maketh the wrath and rage of bloody men to praise him I might go on and shew you how God makes use of the wars and fightings the envy emulation and strife which often arise amongst the men of the world and James 3.1 Whence come all these but from the lusts that war in our members to gain his people liberty and protection But I have spoken enough to justifie this Observation but it may be some will say to me Why doth God do this Could not God do his work by other instruments And were it not more suitable to the Holiness of God to bring about his designs by better instruments To which the answer were good enough to say Who art thou that disputest with God It is enough for us that thus it pleaseth him and that this is consistent enough both with his Holiness and Wisdom It is not inconsistent with his holiness to mean and to turn that for good which men mean and intend for evil as in Joseph's case Gen. 50.20 for God doth not put this malice into their hearts he only suffereth them to walk in their own ways and then governeth their lusts to his own praise and glory But I shall shew you that this is a very reasonable motion and working of Divine Providence which will appear to you by the following Considerations 1. That God by this sheweth his infinite wisdom and power by how much there is the less aptitude and disposition in a cause to bring forth an effect by so much must the power and wisdom of the efficient cause be made more glorious Now there is nothing in nature less disposed to the Glory of God nor that hath so much antipathy to the Glory of God as sin and lust What cannot that God do that can make mens lusts to praise him Lust of its own nature opposeth God nothing is so contrary to his designs for God to make this now to serve his designs and to bring about his Counsels this must glorifie God as an Almighty God that can do whatsoever he pleaseth and by what means soever he pleaseth yea and by this means God maketh his Wisdom admirable When he taketh the wise in their own craftiness Come saith Pharaoh let us deal wisely with them God makes Pharaoh's wisdom to destroy his people a great means to deliver his people What an infinitely-wise God did he by this declare himself Turning Pharaoh's wisdom into folly and making it to operate directly contrary to his deliberations 2. A second Consideration is this That it is but reasonable that God should make some use of the worst of men The worst of men are the Lords creatures he hath made them he doth much for them they live upon his hand of Providence 't is reasonable they should do him some service now intentionally and designedly a wicked man will do God no service at all his heart is quite another way his life is a pursuit of one lust or other if God did not get glory on him besides his intention he could have no service at all from him There is no reason that leud and wicked men covetous ambitious men bloody and cruel men should live in the world for nothing and be maintained from Gods basket for nothing without doing him any service they will not serve God as reasonable creatures should do offering up their bodies as a living acceptable sacrifice to God which the Apostle Rom. 12.1 determines our reasonable service The Apostle therefore to the Thessalonians calls wicked men unreasonable They shall therefore serve God as brute creatures as the beasts of the field serve him not knowing what they do as a meer machine and engine serveth us by the force of our hand nay in a worse degree quite contrary to their own counsels intentions and designs God could have no service from wicked men if he did not get himself a glory from their lusts as he got himself glory upon Pharaoh 3. There is something in Gods Counsels to be produced in the world that is fit for no other hands than the hands of sinners and is hard to be effected any way but from their lusts These are the acts of his Punitive Justice upon his People God is compelled by his Justice sometimes to kindle a fire in Sion and to set up a furnace in Hierusalem to melt and to try his people in order to the purging out of their dross and taking away their tin Now as it is lust which kindleth all fires so ordinarily it is the lust of Gods Enemies of wicked men which bloweth up this fire Sometimes indeed Ephraim is against Mamasses and Manasses against Ephraim but ordinarily it is the Assyrian or Egyptian or Babylonian that must destroy Israel Men do not use to set sheep to hunt and tear sheep but to make use of dogs for that work 4. This is a reasonable motion of Providence to incourage the people of God never to despair but continually to hope in the Lords mercy That which usually discourageth our hope in God for any good as to his Church is the heighth of the rage of Enemies the sad and forlorn state of things the appearance of never an instrument like to do any service for God or for his People But none of all this is a sufficient ground for discouragement if God can make use of the worst of men and make the lusts of people serviceable to his own wise counsels and bringing about his purposes I might also have added that these motions of Providence are reasonable to shew wicked men their folly and how vainly they set themselves against the counsels and purposes of God who ordinarily taketh them by guile and overthroweth them in their own craftiness But I have enlarged enough upon the doctrinal part of this Observation I now come to the Application of it Vse 1. In the first place let us here admire the infinite power and the wisdom of God and learn at all times to trust in his word What cannot that God do What will not the wisdom of that God extend to who can make the highest and proudest Enemies which his glory hath to serve the designs and counsels of his glory The work of Creation is not so much a work of infinite power and wisdom as this work of Providence In Creation God only produceth being out of not being here God brings out his glory from that which hath an unmeasurable contrariety to his glory nothing is so desperately opposite to the glory of God as the sordid lusts of mans heart no creature is so opposite to the honour and glory of God as a resolved malitious sinner is Now for God to make such a wretch to serve him nay to make such a wretch in the hottest pursuit of his lusts to serve him and by the satisfaction of his lusts to serve the great design of his glory O what an Almighty Power what an infinite wisdom must this speak in God! And this I say should recommend God
the old Philosophers of Gods Providence extending not to all but to some particular Beings observed to have a great influence upon sublunary Beings And our Judicial Astrologers seem to inherit though not their wisdom in all other natural things yet their error in this Astra regunt homines sed regit astra Deus is their Song But alas this is but to set up an Idol in our hearts And indeed if we could conceive any earthly Prince to be present in every place we could hardly imagine him so neglective of his Government What Prince will not rule all motions and actions which he seeth and heareth to what he apprehendeth the wisest and best ends for his own honour So that if we could suppose an earthly Prince in all places where he hath Children Servants or Subjects and to have his senses open to see and hear them he would certainly contribute his best help to preserve and govern them Especially if he be a person of ordinary humanity and goodness and hath a sufficiency of Power and Wisdom Do not we see how naturally the parent to his finite capacity careth for preserveth and governeth the Child How the Master of a Family cannot neglect a care for and government of his Family till he hath debauched himself to a beast Nay do not the birds of the air and beasts of the field naturally care for their young seed and govern them Whence had they their natural propensions and inclinations to this goodness towards those to whom they have stood in any order of causation Was it not from the great Creator who thus disposed them If it be a piece of goodness in the creature so to care for preserve and govern its fellow-creature certainly we must allow it to be so in God What goodness of this nature there is in the creature floweth from him as the stream from the fountain And is certainly much more in him he having lost nothing by the Communication of the Creatures shares to them So that whosoever will acknowledg a Being that is infinitely good must also acknowledg that Being infinitely provident for the Creatures that derive from him and every creature thus deriving God who wanteth neither Power nor Activity must as naturally care for them all as a Father or Mother careth for every Child and a bird for every young one And it is nothing but some mens Atheistical conceptions and others more imperfect notions of God not considering the Divine Being in the extent of his Immensity Activity Power and Goodness which maketh any so much as in the least to hesitate as to the Doctrine of Divine Providence 3. Let us once more turn our eyes to the strange effects and events which we see in the world of which we see great variety and many of them which appear to us of great moment and consequence Now supposing that there were not a Divine Providence directing and governing them and being the first cause to them they must either be the products of so many Machines or Engines moving necessarily or of the imperate acts of some creatures endued with wisdom and counsel We shall find the effects in the world such as are impossible to be products of any such nature 1. Were they the products of the first Man might have a previous knowledg of and not at any time be surprised by them 2. Were they meerly the products of the second God himself could hardly be conceived to have a previous certain knowledg of them so as by his Prophets to give the world a warning 1. I say first Were the effects we see in the world necessary depending upon a certain fate and moving in a certain order What then hindereth but man might have a certain previous knowledg of them things which work necessarily work certainly and evenly Thus indeed the Sun Moon and Stars and all natural agents move Every Almanackmaker therefore will tell you how many hours the Sun will shine in a day six twelve months hence when the Eclipses shall be of either Luminary and to what degrees they shall be obscured But can they also tell us when the next great Plague the next Innundation or Fire we shall hear of shall be or when and where shall be the next great mutation in an Empire or a Kingdom We see men sometimes infinitely surprised in the product of second causes so contrary to their expectation and to what appeared to us would have been their probable effect If things had moved by a Law of Fate the world is now so old that the course of its motions would have been matter of science and demonstration to us but alas there is nothing less Who can tell what to morrow will bring forth not only as to his own particular concerns but the far greater and more general concerns and interests of mankind and the Church of God in particular 2. How then are they produced Is it from the will of man I ask whether from the wills of men working necessarily as the first and only principle of them or working freely and at perfect liberty the first surely none will assert that considers what he saith If from the wills of men working freely then they might also work and move otherwise than they do Then I say it is hard to conceive how God himself should have a certain knowledg of things previous to the event or effect for there was no certainty of such an event or effect But that God hath such a certain previous fore-knowledg is evident from all the Prophecies where by his Prophets he foretold things that were to come to pass many hundreds of years after and that with all their circumstances The great effects of created Beings must have some cause I mean some first cause If this were Nature or Fate i. e. a necessary law imposed upon them their motions would be even uniform subjected to our art and fore-knowledg which they are not If the first cause of them be the wills of men working upon choice there could then have been no certainty of them before they had existed for they might as well not have been as have been If any say but though the wills of men move freely yet he who calleth the things that are not as if they were he knew which way things should be and how the wills of men would move This we most freely grant but we also say That he knew them because he willed either to effect or to permit them and that supposing this Decree of Providence there must also be a working of it upholding created Beings conducting their effects and many times over-ruling them and this is that which we call Providence 4. In a further evidence of this I might call in a plentiful Testimony from the most learned and wise amongst the Heathens But I shall not much trouble my self or you with that discourse but refer those that desire to be satisfied herein to the excellent discourse of Du-Plessis Lord of Morney in
