you That from Abraham's receiving of the promise unto the birth of Isaac were five and twenty years sixty from thence to Jacobs birth and to his death which fell out presently upon their entrance into Aegypt a hundred and thirty years After which unto the death of Levi who was Vltimus Patriarcharum the last of the Patriarchs that survived and in which space the Israelites were kindly entreated for Joseph's sake were ninety four years and a hundred and one and twenty more of cruel Bondage until Moses came to deliver them from it in the Reign of Pharaoh Cencres All which particulars being gathered up together do make up the compleat sum of four hundred and thirty years and may serve to justifie God in all his sayings and to clear his Truth in the least circumstance and punctilio of time when it shall come to be judged For when once Gods appointed time is come to introduce a change either for better or worse among any people then shall every breath of wind how cross soever it seems to blow at the present yet be so far from hindring Gods work in it as that one way or other you shall find it in the sequel to contribute its help and assistance to it 3. God advances also his Glory this way in the manifestation of his Wisdom and Goodness in that he makes a sweet harmony of so many different cords and changes and frames a most admirable Order out of a seeming Disorder and Confusion Many and divers are the qualities of Herbs yet if a skilful Simpler hath the mixing of them he knows how to make of them a well-relish'd and wholsome Sallade So many were the interchangeable passages that happen'd to Joseph and had we the same it may be we should think them very confused ones but yet let the Wisdom and Goodness of God but lay them together and we shall presently find as Joseph did the close of them all in a sweet Diapason For though all things as to us are floating up and down to and again by chance as it were and accident 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Gregory Nazianzen yet if we look to the order and appointment of Gods Providence which doth always most wisely contrive all events for the good of his Children they are fixt and stable howbeit they may seem to go contrary at the present And of Gods dealing in this kind we have Job an aminent example who is to day the greatest man for Wealth and Honour in all the East and a Tablet of this is Greatness you may see in his 29 Chapter which I desire you to read over at your leisure wherein you shall find a whole series of worldly prosperity to wait upon him yet tomorrow he is poor even to a by-word and proverb As poor as Job insomuch as he spends all the next Chapter in bemoaning his suddain change beginning it with a But which though a small Monosyllable yet as the Helm of a Ship turns about the Vessel any way so doth this But turn about Job and all his former Honour and Prosperity into the extremest contempt and adversity But now says he they that are younger than I have me in derision whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my Flock and ending it with this doleful accent verse last versa est cithara mea in luctum organum in vocem flentium My harp is turned into mourning and my organ into the voice of those that weep Yet all is well we say that ends well and so it was with Job which makes Saint James say by way of support unto Gods people in their afflictions Ye have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord i. e. what good end God gave him in it for the next day God brings a great deal of Light out of this Darkness by a wise and gracious disposing of all that evil to him for the best in giving him twice as much as he had at the first and blessing his later end more than his beginning So that although for a time all those sad Changes that befell Job seem'd even to cross the ordinary course of Gods care and Providence to him yet in the conclusion you see how his Wisdom and Goodness cut them all out and made them serve to his greater Honour and Abundance And so much for the Ends or Final Causes in respect of God They follow now in respect of our selves And these are two first to confirm our Faith secondly to reform our Lives and to work out by them good to his servants First to confirm our Faith And so God brings many times great Changes into the world to try if amidst those shakings of outward things among us we will be shaken in our Faith or not That as the Apostle speaks of Heresies 1 Cor. 11.19 Oportet esse Haereses There must be Heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest so say I Opertat esse mutationes There must be Changes and these not so much in respect of the things themselves which are in their own natures liable to alteration and dissolution as in respect of Gods end in it that they which are approved and sincere in the Faith may be manifested to be so by their constancy and perseverance in it That as there is a necessity of Fire to try Gold whether it be true or else counterfeit so also is there a necessity of Changes for by these it will appear whether we will measure our Religion by outward things and in the loss or enjoyment of them be lost in our Protestant Faith yea or no. There is nothing Beloved more discovers the Hypocrite than his Ingenium versatile as Livy said of Cato than his turning humour in Religion for which I do not say he shall be plagued in Hell by being wheel'd about there continually without any relaxation though that may seem a punishment somewhat suitable to his Weathercock-disposition here upon earth no Hoc nimis Ethnicum This is too heathenish but rather with the Prophet David That he shall turn into Hell with all those that forget God which is that portion of Hypocrites mentioned by our Saviour Matth. 