheless such things are sometimes seen upon the great Stage of the World to the Wonder and Astonishment of the Beholders who are wholly unable by the Common method and discourses of Reason to give a Satisfactory Account of these strange Phaenomena by resolving them into any thing Visible in their immediate Agents In which case therefore I conceive