the face of the Earth God at first said Let the earth bring forth grass Gen. 1.11 He sendeth the grass of the field Deut. 11.15 He causeth it to grow for the cattel and herb for the service of man He multiplyeth the beasts of the field the birds and fowls of the air He leaveth us not without witness but giveth fruitful times and seasons filling the hearts of men with food and gladness 3. From whence is it but from the influence of God upon his Creatures that Creatures universally and ordinarily avoid the eating of such things as would be noxious to them and many creatures if they be distempered are directed to such things as will cure them But this is enough to have spoken to the second Conclusion 3 Concl. Thirdly God preserveth living Creatures by upholding those faculties in all living creatures upon the operations of which their lives are preserved their species are propagated and they are to propagate their species and to perform those actions which are proper to their several Beings and natures To uphold the Creation as to those things in it which have life there are divers faculties necessary which must be upheld here are four sorts mentioned in the Conclusion Let me speak a little to each of them It will be of excellent use to convince you of the necessity of a Divine influence or Providence upon you every moment 1. The first sort are those By which the Beings the lives and beings of Creatures are preserved and encreased to their due proportion These are those which belong to those principal faculties which the Philosophers calls Facultatem altricem auctricem I will put them together and instance in divers particulars We are craving changeable creatures subject to wasts and decays in our beings and we must have a Nutritive faculty or we could not live The action of this faculty is called Nutrition or Nourishing Now our nourishing depends upon our food the change of our food in our stomachs by the natural heat of our stomachs and this dependeth upon several powers which God hath created in all sensitive creatures in the upholding of which the daily Providence of God is wonderfully experienced although possibly not so wistly observed and considered by us as it ought to be Let me a little awaken you to a due consideration of it by instancing in several Particulars 1. In the first place We have a power a natural power to crave and desire food Without an appetite the creature desires no food can take none though it be set before him but instead of it the very sight of it maketh him sick he loatheth and abhorreth it and calleth to have it taken away out of his sight as we see in daily experience Now I would know by what this faculty is upheld but by the concourse and daily operation of Providence I do not intend to divert here into a Philosophical discourse concerning the causes of a decay of our appetite It is sufficient to tell you that the causes may be various and the variety of the causes which may produce such an effect is sufficient evidence that nothing but the upholding power of Divine Providence can hinder it It is God that must give us our daily food and it is God that must give us a stomach or appetite to it and the causes are so many which may abate and destroy our appetite that did not God daily watch over us and influence us as to this very thing it were an hard thing to conceive how it should keep preserved a few days much less as it is with many to very many years 2. But suppose us to have an appetite to say nothing of our power to take and chew and swallow our food We see by a daily experience if we have not a power to digest it if the natural heat of our stomachs be from any cause abated so as it will not change our food and this continueth upon us for any time and no remedy can be apportioned to it the creature dyeth whether it be man or beast If the nap of the stomach be but worn off our bodies soon appear thredbare we pine away and presently sink into our graves by which we learn that a natural faculty power or ability to digest our food is necessary to the preservation of our beings As I said before of the Appetite so I shall say again of this I intend no discourse of the variety of causes from which such a thing may proceed but the possibility of such a thing and that as an effect of various causes evinceth a necessity of a daily influence of God upon us to uphold this faculty in its vigour and efficacy which ministreth to our nutrition 3. But thirdly suppose our food taken into our bodies concocted and digested in our stomachs that it may nourish the whole body it must be by several vessels and channels distributed to the several parts of the body So as there must be supposed a freedom from obstructions in those passages and an attractive vertue and faculty in the several parts If these passages be any way stopped or the attractive vertue abated the parts are not nourished but decay and wither the creatures being destroyed Of such obstructions we have daily examples and indeed whoso considereth the various passages in our bodies through which that part of our food which proves for nourishment passeth and the variety of obstructions to which we are subject must needs again acknowledg that our Souls must be kept in life our bodies in health meerly by a Divine Power 4. Again What we take into our bodies for our proper food being in part found either not proper for us or in too great a proportion when the stomach hath done its office there is a separation made that not proper for us or in a superfluous proportion for that end must be voided and cast out and a natural faculty to do it must be supposed which if it ceaseth but for a while or the freedom of the passages by which it passeth be obstructed the life of the creature quickly determineth Now whoso considereth the variety of powers and faculties in a living body which must be all upheld and the variety of causes from which they may be incumbred yea and quite destroyed will be forced to acknowledg the incessant influence of Divine Providence in upholding and preserving both the being and well-being of every creature that hath a sensitive life 2. But yet here is not all For in order to our nourishing not only those faculties in the body nourished which I have mentioned must be upheld But also the faculties and vertues in the bodies nourishing by which they are made nourishing to us In all nourishing there must be a body giving the nourishment as well as a body receiving it each of these must have its faculties upheld or there will be no nutrition and consequently no preservation of life Philosophy telleth us that the nourishment
they have not the Oracles of God the ordinary means of Grace are hidden from them There is no doubt but their own wilful sinning is the cause of it But whether the Sin of their Progenitors who had the Gospel and sinned it away which to me seemeth a little hard for I can hardly be brought to agree that God for the sins of Relations punisheth their Correlates in Spiritual things Or that prodigious sinning which they are guilty of not living up to what may by them by their natural Light be seen of God for the Apostle Rom. 1. gives you a true Copy of the lives of all Heathens is not so easie to determine I should incline much to fix the cause here they have though not the Book of Scripture yet the Book of Gods Works and Nature though not Men Ministers of the Gospel to them yet the Heavens declaring the Glory of God and the Earth shewing his handy-work those standing Preachers of the Power Glory and Greatness of God whose sound is gone out and going dayly out over all the world they have the Sun and Moon they see much of God in and by them and may learn much of God from them but knowing God and not glorifying him as God but becoming vain in their imaginations they worship Devils and Stocks and Stones the work of their own hands and shutting their eyes against the Light of those common notions which are engraven in all reasonable Natures they give up themselves to commit all filthiness and unrighteousness So not using the Light of Nature and Reason which God hath given them God justly with-holdeth from them the Talent of the Gospel If God doth grant it to others which yet it may be are guilty of the same sottish abuse of their natural Light and Reason therein he is good and gracious but if he denieth it unto them therein he is not unjust or unrighteous But I say there may be some particular instances as to which it may be hard for us to assign what particular sins God so securely proceedeth against the Nations Families or Persons for but this is certain Sin is certainly the next cause of all severe dispensations of punishment Now this will appear to us 1. From the evidence of Scripture 2. From the evidence of Reason concluding from Scripture-Principles 1. First from the plain evidence of Scripture In the case of the Heathen amongst whom the Devil hath the greatest harvest of perishing Souls of these the Apostle speaketh Rom. 1.18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men Observe the words God doth not reveal his wrath against the Heathen meerly upon the account of his Soveraign Power because he will do it but against the ungodliness and unrighterusness of men he goeth on declaring their ungodliness and their unrighteousness Vers 21. Because when they knew God they glorified him not as God They had light enough from the Works of God in Nature to shew them other kind of Ideas of the Divine Being than it was possible for them to find amongst created beings but they turned the Incorruptible God into the image of a corruptible man yea of creeping things and four-footed beasts The Apostle telleth them also of their unrighteousness Vers 29. Fornication wickedness covetousness malitiousness they were full of envy murders debates deceits c. Now for these things the wrath of God was revealed against them The Apostle telleth us Rom. 2.14 That when the Gentiles which have not the Law do by nature the things which are contained in the Law they are a Law to themselves And Vers 26. If the uncircumcision keep the Law their uncircumcision shall be accounted to them for circumcision I am not of their mind who think that the Heathen have light enough to shew them the way to Heaven I know not Isa 9.2 Mat. 4.16 Luk. 1.7 9. if that were true why the Scripture should set them out under the notion of persons or people that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death until Christ as the day-spring from on high hath visited them But I am sure they have sin enough to justifie God in damning them and permitting them to walk in their own ways until they have filled up the measure of their iniquities and brought judgment upon themselves I also believe that if there be found a Job in the Land of Vz If there be one found amongst the Heathen who feareth God and escheweth evil who walketh up to his natural light God hath his secret way to reveal and apply Christ to them so as he shall not perish But yet I cannot believe that his natural light shall save him because the Scripture telleth us That there is no other name under heaven than the name of Jesus Christ by which any can be saved neither is there Salvation in any other There are several things in nature that we know are so but we do not know the way of them In the matters of grace there are several things also which we understand not the way of God in Three come into my mind at present The way of God with an infant we are not sure that all infants no not that all Baptized infants shall be saved but we doubt not but of many such is the Kingdom of God but for the way of God with the Soul of one that liveth not up to the exercises of reason and the intelligentness of the ordinary means of Faith and Regeneration this we do not understand 2. The way of God with a thief upon the Cross I mean with a sinner forgetting or neglecting to turn unto God until his last hour we do believe that God hath mercy upon some such Souls but how God worketh in them these habits of grace which are necessary according to the ordinary rule how they are born again of the Spirit and Baptized not with water only but with the Holy Ghost and with fire this we do not understand And so Thirdly The way of God with an Heathen that never cometh to the light of the Gospel nor hath any external Revelation of Christ I say how the Spirit of God moveth and which way it cometh into such a Soul this we do not understand but leave it amongst the unsearchable things of Divine Providence which we believe and revere If there be as I said before a Job in the Land of Vz he shall know that his Redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the last day upon the earth and he shall see him with his eyes But which way God revealeth this to him we understand not In the mean time these hidden things being left to God revealed things belong to us and to our children and this is revealed That the wrath of God as to the Heathen is revealed against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men 2. But this is much more evident concerning such as live under the means of grace and offers of salvation Oh
more reasonable more excellent What we know then of God must needs be from Reason or Revelation Reason brings us in knowledg by raising Conclusions from Principles These Principles are of two sorts Philosophical or Scriptural I call those Philosophical Principles which reason as it now resideth in us justifieth and which without the help of the Word of God are allowed by all or the most of men especially if cultivated by any ingenuous education being either common natural principles or such as are established by studies upon deliberate thoughts with the help of sense and improvement of discourse and ratiocination Thus Reason will tell us that there is a God but one God That he must be the first being the first cause more excellent in the perfections of his being than any creature and an hundred things of a like evidence Or else it concludeth from revealed Principles having first a sufficient evidence That the holy Scriptures are the word of God who cannot speak falsly These Principles now are such propositions as without the surer word of Prophesie we could never have had any just evidence of Such now are the Doctrines of the Trinity The Incarnation of Christ The Personal union of the Divine and Humane Nature in him and many others In the discovery and justification of such Conclusions as Reason gathereth from the first sort of Principles lyeth the work of a Philosopher as a Philosopher In the discovery and proof of such Propositions as are partly evidenced from Reason but more fully from Scripture lies the work of a Christian Philosopher In the discovery proving and applying of such Propositions as have their Evidence partly from Reason and more fully from holy Writ or as cannot be at all concluded unless building upon Scriptural foundations but are founded in Scripture and may be illustrated imperfectly from reason and shewed not to be improbable nor unreasonable lyes the work of the Minister of the Gospel who is to convey the knowledg of God to his people And the true reason why some even of these silver Trumpets which belong to the Sanctuary give an incertain sound is because neither the Principles of natural Reason nor Revelation appear to all men in the same light We say The best Philosopher is not as yet born Our age tells us how generally Principles of Philosophy are exploded and it may be some of them justly too which we when we were boys thought to lye very near Demonstration and doubtless in the next age something now admitted will be judged as faulty It hath pleased God to subject our understandings to this vanity Now we having no way unless God would from Heaven speak to us to know any proposition of Truth but from the exercise of our Reason concluding either from Principles purely natural or from Propositions of Revelation in Scripture every one naturally judging himself obliged to believe according to the evidence he hath from his understanding there must and will be different apprehensions until which will never be men have all either the same degrees of Natural Reason or Scriptural knowledg which will be advantaged if there be any who think that all Propositions are to be weighed by the ballance of Natural Reason and that the holy Scripture as to the sense of it must come into that scale and make but in-weight giving only an auxiliary help to the Evidence of the most sublime