24. last For if an Apple be rotten at the coare it will not hold long upon the Tree but upon the least Wind will fall from it And so it is with the rotten-hearted Hypocrite if a little cross wind do but blow upon him oh how soon doth he fall off from the Tree of Life and become a wind-fall in his Religion for the Devil that old Serpent to prey upon Every Cock-boat you know will bear up well enough in a calm sea but that is a stout Vessel that can live in the most troubled water And too too many there were in the Primitive times that like Dr. Pendleton in Queen Maries days boasted much of their Constancy in the Orthodox Faith during Constantines days so long as God hedg'd
Hills over Seas and Rocks without any hinderance for now it is upon the lowest Shrub and presently upon the highest branch of the tallest Cedar now upon heavenly and within the twinkling of an eye upon earthly things now at Dan and in a trice at Beersheba now at one part of the earth and then at another for sometimes it is soaring after Principalities and Powers and spiritual Wickednesses in high places as the Apostle speaks then after Riches and by and by after pleasures now rejoycing and then sorrowing now quieted and immediately troubled and as soon pacified again now hoping and straightway fearing those hopes now loving and then hating what it loved before Sic omnia mutabilitati subjacent says St. Augustine Thus do all things lie down under mutability And it amaz'd Saint Bernard much to consider how in the same moment of time his mind was not only diversly but likewise contrarily affected and as it were pull'd a pieces betwixt love and hatred joy and sorrow fear and hope having as many varieties of affections within him as there were diversities of things in the world for them to light upon So that you see how the several Passions of our Minds do in a breath and with the turning of a hand steer divers ways first looking one way and then another according as they are wheeled about with the motions of outward Contingencies But in the last place we shall add unto the former the great changes that particular men are subject to in regard of their outward Estates and Fortunes For the condition of Mortals says a Heathen man hath its turns and returns both of Prosperity and Adversity That as in a Military skirmish there be some come up to discharge while others fall of So is it in the World's Militia One there is that is rais'd out of the Dust to sit among Princes whereas there is another that is flung down from the pinnacle of worldly joy and prosperity and stated as Job was upon the Dunghil And this doth the Preacher tell us among the rest of those changes that fell under his observation That one comes out of Prison to Reign as Queen Elizabeth did out of the Tower to the Throne whereas also there is he that is born in his Kingdom and becomes ver poor as our Henry the Third was while he lived sometimes on the Churches Alms. God hath appointed us saith one well all our parts to play and hath not in their distribution been either spare-handed to the meanest nor yet partial to the greatest He gave Caius Marius at first the part of a Carpenters Son but afterwards the part of one that was seven times Consul So also Agathocles the part of a Potters Son at the first but afterwards of the King of Sicily So also on the other side Darius play'd the part one while of the greatest Emperour and another time of the most miserable Beggar begging but a little water to quench the drought of Death And Bajazet play'd the Grand Signior in the morning but in the evening stood for Tamerlains footstool And Jane Shore Edward the Fourths Minion acts now as Mistress of a stately Palace and a little after dies in a Ditch for want of a House and as he said of Icarus so may we of her That Nomina fecit aquis she gave Name to the place where she died it being call'd from her Shore-ditch to this day But I forbear since there is enough recorded for our use in the Sacred Scriptures to this purpose where we find an example of the one in David who says that God took him from following the Ewes with young and set him upon the Throne there to feed as he says Jacob his people and Israel his Inheritance And to go lower yet not only from the sheepfold so he says Psal. 113.7 and 8 verses God takes the poor out of the Dust and the needy out of the Dunghill that he may set him among Princes even with the Princes of his people Now more vile and contemptible than the Dust we tread upon which the least breath of wind commands any way or than the worst of dust which is that of the Dunghil we cannot be yet these are they says the Psalmist whom he sets among Princes even with the Princes of his people An example of the other we have in Antiochus 2 Mac. 9.9 who was so fill'd with Pride through the rankness of his Prosperity that he thought he might command the Sea so proud was he says the Text beyond the condition of man and further that he could weigh the Mountains in a ballance and reach up to the Stars of Heaven yet by and by is his Comb cut all his Glory worm-eaten and none able to endure him for the filthiness of his smell Adde to this the example of Balthazar Dan. 5.5 who was now carousing in the Consecrated Vessels that Nebuchadnezzar his Grandfather had plundred the Temple of and House of God at Jerusalem as you may see 2 Kings chap. last But in the same hour says the Text came out the hand-writing of the wall against him and then was the Kings countenance chang'd his thoughts troubled the joynts of his Loyns loosed and his Kingdom given away to the Medes and Persians Thus are we for outward things like so many Counters which stand one while for a pound and another for a penny That was we see commonly in High-ways where one man hath seth his foot another presently follows him and treads it out again so is it usually That if one man beat out an Honour or Estate to himself another comes after and treads out that impression and whose it shall be next there is no man knows Nay Lucan Ipsa vices natura subit Even the whole course of Nature runs about in a circular motion Our Bodies Minds and outward felicities whatsoever we are or whatsoever we have are all subject to change in such wise that we can have no assurance of them no not for a day We know not what a day may bring forth And so much for the demonstration of this truth viz. That there is such a Vicissitude The next thing is the Efficient Causes of it For we never know any thing throughly says the Philosopher until we know the Causes of it Now in speaking to this I shall proceed 1. Negatively 2. Affirmatively 1. Negatively in shewing what have been thought to be the causes of all Changes and Alterations yet are not so indeed And here the Epicures and vulgar Heathen have thought Fortune to be the cause of them And they define it thus to be An Event of things without Reason But how unreasonable it is to say That an Event of Things without a Cause should be the Cause of all Events judge ye For it was only the ignorance of the true Causes that made the name of Fortune there being nothing fortuitous in it self but only to us and our ignorance since the power and providence of God hath
of all doth not take away the natures and workings of Secondary Causes but rather establish them which is the reason of that Speech of God to Job in the ordinary revolution of the times and seasons of the year Job 38.31 Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades and loose the bonds of Orion Now the Pleiades are those we commonly call the Seven Stars that have their influence on the earth by producing sweet showres to the opening and refreshing of it about the Spring of the year and Orion is a Constellation most conspicuous in the Winter-season as having a commissionary power to bind up the earth with Frosts Again canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season i.e. the twelve Signes successively after one another or guide Arcturus with his Sons i. e. the Polar Star as some will have it with those ignes minores that wait upon him or Bootes as others It is not then so much the Earth as the Heavens that give us either fruit or withhold it they being the first ordinary means whereby God uses to work out alterations in sublunary things The second Instrumental cause of these strange Vicissitudes here below is the Will of Man for though it have not a liberty to Spiritual yet all grant it a liberty to external acts and moral goodness And this Liberty of Mans Will doth God use as an under-wheel to turn about most of those Alterations that are in the world It is true that Health and Sickness Peace and War Plenty and Scarcity Riches and Poverty proceed from God as the principal Efficient cause but yet for all this we deny not but that God makes use both of our selves and others as to the means of bringing them about The life of Joseph was checquer'd with variety of accidents for he is now a Slave to the Ismaelites and by and by a Prince in Aegypt Now these although they proceeded from God as the Author yet was the will of his Brethren as the will of Reuben and Judah the instruments of preserving his life and the wills of his other Brethren the means of selling him into Aegypt Now because it is the Nature of Instruments to be subservient to the principal Agent and to be determin'd by it therefore give me leave here by the way to fasten this exhortation upon you That in all Changes whatsoever you will look beyond the Instruments of them unto God the Principal Agent For so did Job in his losses beyond the plundring Chaldeans and Sabeans unto Dominus abstulit The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away looking upon them as we use to do upon an Index tantum in ordine ad Librum only in order to the Book it self Et in transitu ad Deum in his passage unto God who sets them a work as to their natural powers and faculties though to the evil of them no otherwise than by ordering and over-ruling it to the good of his Children And hence it is that the wicked are called Gods Sword as in the 17 Psalm v. 13. Deliver my Soul says David from the wicked which is thy sword And so must we in all those Losses that befal us here have in our eye not so much the Sword as the Hand that holds it which will be one means and a good one too to bring us to Davids calm temper in the 39 Psal. 19. who says in the like condition That he