Propositions of truth Nor is there any help for this The Church of Rome which your Ladiship knows pretends to wondrous Miracles hath indeed devised a palliating cure for this setting up an Infallible cheat to judg of all Controversies and by fire and faggots and all barbarous cruelties and inhumanities forcing men to acquiesce in the Decisions of that ridiculous Judg. But in the mean time mens Consciences apprehend themselves before one who is no Judg in the ease and the sore festreth and rotteth to the bone for the Pope can make none to alter his mind And a little reason might tell the Quacks of that Colledg that if it be not in the power of a man to believe what he hath a mind to believe it is much less in the power of a foreign power to compell him to it The Protestant cure is certainly more humane and reasonable yea and more Apostolical too They set forth sums of sound Doctrine to which they only annex that of the Apostle Phil. 3.15 Let us therefore as many as be perfect be thus minded and if any in any thing be otherwise minded God shall reveal even this unto you Only Protestants require as the same Apostle directs Rom. 14. That if any hath a particular faith different from that of the Church wherein he liveth he should have it to himself before God Thus the Knowledg of God is acquired from his word reading it being Catechised out of it hearing it opened and preached by the comparing of spiritual things with spiritual by the use of reason and discourse in the Velitation of Questions arising from the seeming contradictions in Holy Writ c. But there is also another mean of Divine Knowledg that is by his exterior works by which much of the Knowledg of God is gained improved and encreased These works are either of Creation or of Providence Creation was the work of the first six days from which God hath ceased long since but the things created remain and much of the Knowledg of God is to be gained from thence by the help of sense which sheweth us the things and reason which helpeth us to conclude that there being so many noble effects there must be a first and more noble cause there being so many excellent Beings there must be a first and most perfect and excellent Being Nothing created could give an Existence to it self Hence the Apostle telleth us That the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen from the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead Rom. 1.20 So that they are without excuse because that when they knew God they glorified him not as God For the Book of Scriptures we blessed be God! have it in our Vernacular Tongue we have means to teach us to read we have Catechisms and Confessions of Faith containing the Epitome and substance of them we have the various labours of holy and learned men to make us to understand them scarce any thing seemeth to be wanting to this age for the gaining of this excellent knowledg by this mean but persons giving themselves up to Reading Hearing Meditation Christian Conferences and Prayer For the Book of Creation methinks it is like a great Bible in some Religious Gentlemans Hall that lyes always open we cannot move a step in the world nor lift up an eye to Heaven but our eye is upon one page or another of it If men will not read the Wisdom of God in the sagacity and wisdom of some Creatures nor the power and greatness of God in the
greatness and power of others and so for other perfections it is not because they want means but because they want an heart to seek after God as to this there is no want of any thing but a wise contemplation of them and a rational concluding from the perfections of the effects to the greater excellency and perfection of the first cause and being The Book of Creation will learn us much of the nature and admirable perfections of the Divine Being The Book of Scripture will learn us more of it and instruct us in sublimer Mysteries than Reason could discover The Doctrine of the Trinity the two Natures united in the Person of the Mediator They will tell us of Gods Covenants of Christs performances of the Covenant of Redemption of the Will of God to be done by us and the Will of God to be done unto and upon us in his Promises and threatnings The Apostle sums up all when he tells us they are able to make the man of God wise to salvation throughly furnished to every good work But there is yet another Book which is less obvious to the eye of sense than the Book of Creation is and to the eye of Reason too and upon which fewer Commentaries have been wrote than upon the Books of holy Scripture that is the Book of Actual Providence A Book in which much of God is written and from which much of God may be learned but it is commonly taken for the Vision of a book that is sealed which is given to one who is learned with a command to read it but he saith I cannot for it is sealed Some more brutish than the Heathens deny any such Book dreaming of the old Pagan Fate or blind Fortune Others will allow it in part but will have much of it spurious dreaming that the World is like a Clock which once set in order and wound up goes alone without further use of the Workmans hand Others will allow Divine Providence a more universal influence but yet love not to hear of any Specialties of it Some again highly conceited of their own reason will subject the Providence of God to their rational Conclusions Few or none make any observations upon the motions of Divine Providence though certainly nothing more conduceth to true Spiritual wisdom Others stumbling at some difficulties relating to the motions of Providence either wholly deny it or form to themselves strange Ideas of God which no way agree to his most holy and perfect essence This Madam hath encouraged me to attempt something both to recover the Actual Providence of God from the Atheism of this age and the groundless prejudices which vain men have taken up against it and by it to recover for God that just Fear Faith Love Patience and other homage which both the excellency of his being and of his holy working calleth for And certainly Madam if learned men have thought it worth their while as some have done to give the World a rational account of Divine Offices of the Modes and circumstances of Ecclestastical constitutions in Rites and Garments Liturgies and Ceremonies c. It must needs be a noble work to undertake to give the world a Rational of Divine Operations Such especially which seem to be the hardest Chapters in the book of Providence and least easie to be understood and indeed this was my original design But while my thoughts were exercised in this my work grew upon my hand considering especially the Atheism of the age in which we live together with the circumstances of the Church and people of God in most European parts of the world and the particular temptations I have observed attending many and those very excellent persons I was further drawn on by the pleasantness and usefulness of the subject in all but especially in evil times and the apparent tendency of it to make men fear and love hope and trust in and with patience to wait upon God These things Madam made me resolve to open the Doctrine of Providence more fully though not in its full compass and latitude resolving always to carry along with me the capacity of those to whom I spake or wrote I was Madam the more encouraged in this from my observation that amongst the many excellent Books with which this age doth abound there are fewer of this Argument than any other Mr. Obadiah Sedgwick a great Divine treats in two or three Sermons about the Specialties of Providence and the late eminent Bishop Wilkins hath in a short Tract learnedly and piously discoursed the symmetry and beauty of it Another in a larger Discourse called an Introduction into the Doctrine of Providence hath made and a little enlarged upon several Observations upon the motions of it I projected and have at last finished a fuller Discourse than any of these though possibly much more imperfect so far as they did discourse this excellent argument and resolved to divide my discourse into three parts which accordingly I have done In the first Part Madam after two Preliminary Discourses the first concerning Gods Predeterminations where I had no mind to meddle with any present Controversies that was not a popular work the second concerning Creation Your Ldiship will find me plainly discoursing of the Nature of Providence in the notion in which alone I intended to speak to it There I have from Scripture and Reason proved That there is a constant care of God extended to the whole Creation That the Creature stands not in its own strength nor moveth meerly from a principle within it self nor is governed meerly by its fellow-creatures in a superior order much less acteth casually or under the necessity of any fate but is under the daily inspection government care and influence of the first cause its great Creator who both preserveth and governeth it There I have shortly shewed the particular acts by which God preserveth and governeth created Beings in their several capacities A point Madam of inexpressible use to possess us of a true notion of God of our daily dependencies upon him and consequently our duty toward him David saith he was fearfully and wonderfully made we are fearfully and wonderfully preserved In the second Part I have discoursed 1. Of the Specialties of Providence more especially to the Church and to every individual soul that loves and fears him shortly opening wherein they lye and shewing the reasonableness of it 2. Then I more shortly discourse the unsearchable things of it for Madam who dare pretend more than to shew a part of his ways Who can by searching find out God Who can find out the Almighty to Perfection This I have done to check curiosity and keep off good people from vain guesses and Prophetical conclusions without bottom 3. From that the discourse will lead your Ladiship to consider the duty of a good Christian in the observation of the motions of Providence and the advantage from it resulting to an observing soul To help my Reader in this
thy gifts to man Sometimes unite The Indian nut alone Is clothing meat and trencher drink and cann Boat cable sail and needle all in one Most herbs that grow in brooks are hot and dry Cold fruits warm kernels help against the wind The limons juice and rind cure mutually The whey of milk doth loose the milk doth bind Thy creatures leap not but express a feast Where all the guests sit close and nothing wants Frogs marry fish and flesh bats bird and beast Sponges non-sense and sense mines th' earth and plants To shew thou art not bound as if thy lot Were worse than ours sometimes thou shiftest hands Most things move th' under-jaw the Crocodile not Most things sleep lying th' Elephant leans or stands But who hath praise enough nay who hath any None can express thy works but he that knows them And none can know thy works which are so many And so compleat but only he that owes them All things that are though they have sev'ral ways Yet in their being join with one advice To honour thee and so I give thee praise In all my other hymns but in this twice Each thing that is although in use and name It go for one hath many ways in store To honour thee and so each hymn thy fame Extolleth many ways yet this one more A DISCOURSE Concerning ACTUAL PROVIDENCE PART I. Concerning the Nature and principal Acts of Divine Providence to all created Beings SERMON I. Ephes I. 11. Who worketh all things according to the Counsel of his Will THE Relative Particle who in the front of the Text must necessarily relate to God spoken of vers 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Many of these spiritual blessings are enumerated from that third verse to my Text. He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world predestinated us unto the adoption of sons vers 5. Made us accepted in him vers 6. And here again ver 11. Predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things according to the counsel of his will All this is written to those at Ephesus who were faithful in Christ Jesus Ephesus was a City in the lower Asia A City famous for Trade and as famous for their Idolatrous Worship of the great Goddess Diana Paul came thither Act. 18.19 20. but tarried not being to keep the feast at Hierusalem Acts 19. You find him returned thither where he stayeth two years and three months as you may gather from Acts 20. You may in that Chapter find him forced thence by an uproar of the people during the time of his abode there God used him to plant a Gospel-Church He left the charge of it with Timothy 1 Tim. 1.3 As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus while I went into Macedonia We cannot gather from any thing in this Epistle that any such corruptions in Doctrine or manners had crept into this Church as had done into the Churches of Rome Corinth and Galatia but the blessed Apostle knew that although they stood they were concerned to take heed lest they fell and that the common temptations of those times might influence them to obviate which he writeth this Epistle unto them In the Preface contained in the two first verses he after his manner saluteth them In the third verse he begins the matter of his Epistle minding them of the wonderful benefits and acts of Grace which God had made them partakers of in and through Christ He instanceth in the Election of them to eternal life as the end and the Predestination of them to the means in order to that end ver 4 5 6 7. Thence he proceedeth to a discourse about Redemption vers 8 9 10. In this Verse he returneth again to the business of Predestination In whom also saith he we have received an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him Who worketh all things according to the counsel of his will Where you have two things affirmed concerning God 1. That God worketh all things As he at first created all things so he worketh all things some by way of Efficiency and special influence others by way of Permission or he worketh all things whatsoever is not sinful 2. That he doth it according to the counsel of his will I am aware that there are some Divines who restrain the Universal Particle all things to the things before spoken of or at least to all those things which God worketh in a way of Efficiency The latter is Bellarmine's sense for which he quoteth Hierome I do rather encline to those Interpreters who think all things are to be interpreted more generally Nor is there any fear that by this interpretation we should make God the Author of sin for besides that after Bellarmine had spit his Venom against Calvin and Beza Bellar. de amiss Gratiae statu peccati cap. 15. he could find out a way himself to entitle God to all things yet not to sin for he tells us right Peccatum facere est deficere certainly all actions as things or natural motions must be from him in whom we live move and have our being though the irregularity obliquity malice and deformity and crookedness of actions in which alone lyes the sinfulness of them is not from God but from the corruption and malice of the sinners hearts Now the very esse formale of sin if it be not improper to say so lyeth not in the natural action but in the obliquity and deviation of the action from the Divine rule and this neither Calvin nor Beza nor any valuable person ever ascribed unto God And therefore the All things of the Text may safely be understood of all beings natural motions and actions and to entitle God to them is no more than to say after the Apostle In him we live and move and have our being Now the Text doth not only say That God worketh all things but that he worketh all things according to the counsel of his will that is an eternal Decree made in infinite wisdom So that two Propositions are plain enough in the Text 1. Prop. 1 That there hath been an eternal purpose and counsel of the Divine will concerning all things 2. Prop. 2 That according to this eternal counsel of the Divine will the Lord worketh all things I begin with the first of these Nothing hath come to pass nor ever shall but what the will and counsel of God hath before determined that it shall be observe that phrase That it shall be There are many things have been done and are every day done or doing in the world which the purity and holiness of God will allow him to have no efficiency in but there is no effect which he hath not willed should be done Indeed concerning the means the primary efficient or instrumental causes of actions Gods VVill hath moved variously For all good
the beginning with God but he is no-where call'd the word of God I chuse therefore rather to interpret it of that word of Power and Command which Moses Gen. 1. telleth us God used in the making of the world and the fitting and joynting of it together He said Let there be light and there was light c. Thus the Worlds were made by the Word of God so as the term is both exclusive of any other instrumental cause in the Creation of the world and expressive of the true instrumentally efficient cause which was the mighty powerful commanding virtue of the Word of God And this is enough for the explication of this term But Quest 3. What is the meaning of this that the things which are seen are not made of those things which do appear The Vulgar Latin Version reads Vt ex invisibilibus visibilia fierent that visible things should be made of those which are invisible by a transposition of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if it were not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but our Copies are otherwise If by the invisible things be meant those invisible things of God the Apostle speaks of Rom. 1.20 His eternal power and godhead So it is true and the sense much the same with what went before but else it is as Beza saith Perperam immo false Some would make the sense of the words this That the world was not made of those things which now do appear to us and are the objects of our senses but of invisible principles and elements which are not now the objects of our senses Others thus That it was made according to an invisible Platform and Idea which was Plato's notion Others say That by invisible things or things which do not appear is to be meant nothing that must be an invisible thing and the world was not made of any pre-existent matter but it was created that is produced out of a meer and total not being into a being Which sense if we allow the Apostle by it as to the Creation of the world asserteth the Truth of God against the Heathen Philosophers who could not by reason comprehend how something especially such a something as the world is should come out of nothing and therefore grew very vain in their imaginations about the pre-existing matter of which the world should be made Estius and Calvin also take notice of a much differing sense as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and it were to be read thus We by faith understand that the worlds were made by the Word of God that they might be the looking-glasses of those things which do not appear The thing indeed is true for the Apostle telleth us Rom. 1.20 That the invisible things of God are known by the things that are made But I cannot agree it the sense of this Text not only for that which Beza noteth that it is a very harsh interpretation to interpret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but because as Pareus observeth it seemeth not to be any thing of the Apostle's design to express the end here why the World 's were made by God I do therefore take the Text to be a Divine assertion of the Creation of the World against the vain imaginations of the Heathens who either dream't that it was eternal or made of a casual concourse of Atoms or from some Idea's It was saith the Apostle made of nothing by the Word of God of nothing that doth appear And so I have done with the first Member of the Proposition That the worlds were framed by the Word of God the things which are seen were not made of those things which do appear I proceed to the second Mem. 2. That we understand this by faith Here I shall speak to two things 1. What is here meant by faith 2. How do we by faith understand this Faith in Scripture sometimes signifieth the object of faith the Word of God Thus Gal. 1.23 He which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which he once destroyed Thus you read of the hearing of faith Gal. 3.2 Received you the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith that is of the Word of God particularly the Gospel sometimes it signifieth the act of faith which as it respecteth the Proposition of the word for its object is a firm and steady assent the agreement of the mind to the truth of the Proposition as it respecteth the person of the Mediator is a resting relying and recumbency upon him which is what we call the justifying act of faith you may understand the term Faith in either sense By the word of faith revealing it and by our souls acting faith in agreeing and assenting to the truth of that word we understand that the world heaven and earth was at first brought into being fitted and joynted together by the powerful Word of God commanding the production of all those Beings which are in the world and that beauty and order in which we see them placed But secondly How doth the Apostle say we understand it by faith May not this be understood by Reason if it may what need Faith in the case or why or how doth the Apostle say by faith we understand this Wherein doth Faith give us a further knowledg of this than Reason hath given the Philosopher To which I answer Undoubtedly reason hath gone a great way and may go a great way to make men understand that the world was made by God That the world was eternal was indeed the opinion of a great Pagan Philosopher but his master Plato was of another mind and he is said to have learned it from Hesiod and the most and wisest amongst the Heathens acknowledged that the world was at first by a Divine power produced out of a not-being into a being Nor indeed would their Reason allow them to judg otherwise the infinite motions the measures of things in the world their order and succession their alterations and corruptions duly considered forbiddeth reasonable souls with any consistency to themselves to affirm the world to have had an eternal existence All motions must be in time and have had a being all successions and corruptions of things plainly speak that they had a beginning if we had no assistance in the proof of it from the word of faith 2. The same Reason will agree that it gave not a first being to it self nothing is the efficient cause of it self experience tells us that it is not in the power of a man to make the least hair of his head white or black much less to make an hair Man is the noblest sublunary Creature but cannot make the meanest vegetable all that his art can do is but to counterfeit and dissemble nature if it be but as to a spire of grass or to the meanest flower of the field Now if it were not eternal if it did
man who hath by the Law of Creation a Dominion and Rule over all must cry out Who is like unto thee O Lord who is like unto thee glorious in holiness fearful in praises working wonders We may from hence observe the vanity of those Philosophers of this world who would either make the world Vse 3 as fitted and joynted together to be eternal and without a beginning or at least some Chaos or heap of confused matter to have been so as also of those who as to the Creation of the world will have God at first to have made such a confused Chaos or Mass and then out of that to have made all things The Potter indeed must have such an heap of Clay before he can make his Pots of several sizes and fashions but if he were to create this Clay certainly he would go the furthest way about for by the same power that he must first have to give being to his Clay he might make his several sorts and sizes of Vessels and save himself that double labour I conclude by Faith we understand that the worlds were made by the Power or by the Word of God His Power was the efficient cause of it his Goodness the final cause of its Creation his Wisdom the exemplary cause 4. Vse 4 We may from hence learn the usefulness necessity and excellency of faith Faith taken for the object of it Faith taken for the habit and act of it The Word of God the habit of Faith the exercise of it they are all useful We have great magnifyings of Reason and indeed Reason is a noble faculty it is that to the soul which the eye is to the body which light is to the eye but Faith is not useless because Reason is useful yea Reason must ride but in the second Chariot Reason would have taught us little of Spirits indeed we by Faith know little of them but we know so much as God will please to reveal we had known much less if left only to what conclusions we could have raised from natural principles Reason would have taught us nothing in particular how and in what order or in what time the world was made Nay 2ly There is not an use of Faith only but a necessity of it The Creation of the world is an object of our Faith and to be received upon the credit of the Word of God we must so assent to it as by our assent to give an homage to Gods Authority in revealing it this we cannot do but by Faith Finally from this discourse appeareth the Excellency of Faith it maketh us to understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God it puts our mind beyond doubts and endless disputes and incertain fluctuations it leaveth us not to the endless inquiries of Philosophy how these things could be c. Lastly Vse 5 Learn hence how every inanimate and brute creature praiseth God and how infinitely all rational creatures are obliged to the service and obedience of God 1. How every inanimate and brute creature praiseth God The heavens saith the Psalmist declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handy-work Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night declareth knowledg there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard their line is gone out to the end of the earth and their words to the end of the world In them hath he set a tabernacle for the Sun c. Psal 19.1 2 3 4. There is no Creature but giveth a mute praise to God they shew the Lords Glory and praise him as the picture finely drawn doth praise the Limner or the building praiseth the Mason or Carpenter as any great effect praiseth its efficient cause And this is a thing we ought to attend and observe in our Contemplation and use of the Creatures we should view God in them see how God is glorified in their brave and useful structure and composition Oh how sweet a Contemplation would this be if we could view the Glory Power Wisdom infinite Goodness of the Creator in them all But secondly How particularly is man concerned to praise love and serve God the Creator of Heaven and Earth to man he hath alone given Reason to make conclusions to man hath he given the word of Faith for man he hath made all these things and given him a Dominion over the work of his hands Now who planteth a vineyard saith the Apostle 1 Cor. 9.7 and eateth not of the fruit thereof The world is a great Vineyard God hath planted it he hath let it out to the Sons of men as his husband-men Should he not eat of the fruit thereof The inanimate Creatures they declare the glory of God the Heavens declare his Glory the Earth sheweth his handy-work the Sun the Moon the Stars carry the high Praises and Glory of God to the utmost ends of the Earth Do not you that are Fathers think your Sons obliged to serve and to honour you Yet you were but partial causes of their being God did much more than you to their production Doth not the Master think his servant is obliged to serve and to honour him because he hath made him he hath raised him up to some capacity of living in the world to some dignity The Potter thinketh that he may command the Pots which he hath made and shall not man be the servant of the most high God who made him and who made the world for him 1. In Reason he ought to be so he oweth his being his well-being all that he hath all the accommodations of his life unto God 2. God expecteth it from him Nulla necessitate coactus saith Holy Augustine nulla sua cujusdam utilitatis indigentia permotus sed sola bonitate ac liberrima voluntate fecit Deus quicquid fecit God was not compelled to make the world he needed it not he made it meerly of his own goodness and for the use of man Can any one think that God doth not expect homage and service from man And from hence three things must follow 1. That the presumptuous sinner must necessarily be the most unnatural creature he serveth not the end of his Creation The grass was made for the food of the beast that serveth its end it grows is cut down c. The beasts serve their end they were made for the use of man for his food his covering they dye daily are clipped shorn flea'd and all for man only the sinner serveth not his end He was made for the Honour and Glory of God he doth nothing less yea his whole life is a dishonouring God an abusing of his holy name and things 2. That this sinner is the most ingrateful creature in the world he acts from his will and choice with the use of Reason Now doing so considering that not only he is born in the Lords house and is his Creation but all the Creatures upon which he lives by the use of which his life