was dumb and did not open his mouth nor let fall an impatient word in it because it was Gods doing And therefore when Abishai would have taken away Shimei's life for cursing of David No says he Let him alone Iussit enim Dominus for the Lord hath bidden him curse who then shall say Wherefore hast thou done so q. d. Who then dare expostulate with God or call him to account about it as if he were unrighteous in it since evil men are but Swords in Gods hand who when he hath once done his work by them will either put them up again into his Scabbard and lay them by or else so blunt the edge of their power that it shall not cut or else break them a pieces and throw them quite away And so much for the Efficient Causes of Vicissitudes Next I shall speak to the Ends or Final Causes of them And these are either Ex parte Dei or Nostri in respect of God or our selves First in respect of God and so the Principal End why God rings such Changes upon all earthly things and will have them disposed of after so various a manner is to make them by it the more tunable to his own Glory which by this means is exceedingly magnifyed and advanced but especially in the Attributes of his Power Truth Wisdom and Goodness 1. In his Power and Omnipotency that so he may let the world know that the Finger of his Power is in all Transactions and that he can do whatsoever he will both in Heaven and Earth and yet changes not For why else did God work so many miraculous Changes in Aegypt by the hand of Moses Why turned he Moses Rod into aSerpent and the Aegyptian waters into Blood Why their Dust into Lice and Flies and their Light into Darkness for the space of three days together Why else Created he a new generation of Frogs and Locusts among them Why unheard-of Diseases upon themselves and upon their Cattel Why destroyed he their Herbs and Fruit-trees with Hail and their first-born with untimely death In a word Why caused he the Red-sea to go out of its natural course and chanel whereby it became a wall to the Israelites and a grave to the Aegyptians Did not God all this to make known the glory of his power in the preservation of the one and destruction of the other Yes For this cause says God to Moses I have raised thee up to shew in thee my power and that my Name may be declared in all the earth 2. He advances also his Glory this way by manifesting his Truth and Faithfulness in that those things which are accidental in regard of us and seem as impossible yet are they exactly brought to pass in their due times and seasons As in the bringing of the Israelites out of Aegypt wherein God was full as good as his word and kept touch with them to a day in their Deliverance as you may see Exod. 12.41 where we read That it came to pass in the end of four hundred and thirty years even the self-same day it came to pass that all the hosts of the Lord went out of the land of Aegypt All Pharaoh's oppositions and tergiversations could not prorogue their Bondage so much as one day beyond the time prefixed of God but serv'd only to fill up that Interim or void space of time betwixt Gods Promise made to Abraham and his performance of it And if you ask by what intervals of time the truth of his promise came about so punctually Divines will tell
afflicted condition or as a cordial to stay up our spirits in the saddest and most distressed times and to teach us patience and contentedness in them that so as in prosperity we should not say we shall never be moved so neither in adversity that we shall never be delivered when we shall consider that what weight of affliction soever we lye under is not of a continuant but of a changeable nature And to this end we have the sure staff of Gods promise unto his children to lean upon as in the tenth Chapter to the Hebrews where he says thus Yet a little while or rather as it runs in the Greek yet how very very little while with a double diminutive and he that shall come will come and will not tarry And in the precedent verse he tells them they have need of patience that they may receive this promise And in the twelfth Chapter to the Hebrews the Apostle takes up an exhortation to it from the Wise man and makes a consolatory use of it to his Hebrews withal taking them to task for their forgetfulness of it And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children My Son despise not thou the chastning of the Lord nor faint or be not broken in mind as others translate it when thou art rebuked of him For we had says he the fathers of the flesh who verily chastened us a few days after their own pleasure and we were patient under their rod and gave them reverence but God a few days only for our profit Shall we not then be much rather in subjection to him who is the father of spirits and live Thus when Boetius that Christian Consul and Martyr at Rome was wrongfully deprived by Theodoricus of his Honours Estate and Liberty Philosophy brings in what we call Gods Providence comforting him in these words I turn about my wheel continually and delight to tumble things upside down why then doth thy heart shrink within thee when as this changeableness of mine is cause enough for thee to hope for better things And so also when many of our Brethren were heretofore in Exile for their Religion in Queen Maries days what I pray did that Jewel of our Church comfort them with but onely this Haec non durabunt