The infinite variety with the different qualities of created Beings yet all conspiring together for the good and order of the whole the order we see amongst them their subserviencies and subordinations each to other they all speak that there is a God that by his Providence ruleth the world Whoso lifteth up his eyes to the Heavens and considereth the constant unwearied motions of those great celestial bodies with the evenness of them so as they are reducible to a science of all other most certain liable to little more exceptions than an extraordinary command to the Sun to stand still in Gibeon and the Moon in the valley of Ajalon or to go backward some few degrees as in Hezekiah's time or considereth the vast bodies of water sometime in the Heavens coming upon us not as water from a pail but through a water-pot must needs conclude a Superiour hand directing and guiding the motions and holding the thin Cloud that it is not rent while the rain makes its orderly passage by drops through the thin and subtil parts of it Whoso standeth by the Sea-side and observeth that vast body of water driven by fierce winds sometimes and constantly by its natural motion invading the Earth as if it would presently swallow it up and observeth it after the ceasing of the wind or a six hours progressive motion gradually retreating and leaving it out of fear yea and further leaving a water-mark for the following flow unless at some certain times before and after the full of the Moon must needs acknowledg a Supreme Being setting bounds unto it which it hath no reason to prescribe to it self nor is it subject to the Command of the greatest Potentate on Earth Finally he that standeth upon the Earth and considers its annual productions the variety of Creatures of all orders in it their Sympathies and Antipathies their Successions the varieties of their Beings Motions and Qualities and yet their mutual subserviencies to one another and subjection to each other must be no less than a most absurd and bruitish Atheist if he will not acknowledg that no less than the daily and mighty influence of an Almighty God could compound their living together upon the same soil in any harmonious agreement each with other That every thing should know its seasons and keep its bounds and be in subjection to man weaker than many of them and not transgress its order or end but when armed by God as a part of his Host to revenge his quarrels upon sinners must be from a knowledg which God gives them and a Law he daily puts upon them but as the Psalmist saith Psal 107.23 They that go down to the Sea in Ships that do business in great waters these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy winds which lift up the waves thereof they mount up to the heavens they go down to the depths their soul is melted because of trouble the breaking of a wave would swallow them up Who is he that maintaineth the continuity of the parts of the water that the waves break not nor the water divideth under the mighty weight that is upon it who but the mighty God could do it In short he seemeth to have taken a very cursory slight and overly view of the Works of Creation that doth not see a plain necessity of a Divine Providence to uphold the various Beings within the compass of it and their various Qualities to compound the disagreements of their natures into an harmony proportioned to the preservation of the Universe Whoso is wise and hath observed these things he must understand both the Power and Wisdom of God in all these things and consequently the loving-kindness of the Lord. I shall shut up this with that Pious foot of the Psalmists Song of Providence Psal 107. O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness for his wonderful works to the children of men 2. If we consider the Nature of God we shall find that he who acknowledgeth a Divine Being and denieth a providential care of all created Beings hath but set up an idol in his heart and rather owneth a God with his tongue than in any truth and sincerity For what do we mean by that term God but an immense Being filling all places a first cause of all things Almighty in power of infinite activity wisdom and goodness We can hardly so much as fancy such a Being but by the same conception we must establish a Divine Providence 1. If we allow not God to be the first Cause we must grant a former cause of things and this were to deny God while we pretend to own him It is as much nonsense to assert one before the first as one higher than the highest But how is God the first cause if he hath no influence upon second causes nor they any dependance upon him If they say that second causes have a dependance on him and he an influence on them they establish what we contend for viz. a Divine Providence 2. If we allow God to be an immense and infinite being filling all places we must either allow him to fill all places as an oculate active being or as a sensless inanimate being A bulk of lead or stone filleth a place but takes no notice of any thing in it A man filleth a place which circumscribeth him but seeth and observeth all things It were an high blasphemy against God to affirm that he filleth all places only as a Log or a bulk of Lead filleth a particular place if he filleth all places as an animate being that hath eyes and ears he must needs see and hear and observe all things in all places which his Being filleth Whoso granteth this doth in a great measure own and acknowledg a Divine Providence 3. But this Doctrine is fully confirmed to us if we will but recognize God a being of infinite mercy and goodness God is not like the Ostrich of which Job saith 39.14 She leaves her eggs in the earth and warmeth them in the dust and forgetteth that the foot may crush them or the wild beast may break them she is hardned against her young ones It is our great vanity that labouring under a difficulty to conceive of any being above our own pitiful perfection and capacity we fancy to our selves strange Idea's of God We can hardly apprehend an immense being that should fill all places if we could we should easily conclude a Divine Omniscience If we can fancy any thing of that yet we are ready to conceive of him according to the lazy imperfections of our natures and think of God as of some great and mighty Prince that hath either through inactivity or for greater state mewed up himself in his Court and gives up himself instead of his business of Government to divertisements of pleasure leaving the care of Government upon his Counsellors or some principal Ministers of State Hence the mistake of
of living bodies must be 1. Something that hath a capacity to be turned into the substance of our bodies else how can it nourish Hence it is that a man cannot feed or be nourished by stones or dirt there is not in these things a capacity to be turned into humane flesh 2. It must have something of contrariety in it to the body nourished otherwise the stomach would make no alteration of it And 3. It must have in it something of similitude else it would never incorporate with us and join it self to our flesh or mix it self with our blood All our food must have some qualities in it that must be accommodate to our nourishment and these qualities or faculties must be upheld in it and upheld too in some due proportion Hence we see that food when corrupted and putrified and so hath lost these faculties and vertues and they be extinguished it instead of nourishing us breeds diseases and destroyeth us Now God preserveth the life and being of his creatures by a daily concurrence of his Providence as well by upholding the nourishing vertues and qualities of their food as those natural faculties by which they crave concoct and digest or attract their nourishment or expel and throw out that part of it which is not proper for the nourishment of their bodies But this is enough to have spoken as to that first principal Faculty by which the life and being of all sensitive living creatures are preserved 2. A second principal Faculty by which the life of creatures is preserved is that of Respiration or breathing which is the motion of the breasts and lungs by which they draw in air and again puff it out thus continually cooling the heat of the heart which would else soon determine the life of the creature A Faculty so necessary that we daily see with what difficulty the creature liveth when it is any way incumbred daily experience we have of this in persons sick of Consumptions or Asthma's c. When any living creature is once wholly deprived of this it presently dieth This God giveth and maintaineth He giveth to all Life and Breath and all things Acts 17.25 He also taketh it away Thou takest away their breath and they die saith the Psalmist Psalm 104.29 God is said to be the God who spreadeth forth the Earth and that which cometh out of it he that giveth breath unto the people and spirit to them that walk thereon Isa 42.5 Now God preserveth both man and beast by upholding this power or faculty in them by which they draw in and puff out the air yea and his daily Providence appeareth also in the preserving of the air which they suck in ordinarily from such affections and qualities as would destroy life in his creatures I say ordinarily to except those special remissions of Divine Providence in this case by which God sometimes punisheth persons and places by a noxious and infected air as the procreative causes of more Epidemical sicknesses and distempers And this sheweth us how reasonable a thing it is That all that hath breath should praise the Lord according to the Psalmists exhortation Psalm 150. 3. A third principal Faculty necessary to the upholding of the life and being of creatures is that by which they sleep and take their alternate rest Quod caret alterna requie durabile non est Experience tells us that we can live very little while without sleep we must therefore have a power to sleep There is no living creature that is always asleep or always awake we must have a power to sleep and a power to awake again or we cannot live Some sleep more some less all must sleep sometime Sleep is a cessation of the common sense and the exterior senses from action The Eye seeth not the Ear heareth not c. Now this is caused say the Philosophers from the ascending up of vapors out of the stomach which stop the passage of the animal spirits from the brain which vapours when they are spent and the passages are clear again man waketh and the senses return to their exercise Be the cause what it will certain it is it is necessary in order to the holding of our souls in life we must have a power both to sleep and to wake and this power must be preserved and by the upholding and preserving of this power and faculty both men and beasts are upheld preserved and kept alive Now I say this is Gods work he that made the deep sleep at first to fall upon Adam in the day in which he was created Gen. 2.21 makes ordinary sleep to fall upon all living creatures He giveth sleep to his Beloved Psalm 127. v 2. It is a piece of his promise Prov. 3.24 Thou shalt lie down and thy sleep shall be sweet David complained that God held his eyes waking Psalm 77.4 And thus I have shewed you how God preserveth both man and beast by upholding and preserving those powers and faculties in their Bodies by which they are kept in life and their Being is preserved 2. But both men and beasts are very small when they first come into the World Their Beings afterward increase and this must be by a natural power which God the great Creator hath created in them at first and made every creature to be brought forth with without which it could not grow beyond its proportion in the first day of its production into the World This is that which the Philosopher calls Facultatem Auctricem the power by which the living creature grows and increaseth to a just perfection and measure I say a just measure for no creature groweth always The God of Nature hath set a just measure to every Being This Power also must be upheld or the World would be full of none but Children and very small beasts The Psalmist saith Psalm 104.14 He causeth the grass to grow for the cattel and by a parity of Reason he must also cause the cattel to grow for the grass Christ hath taught us that we cannot add one cubit to our stature It is true man and beast grows to both their just dimensions by a natural faculty mans growth stops at thirty years or under by a natural Law But God at first created in them this Natural faculty and God by a daily concourse of his Providence upholdeth enliveneth and assisteth this natural faculty and by this particular act of his Providence he doth preserve and uphold both man and beast as in their Beings so in their just dimensions and proportions in which we see them supplying and adorning the World 3. But thirdly Supposing all living creatures preserv'd and upheld in their several lives and beings by Gods upholding and preserving those several powers and faculties in the object of their nourishment by which they are made fit nourishment for their bodies and those several faculties in their bodies which are the subjects to be nourished by vertue of which they desire their due food concoct
digest it c. and to uphold the just proportions of creatures in the World by preserving and upholding in them that faculty by which they dilate themselves grow and increase to the law of Magnitude which the great Creator hath set for them yet if they had not all a several power to propagate their species or kind the World or at least the living creatures in the World would quickly cease the days of mans life are three or fourscore years the days of most other creatures much less God hath therefore created all living things with a power to propagate their species some one way some another of all he hath he saith in the day they were created Let them increase and multiply and hath created several powers and vertues in them by which as all species so most individuals doth so To some individuals of most kind he denieth this or at least concurreth not by his Providence to the effects of it Some Men and Women are barren so are some beasts generally not so and this is another act of Divine Providence by which he preserveth both man and beast and eminently attributed to God The Rabbies tell us of three Keys which God keepeth the Key of the Clouds of the Womb of the Grave None can give Rain but God none can open the Graves but God none can open the Womb but God Psalm 113.9 He maketh the barren womb to keep house Psalm 127.3 Children are the heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward It is as true of other creatures as of man He turneth a fruitful land into barrenness Psalm 107.34 It was Gods Promise Exod. 23.26 There shall nothing cast her young nor be barren in thy land Deut. 7.14 There shall neither male nor female be barren amongst you nor amongst your cattel The flocks of the field and of the air the herds of Cattel the multitudes of Fish in the waters the numberless Families of the Earth they are all preserved by the daily concurrence of Divine Providence in the upholding of that natural power and vertue with which he hath created them by which they propagate their species by the propagation of which and the multiplication and the succession of individuals in it Man and beast the whole living World is preserved 4. There is yet a fourth sort of Powers and Faculties which I called those faculties abilities or powers which are necessary to every living being for the performance of its several operations according to the specifick nature of it God also preserveth man and beast by upholding and preserving these to their several operations The Herb hath only a vegetative soul by vertue of which it grows buds blossoms produceth its seed c. The beasts have a sensitive soul which works a little further Man hath a reasonable soul comprehensive of all the powers and vertues of the former and extending further he seeth heareth perceiveth things by his outward and inward senses By his Understanding he gains the notion of things judgeth of them he willeth and chuseth by his will c. Now his power to all these and other operations proper to his nature must be preserved and upheld or he can do none of these things These powers are not indeed all necessary to our being and the keeping of our souls in life but the upholding of them is necessary to our perfection and the actions that are proper to the stations wherein we are and the capacities in which we stand God hath not only created in the Soul a power to see hear tast c. and created the Eye to be the Organ to the visive Faculty and the Ear to be the Organ to the hearing faculty and the pallat to be the Organ for the faculty of discerning tasts but he concurreth with his Providence both to uphold the faculty in the soul and to keep the several Organs in tune and order that by and through them as means those faculties might be exercised and as the upholding both the faculties and Organs or instruments the bodily members by which they are exercised in their due state is the cause why we hear see tast c. so Gods withholding that concurrence as to some individual persons is the reason why some are deaf blind c. For though there be second causes of these infirmities decays and weaknesses in humane bodies yet all these are under the governance of the first cause either set on work by God or permitted in their motions by God and this is as true also of the Locomotive faculty the power in man or beasts to move from one place to another for their food and dispatch of business for though it be the Soul that moveth yet it is by vertue of a power which God created in it to command the motion of the feet for the moving of the whole body and man moveth no longer than this inward power or faculty is upheld by God and his feet which are the Organs or instruments of motion are kept in order free from dislocation or ruptures of joints or bones or the incumbrances of troublesome humours the keeping of which freedom dependeth upon the influence of the Divine Power and thus requiritur continuus tam verbi conservatricis quam creatricis influxus to preserve man and beast there is required as well a continual influence of the upholding-word as the influence of the creating-word to give both man and beast a first being So as Raymundus de Sabunde saith truly Ut radiorum esse a Sole umbra a corpore ita omnes creaturae a divinâ pendent conservatione All creatures depend upon the Divine Power for their preservation as the beams of the Sun for their being depend upon the Sun and the shadow upon the body I shall add no more to my Discourse concerning this third Act of Providence by which God preserveth both man and beast 4. A fourth Act by which God preserveth both man and beast is Gods discovering to his creatures the vertue of other creatures with which he hath created them for the amending repairing and recovering of the decays and disorders to which their frail natures are subjected and concurrence in the use and application of them upholding the vertues in them in order to that end and blessing the application of them For the delivery of his creatures from diseases and accidents to which they are subjected Mesua the great Arabian Doctor is said to have cried out Solus Sanat languores Deus That God alone doth heal sicknesses and diseases God made man healthy in the day wherein he was created and most think he should have continued so if by his fall he had not disordered the crasis or temperament of his bodily humours corrupted the air brought a curse upon the Earth which hath ever since brought forth as well bryers and thorns to prick and offend his flesh as herbs and fruits to increase and nourish it Man is subject to a
unto him Indeed such a subjection or subordination the Heathens fancied amongst their idols Jupiter was their supreme idol others were subject unto him but he is no God that can truckle under another and be in subjection unto any Being And this greatness of God calleth to all men to fear before him and do reverence unto him who shall not fear before that God whose throne is prepared in the heaven and whose Kingdom ruleth over all and for a free and voluntary subjection to him for he ruleth over all not as a Tyrant and Oppressor whose title lies in his Sword but as one who is a native Prince and hath a rightful title not to obey whom is the highest Rebellion which Samuel compareth to the sin of witchcraft But I must leave the distinct and full application of this Doctrine for a further discourse SERMON IX Psal CIII 19. The Lord hath prepared his Throne in the Heavens and his Kingdom ruleth over all I Am at this time to make Application of what you have heard concerning the Governing-Providence of God I shall do it under three Heads shewing you how it may be useful for Instruction for Consolation and for Exhortation In the first place you may conclude from hence Vse 1 In what sense alone any thing can be said to be casual or necessary what to determine concerning Chance and Fortune or Fate As to the first I shall only lay down this Conclusion Concl. That although many things as to our eyes and apprehensions of them may appear casual yet there is nothing so with reference unto God the first universal cause It is truly said by Augustine that chance and fortune are but terms of humane ignorance as we say of the old Philosophers occult qualities they are but the refuges of ignorance so the same may be said of chance and fortune He described chance well that called it inopinatum rei eventum an event of a thing which man thought not of it is not inordinatus eventus but inopinatus there is no event of any thing that is a slip of Providence not ordered and disposed by him whose Kingdom ruleth over all Beings and existences motions and actions yea errours and obliquities nothing cometh to pass in the world but was foreseen fore-ordained fore-ordered and that in infinite wisdom but many things come to pass which we did not think of could not foresee whose causes are hidden from us these things we say come by chance and fortune A word indeed not very fit for a Christians mouth I remember Augustine more than once repents that he had defiled his tongue with it The Heathens ignorant of the true God and of his influence on all things devised such a blind God as Fortune and assigned it a place amongst their other Idols Te facimus fortuna Deum But Christians must own no such blind cause of things they believe there is a God whose throne is prepared in the Heavens and whose Kingdom ruleth over all and therefore can leave no place for chance or fortune You read of a case Deut. 19.5 which one would think if any thing in the world were casual and fortuitous that were so A man goeth into the Wood with his neighbour to hew wood and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the ax to cut down a tree and the head slippeth from the helve and lighteth upon his neighbour that he dye What can be imagined more casual and fortuitous than this for the head of an Hatchet to fly off from the helve and to kill a man at work with him who had the Hatchet such were the cases also mentioned Numb 35.22 23. Casting a thing upon a man without laying of wait or with any stone wherewith a man may dye seeing him not nor seeking his harm yet in these cases Exod. 21.13 God is said to deliver the person slain into his hand who involuntarily and unwarily hath been the cause of his death There are many things which indeed to us are casual nothing is so to God he hath ordered all he ruleth and governeth all actions Ahimaaz and Cushi knew not of each others journey or at least he that ran first knew nothing of the others journey they both met at the Court of David to carry tydings of Absaloms death but Joab had ordered the running of both Ahimaaz casually met Cushi there but though it was casual to him it was not so to Joab who sent him I say nothing is in it self casual or with respect unto God casual with respect to us many things are so that is we do not know the causes of them but God ordereth and directeth all his Kingdom his Rule and Government extendeth to it his hand is in it either permitting or effecting it Secondly You may from hence conclude how things are necessary Arminians make a great deal of stir about this and charge those whom they call Calvinists as maintaining a fatal necessity of all things Let us examine the word Fate a little we shall find a three or fourfold use of it there is two or three sorts of Fate which we shall condemn as freely as any of them but in a fourth sense we shall find the word honest enough and to destroy it will ask better arguments than any they have yet favoured the world with 1. There is a Stoical fate The Stoicks were a sort of ancient Philosophers you read of their name in Scripture Act. 17.18 They fancied an eternal necessity of things Cui Deum licet nolentem subesse fingebant nexum in rebus ipsis to which they conceived God himself though against his will was subjected according to this they fancied all things came to pass by an equal necessity and that the wills of men were forced by it This is a fate to be abominated by all those that own God and him as the first cause of all things 2. There is a Mathematical fate This was a necessity of things depending upon the motions and influences of the stars these men indeed make God to be the ruler of the Stars but the Stars to be the Rulers of mens motions and actions according to that verse in credit amongst them Astra regunt homines sed regit astra Deus as if God did not exercise a daily Dominion and Power over the Creation but had made the celestial bodies which being created and set in their order move other things by a fatal necessity Of both these Augustine saith Si cor tuum non esset fatuum non crederes fatum if thou hadst not a foolish heart thou wouldst not credit such a thing as fate 3. There is thirdly a Physical or Natural fate by which we understand that necessity which God hath established in natural causes according to which they cannot but produce such and such effects supposing them not hindered by the supreme cause thus the fire burneth necessarily and we say all natural causes move necessarily and produce their effects unless suspended hindered or
restrained by some superiour cause this is called in Scripture Gods Covenant with day and night heat and cold summer and winter Such a necessity all must acknowledg in the operation of all natural agents the power and pleasures of God only being reserved to countermand their operations which when he doth we call it a miraculous work of God thus day and night cold and heat seed-time and harvest summer and winter are under a fate they necessarily follow one another but as God was the first cause of this necessity by the Covenant he established so their event is in the power of God to hinder or suspend or alter as he pleaseth 4. But then Lastly There is a Theological or Christian fate which is nothing but a necessity of event imposed upon things by the most holy wise eternal free purpose and counsel of God executed by his Providence It is true the name of fate soundeth ill because of the Stoical and Mathematical vanities about it but if we take it for Quod Deus in animo suo fatus est apud se statuit ac decrevit what God hath said within himself purposed and decreed it is innocent enough Now whoso denieth a fate if they will call it so in this sense doth not so well as he should do understand the Divine Nature or the Scriptures We neither deny saith Augustine an order of causes which the will of God hath set neither do we call it fate In the mean time they are very ignorant that cannot see the difference betwixt this necessity of events and the Stoical fate 1. The Stoicks subjected God himself to fate this necessity dependeth upon the will of God as the cause of it 2. They made their fate pre-existent to God 3. They asserted a fate that took away all the liberty of mans will Now this is no consequent saith Augustine that if God hath set a certain order of all causes Non est autem consequens ut si Deo certus est omnium causarum ordo nihil sit in nostrae voluntatis arbitrio Aug. l. 5. De Civ dei then nothing is in the power of our wills The upshot of all is this We say there are a thousand things happen in respect of us casually and fortuitously that is we know not the causes of them and manner of their operations yet there is nothing so in respect of God And though all things happen necessarily as to the event with respect to the decree of God which hath set all things in an order and in respect of the universal power and influence of his Governing Providence yet for such things as are done by us they are not necessarily brought forth but freely our will is not forced but acteth as a free agent But I shall add no more to the first Branch of Instruction 2. Branch What you have heard may help to confirm your Faith as to the glorious nature of God and that in four or five Particulars 1. As to his Omniscience or knowledg of all things He must needs know all things who governeth all things He governs all the beings and existences of his creatures all their motions and actions all their errours obliquities and Omissions as I have shewed you which he could not do if they were not all naked in his sight all things must needs be open and naked in his sight with whom we have to do The Doctrine of Gods Omniscience is evident from the work of Creation He that made the Eye shall he not see He that made the Ear shall he not hear and it is evident from the work of Providence if his Kingdom ruleth over all 2. Secondly It as much confirmeth us in the Doctrine of Gods Omnipotence If his Kingdom ruleth