aetatem These will not endure an Age as indeed you know they did not her Reign being not full out six years time And with the same consideration also should we chear up our selves now under that black cloud that hangs over the Church that it will not endure an Age but be as Ephraim's righteousness was even as the morning cloud or as the early dew that passes away To this end it will not be amiss to note how the afflictions of Gods people in the Scripture are run out not by any long tract of time as by an Age Year Month Week or the like but by the shortest measures that can be as by a Day now a Day you know holds not long but is quickly gone even as a flying Bird or a Poast that runneth by And thus good Hezekiah calls the time of Sennacheribs rage against Judah a Day of trouble Isa. 37. v. 3. Or if this be not enough you have them then contracted within a lesser room and measur'd onely by a Night which is no more but the dark side of a natural Day and therefore is a great deal shorter And this made the Prophet David say Psal. 30. v. 5. That heaviness may endure for a Night but joy cometh in the Morning The time then that heaviness shall endure to the Godly can be but a Night at the longest but whether it shall be so long or no the Prophet is very uncertain and unsatisfied for which cause he expresses it here with a May be Heaviness may endure for a Night But if this expression be not full enough to set forth the brevity of them our Saviour doth it then by an Hour which is shorter yet and but the four and twentieth part of a natural Day for so he calls the time of his persecution by the High Priests and Elders of the people Their hour and the power of Darkness Luke 22.53 Or if this be yet too long a space to set forth the brevity of their afflictions and to give a through Comfort to Gods people their little continuance is then express'd by a Moment which I am sure is short enough so you have it Isa. 54. v. 7. For a small moment says God to his Church have I forsaken thee but with great mercy will I gather thee And again v. 8. In a little wrath I hid my Face from thee for a moment but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon thee Or last of all if any time can be shorter than this it must then be the present time yet such are the sufferings of Gods children in St. Pauls account but the sufferings of the present time Rom. 8.18 and a shorter time than this there cannot be For as the French our Neighbours are said to be for their inconsiderateness Animalia sine praeterito futuro Creatures that have respect neither to time past nor time to come so may we say of the present time That it is as short a measure as can possibly be imagined having in it nothing either of time past or future the first of the two being dead already and the later of them being not yet born unto us And yet we see here for all this that St. Paul when he had cast up the account of all which he suffered in the cause of Christ how he reckons and concludes it to be onely the suffering of the present time and not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed A Prayer ALmighty God who rulest the Sea of this World by thy power and whose paths are in the roughest Waters We the unworthiest of all thy Servants commit our frail Barks with all that we have to the Steerage of thee our great Pilot and faithful Preserver beseeching thee so to order by thy good hand of Providence all outward contingencies to us that we may be able to bear up through them with a steady and even Course against the several Storms we shall meet with in this passage to our blessed Harbour of Eternity And however earthly things may like Watery Billows be every day rowling up and down in their vicissitudes about us yet suffer oh suffer not the Heavenly truth of our Reformed Religion to flote about any longer so uncertainly among us nor our selves to be as Children toss'd to and fro with every Wind of Doctrine But let us be constant and unwavering in the profession of that Holy Faith we have received and Thou that art the God of Truth be graciously pleased to stay us up firmly in it by the sacred Scriptures which are thy Word of Truth and the sole Anchor of our Faith to rest upon Lord pull in the Sails of our desires towards fleeting and transitory substances for who will cast his eyes upon that which hath wings to flee away as an Eagle towards Heaven Ballast our Spirits with Humility in a prosperous condition and when we have the highest and most pleasing Gale of the worlds favour for us give us to strike our spreading Sails of Pride and to make our Lenity and Moderation to be known to all men for the Lord is nigh at hand But if thou in thy just judgment against us for our manifold and hainous sins shalt cause some cross wind or other to blow upon us and give us over to Shipvvrack in our temporals Supply then we entreat thee their want with thy spirituals of Patience Faith and other suffering graces That although the tempest be never so boisterous without yet we may enjoy within a Christian calmness of Spirit in a happy quietude and contentedness of mind with all thy dealings towards us and not set down our rest upon the Creature which is so restless with us but amidst the sundry and various changes of the world may there fix our Hearts where onely true and unchangeable joys are to be found through Jesus Christ our Lord. FINIS