over all 1. He must have a power to Rule and govern all 2. He must be in a capacity to exercise this power and there must be no power able to resist him So that you may see the Reasonableness of those titles given to God in Scripture viz. The Lord God Omnipotent The Almighty God The King of Kings The Lord of Lords The Lord of all the Hosts of Heaven and Earth If there were any thing too hard for God if he could be resisted he could not rule over all 3. Thirdly It may confirm you in the Activity of the Divine Essence The Schoolmen say That God is Totus Actus wholly an Act always moving working operating so it must be if he hath such a Rule as I have been describing to you He must fill all places not as a meer inactive moles and bulk of a thing filleth a place but so as at the same time he is in all places at work seeing observing governing effecting and directing or restraining and over-ruling We have no Similitude to express it by but cometh much short That of the Soul in man comes nearest it which is in all parts of the body animating actuating and governing of it 4. It confirms us in our belief of the Infinite wisdom of God He is called The only wise God 1 Tim. 1.17 and Jude v. 25. This Doctrine concludes it We see it requires a great deal of wisdom to govern a Family and keep it if it consists of many members in order but much more to govern the greater bodies of people in Towns Cities Kingdoms Empires c. Such a variety there is of motions humours passions and tempers of people Who is able to conceive what Wisdom it requires to govern all beings in the World all motions and actions of all creatures in the World and to keep them in any order or decorum at all In fine Next to the work of Creation there is nothing like the work of Providence well-studied to give a man the true notion of God and let us know what manner of Essence the Divine Essence necessarily must be Thus much by way of Instruction Secondly Vse 2 This Doctrine serveth for the unspeakable consolation of the people of God Psalm 97.1 The Lord reigneth let the Earth rejoyce let the multitude of Isles be glad thereof It is matter of rejoycing to all the World that the Lord reigneth and there is none so vile and wicked but experienceth much though many consider it not of the good effects of this universal Dominion which God exerciseth The Devils cannot do what they please in it the wills and passions of men cannot have their swing There is an Almighty One that holds the reins upon the brutish affections and passions of men the ill effects of which the greatest Atheists and contemners of God which live in the World would quickly experience but to the people of God as being the lesser number the most hated and maligned part of the World and the far weaker as to natural strength and power besides the restraint their Souls are under from putting out what natural power and strength they have beyond the Divine Law doth most eminently demonstrate to them the good effects of the Lords
Vse 1. In the first place let then all men that live upon the Earth praise the Lord but especially such as are superiors and rulers over others and more especially such as are his Church The Psalmist Psal 135.1 calls to all saying Praise the Lord praise ye the name of the Lord and ver 19 20 21. He calleth in particular Bless the Lord O house of Israel Bless the Lord O house of Aaron Bless the Lord O house of Levi you that fear the Lord bless the Lord Blessed be the Lord out of Zion which dwelleth at Hierusalem 1. This observation calleth to all the sons and daughters of men to bless the Lord. We are all sociable creatures and much of the comfort of our lives lyeth in our societies and fellowships one with another either in our family-societies or in our civil-societies or in our Church-societies We should think it a life worse than death to be condemned to live like a wild Ass alone in the wilderness Now there are some lusts of men that would spoil us of all this comfort God peculiarly sets himself against them and makes these the marks for his arrows of vengeance The Jews said of the Centurion He hath loved our nation and hath built us a synagogue We may say of our good God he hath loved mankind for he hath taken care to preserve order in humane societies and severely to chasten the invaders upon the rights of others What an ingagement doth this lay upon all men to praise the Lord Certainly sirs there is a great deal of praise and glory and homage due to God from all men as they are concerned in their several societies There is a great deal of glory due to God from families for his testimony against those lusts of men such as are murtherers and adulterers which in a short time would spoil all the comfort of those societies Certainly every family is bound to worship God and to walk with God But particularly 1. Let Rulers praise the Lord. Let all the Princes of the Earth give homage to him that ought to be served they are more especial marks for furious and ambitious mens lusts Gods Providence as you have heard is eminently seen in preventing their dangers in revenging their harms 2 Sam. 23.3 4 5. Surely then as David saith those that rule over men should be just ruling them in the fear of the Lord their light should be like the light of the morning without clouds God hath not only set them up as lights upon an hill but he hath made his special Providence to be a lanthorn about them that 't is rarely that the wind of sedition and treason prevails to blow them out and then 't is ordinarily for some eminent Provocation of God But I am not speaking to persons in that capacity You that are parents praise the Lord Gods special Providence you see reacheth you and in a great measure secureth you from that great heart-ach of rebellious and disobedient children I know you will say How then cometh this to be the great affliction of many good parents To which I answer 1. There is many a good parent may have been but like good old Ely too indulgent and cockering to their children ordinarily God keepeth up the authority of parents over their children until themselves have prostituted it and in the rebellion and disobedience of their children they may read their own sin and see as much cause to be humbled for that as any thing else as David in the case of Adonijah 1 King 1.5 6. And herein the goodness of God towards parents will be seen that if he doth not upon their endeavours secure to them the duty of their children yet he will not fail to revenge their quarrels against them 2. Let the poor and weak of the earth praise the Lord he hath declared himself the father of the fatherless and the judg of the widows a refuge for the oppressed Psal 68.5 Exod. 22.5 Psal 10.11 How are all the widows and fatherless children all the poor and oppressed people of the world bound to praise and to serve this God who hath taken upon himself the special patronage and protection of them This indeed would be the best use we could possibly make of this Observation relating to the special Providence of God if it might lay a special obligation upon all those who are thus especially concerned to magnifie God as their great patron and defender And how can they praise God more effectually than in doing those particular duties which concern them all in their respective relations or with reference to those peculiar circumstances of Providence under which they are acted I shall add but one branch of Application more and indeed it is not a new Use for it is a part of our praise and homage which we owe unto God upon this Reflexion viz. Vse 2. To all to take heed of those sins which God in his word declares himself more eminently to abhor and in the execution of Providence doth most severely punish All sin is in it self a filthy and abominable thing and the just object of every good mans hatred for should not we hate what God hateth and what hath of all things the greatest opposition to God yes we ought to hate it with a perfect hatred But such is the naughtiness of our heart that we are not so led to an hatred and abhorrence of sin from the intrinsecal evil and obliquity of it as from the dangerous and pernicious consequence of it Death eternal death is the wages of every sin but this being only matter of faith to bold sinners none having ever come from the dead to give them an account of those flames the punishments of sin in this life are those things which most deter carnal sensual men But if men will look no further nor believe any more yet let this lay some law upon us and make us afraid of those sins which I have instanced in being such whose judgment the Providence of God seldom letteth sleep so long as to another life Let this mind us not to meddle with them that are given to change that curse Kings and Rulers in their bed-chambers and are of turbulent and unquiet spirits always plotting and contriving seditions and treasons and disturbances to civil governours it is very rarely that God suffereth their designs to come to issue or their persons to come to the grave in peace 2. What a law should it lay upon the rich and great men of the earth to take heed of violent perverting justice and judgment of turning away the causes of the widows and the fatherless in judgment To consider that he who is the highest doth consider the matter and there is one higher than the highest of them who abuse their power to trample the poor under foot If men be not turned Atheists and have banished all the fear of God from their eyes and hearts it must a little give them law and lay
than to will iniquity and of purer hands than to work iniquity But the difficulty lyeth here It is plain from this discourse that God useth peoples sins as a medium to his glory he having willed the end must needs have willed the means for though a thing may be fortuitous to man yet nothing is fortuitous or casual to God A man now in order to the accomplishment of some design of his may make use of some things which fall in and he never foresaw nor fore-thought nor design'd as a means in order to his accomplishment but it were blasphemy to suppose any such thing of God A great question there is amongst Divines what influence God hath upon the sinful actions of men It falleth not so fully in my way at present as to engage me in any full discourse upon it Certain it is that the holy God putteth malice into the heart of no man nor doth at all incite him to any sinful actions This were indeed to make God the Author of sin he commands it not that is impossible he approveth it not he inclineth not the will of man unto it But as certain it is 1. That he assisteth the faculties and members of a man to those natural actions which his own lust and malice maketh sinful He assisted the tongues of Ananias and Saphira to speak but it was their own lust and malice which inclined them rather to speak that which was false than the truth In him we live move and have our being 2. As certain it is That he permitteth and suffereth men to execute their lusts otherwise they could not execute them he could most certainly hinder them Forty years he suffered the Jews manners in the wilderness Acts 13.18 He suffered all nations to walk in their own ways Act. 14.16 Now for this sufferance I think it is well expressed by an eminent Divine of our own Gods permission of sin saith he lyes in the suspension of his own efficiency and the removal of the impediments Pelagians dream that God gave unto man a perfect freedom of will and so did as it were Dormitare in operibus suis sleep while his Enemies sowed the tares of sin but no such thing must be imagined of God Nor doth God only remove those impediments by which the sinner might be hindred in his acts of sin he is properly said to be hindred in an action who cannot do what he hath a mind to do now God doth something more in his permission of mens sins than not hinder their commission of it he suspendeth that efficiency by which they were restrain'd or which should incline them to do otherwise 3. He willeth that the sin should be though he doth not will to effect it Indeed for God to will the effecting or committing of sin is not consistent with the purity and holiness of God God's permission of sin and willing it in the effect doth ponere effectum non causam it doth assert the effect not the cause his willing it in this sense doth by no means imply his procuring it inciting to it or approbation of it It is not procurans volitio and here Divines say rightly Deus absque jactura sanctitatis offendiculo velle potest peccata vult rem effici non effectum dare He willeth the thing should be done but he doth not will the doing of it Who shall dare to say that God did not will that Judas should betray Christ and Pilate condemn him and that the Jews should crucifie him When the Apostle saith That they did but according to whatsoever Gods hand and counsel had determined before to be done Act. 4.28 And that he was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledg of God Act. 2.23 If God did not will that most vile action should be done how did his hand and counsel determine it How was he delivered by the counsel of God which the Scripture expresly affirms And this is all that I know that Mr. Calvin or any that tread in his steps have said which many now a-days have so clamoured against as if he made God the Author of sin and willed acts of sin Mr. Calvin and all sober Divines will grant them that it is inconsistent with the holy nature of God to infuse malice into the hearts of any or to incite any to any malicious and sinful action or to assist them in the sinfulness and obliquity of their action but those who have read Pareus's disputes with the Jesuites at Swalbach will easily understand what Divines these men read and with whose heifers they plow and out of whose quivers they draw their arrows of bitter words To whom the best answer is that of the Archangel to the Devil The Lord rebuke them 4. Then lastly God governeth the wicked actions of men when they are done to his own praise and glory and maketh an eminent use of them but yet a spotless use Take Pharaoh in his hardening of his heart against the Will of God revealed to him for the dismission of the Israelites God had purposed that Pharaoh's heart should harden he tells Moses so long before it came to issue God removed what might have hindred the hardening of his heart he would believe from time to time that God had done his worst and he should keep them let the mighty God do what he could he suspended his own efficiency he could have softned Pharaohs heart if he had pleased he assisted him to his natural actions he could never else have spoken the words he did nor made ready a Chariot When the action was done he governed it to his own praise and glory he said I will get me glory upon Pharaoh and he did get himself glory upon him and made Pharaoh's wrath to praise him But I will add no more to the Explication or proof of this Observation Vse 1. This now in the first place may convince us of the infinite power wisdom and goodness of God Omnipotency is usually thought to be most discovered in Creation the production of things out of a meer not-being into a being where there is no pre-existent matter for God to work upon but here seemeth yet to be a greater demonstration of Divine Power for God to make the wrath of man to praise him to bring forth the great designs of his glory out of mens sins It sheweth us also the infinite wisdom of God The natural sagacity of the bee is seen in sucking honey out of poysonous herbs and flowers a thing of the sweetest taste out of flowers and herbs of bitterest taste and in doing it it by its chymistry commendeth the wisdom of its Maker who hath given it this natural skill The acquired art and skill of the Apothecary and Chymist who make the desperatest poysons which have the greatest contrariety to humane nature to serve for medicines to heal mens diseases commendeth the wisdom of God for their God hath taught them this discretion But oh the wisdom of God! to make
life as they can I say which way soever men will consider themselves or whatsoever they will place their ultimate felicity in whether it be in the enjoyment and vision of God to eternity or in living long and happy Still it is their highest wisdom both in their personal capacities and in their relative capacities as they stand related to others in their political or oeconomical relations as Princes Subjects Husbands Wives Parents Children Masters or Servants to govern them according to the rules and by the square of the word of God Now the observation I say of these ordinary dispositions of Divine Providence must therefore be exceedingly conducive to the increase of spiritual wisdom in our souls 2. This Observation will also teach us to understand the loving kindness of the Lord. The glory of God is by all Christians confessedly the end of mans creation and ought to be made the end of his action but herein appeareth the transcendent goodness of God That no man can act for his glory but he must also by the same actions consult his own good and be wise for himself So that in truth there is no man serveth God for nothing but in the same action by and in which he obeyeth God he also consulteth his own life health riches success in business and whatsoever can contribute not only to his eternal felicity but to his felicity and happiness in this life Now how wonderfully doth this speak the love of God to the children of men Every mans reason will tell him that there is a duty of homage and honour which is due from man unto God God is our Creator we are his creatures In him we live move and have our being and equally depend upon him for our preservation and sustentation from his Providence as derive from him as our Creator and the first Author of beings to us Now as it is in the power of any man in the cause to prescribe the honour and homage which shall be grateful and acceptable to him so undoubtedly it was in the power of God and free to him to have prescribed us an homage and service that should have impeached and prejudiced or some way disadvantaged us as to our external felicity and the accommodations of this life which should make it sweet to us But in this see the great loving kindness of the Lord That no man can possibly at more advantage serve himself and the good of his Family or City or Country than by serving God and indeavouring to square his whole converse to the rule of Gods word governing himself by the Scriptures and the rules of life which it gives nor doth God require any thing of us that is ungrateful to that true Reason which is in every man All the commands of God do but pinch us in the exercise of our Lusts and Passions the exercise of which if they have their liberty and were not by a Divine Law restrained would have no better an effect from their natural tendency than the imbittering of our lives by aches and pains and grievous diseases by the rebellion crosness and undutifulness of our relations by a liberty to injustice fraud deceit and oppression This is a great demonstration of Gods loving kindness that in his rules for the government of us he hath twisted our interest with his own and made it necessary for those who most consult his honour and glory most to consult their own good and happiness and that not only as to a life to come but as to this life also Vse 2. We may learn from hence the true reason why the most of men are cursed with the want of temporal blessings I say the most of men for what I told you before must be remembred that from these general rules we must always except those particular causes where God either for the punishment of some sins in his people or for the trial of their faith and patience having reserved a better portion for them in the world to come doth think fit to exercise them with the denial of the sensible blessings of this life But setting aside those cases the general cause is their not living up to that conformity or square to the Divine rule to which they ought to live but either failing in the duties of piety and exercise of Religion to which the Divine law bindeth them or in the duties of probity and moral honesty justice temperance sobriety unity and amity which the same Law doth require of them What wonder is it to see the lazy sluggard poor Hath not God said to him Prov. 6.9 How long wilt thou sleep O sluggard when wilt thou arise out of sleep v. 11. So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth and thy want as an armed man Or to see Oppressors and Gripers of their neighbour-poor God hath told them Prov. 10.15 The destruction of the poor is their poverty Or to see the penurious man grow poor hath not God told us That to withhold more than is meet tendeth to poverty Prov. 11.24 What wonder is it to see Drunkards and Gluttons poor Hath not God said The Drunkard and Glutton shall come to poverty and drousiness shall cloth a man with rags Prov. 23.21 what wonder is it to see those that are companions of leud persons drunkards adulterers Gamesters c. grow poor Hath not God again said Prov. 28.19 That he who followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough O Israel saith God by the Prophet Hoseah Thou hast destroyed thy self but in me is thy help Hos 13.9 it is true as to mens eternal ruine but the Prophet there primarily speaks of mens destroying themselves by being the causes of punishments in this life to themselves men destroy their own lives healths bodys by drunkenness gluttony uncleanness their estates by sloth and luxury the comforts of their own lives by giving an unbridled liberty to their lusts and passions indulging the lustings of their flesh The righteous God is not to be accused for any of these things He hath given men a righteous law which to their reason approveth it self to be holy spiritual just and good but they are carnal sold unto sin slaves to their appetites to their sensual faculties and either ruine themselves by their irreligious or immoral behaviours and doing those things over which if God had not by his severe threatnings in his word hung a sword of Divine Vengeance yet in themselves and of their own nature they have a tendency to destroy life health to wast and consume estates and to deprive them of all those good things which may accommodate their lives and make them sweet and pleasant to them and in the day of their affliction they must lay the fault upon themselves and excuse God in the motions of his Providence acknowledging that it hath but fulfilled his word and brought to pass the just threatnings of his word nay not so only but that it hath only brought natural things to
use of them in their not doing so they at least render themselves inexcusable 3. This Question proceedeth upon a grand mistake viz. That all punishment is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the amendment of the person punished and that if such an end cannot be propounded or shall not be obtained Punishments are things not reconcilable to the holiness and goodness of God This now is a very great mistake and not only contrary to Divinity but to the reason of human Policy It will the more Illustrate this matter and make the way of God in this appear more easy and plain if I shew you 1. That all men agree that the amendment of the offender is not the only end of punishment but there are other ends for which the wisdom of man judgeth punishments necessary 2. That as to God Reason holds much more and the Scripture hath revealed other ends which he aimeth at in punishment than the amendment of the person offending which are highly consistent with his holiness and justice Seneca a great Pagan Philosopher mentions three ends in punishments 1. The amendment of the person offending 2. The security of others who may be in danger by his lawless sinful courses 3. The amendment of others It is true there is a punishment the end of which is only the amendment of the person offending Thus Parents punish their Children Masters their Scholars and Servants to this purpose Magistrates use whippings brandings houses of corrections goals c. But these kinds of punishments cannot reach unto death because there can be no amendment of a person after the determination of his Being It is true sinners by being cut off sometimes are stopt from further sinning but properly none can be said to be made better by being put to death and if there were no other end of punishments dictated by humane reason than the amendment of the person offending humane Laws could ordain no capital punishments But the wisdom of the Politicians of the world we see hath ordained capital punishments for some offences and some offenders yea and degrees of torment in death according to the degree of the offence Amongst us in case of Treason Malefactors are hang'd drawn and quartered in case of murther and other Felonies they are beheaded hanged burnt c. and we shall find this wisdom of men justified by the supreme Wisdom of God who ordained capital punishments for divers offences as you read in the Law of Moses Although therefore the amendment of the offender be one great end of punishments for as much as deliberate and ordinary acts of naughtiness beget in us a further proneness and inclination to them and beget ill habits in us punishments are ordained the smart of which may wean us from the pleasure which ariseth to us from sinful acts but though this be one and that a great end of punishment yet it is not the only end for which the wisdom of man teacheth him to make use of them There are others such as are The vindication of the authority of the superior from contempt the amendment of others the security of others c. It is indeed true That man not being his own end can do nothing rightly but what he doth for some good out of himself there must be something out of himself for which he acteth and that something must be good or his action will be evil and bad But it is not necessary that this good which he makes his end in punishment should be the amendment and reformation of the party punished If it were he could never punish with capital punishment Besides there is a twofold greater good than this which he may aim at 1. The glory of God and the vindication of the Divine Majesty 2. The good either of the whole body of the political society with which he is betrusted or some considerable a part of them Hence it is that Magistrates rightly cut off Blasphemers for the vindication of the glory of God as well as for the example of others and cut off Murtherers for the security of other mens lives as well as in execution of the Divine Law concerning such offenders But 2. Let me shew you that as to punishments inflicted by God Reason holdeth much more and as the Scripture revealeth so Reason justifieth other ends which he both proposeth and obtaineth in the punishment of sinners to whom affliction doth no good in order to their amendment and reformation Let me a little open this 1. Grotius de jure belli l. 2. It is truly said by a learned Author That Gods actions may be right though they have no other end beyond themselves Mans cannot be so he must act for some end some good end and that must be out of himself but the case is otherwise as to God he is his own end and may punnish a sinner for no other end than that he may be revenged upon him He hath made the wicked for the day of wrath Prov. 16.4 and saith that Author The Scripture declaring that God takes a pleasure in his vengeance upon sinners that he will mock at their calamity and laugh when their fear cometh as also the last judgment are all evident demonstrations of this Now supposing this to be true it is apparent enough that Gods bringing evil and trouble upon such sinners concerning whom he knoweth that they will never be amended by their troubles but made worse is reconcilable enough to the purity holiness and justice of God I will saith God get me glory upon Pharaoh I told you in my last Exercise that if there were no other good that came from evils of punishment than the predication and magnification of the justice and holiness of God yet that were enough to warrant the entituling of God to be the efficient cause and Author of them The making of Gods Power and Justice known the vindication of his Soveraignty and Holiness is a noble effect of Divine Providence Now where God doth not obtain the reformation and amendment of the sinner yet he obtaineth this he gets himself glory upon the poor wretch which actively refused to give him glory Divines and Philosophers too truly say That in punishments Respicitur aut utilitas ejus qui peccavit cujus intererat peccatum non esse aut indistincte quorum libet that is there is always a regard had either to the good of the offenders or to the good of some others whose interest it had been not to have had the offence committed Supposing God not always in punishments to have a respect to the good and amendment of the sinner that is punished which is most certainly true as to the punishment yet he hath respect unto another and that a far greater good the glory of his own great name Now certainly it is consistent enough with the holiness justice and goodness of God to act for the glory of his name though it be to the prejudice and ruine of his creature considering
than my time will now allow me to do SERMON XLV Psal 37. v. 1 3 4 5 7. Fret not thy self because of evil-doers neither be thou envious at the workers of iniquity Vers 3. Trust in the Lord and do good Vers 4. Delight thy self also in the Lord. Vers 5. Commit thy way unto the Lord trust also in him Vers 7. Rest in the Lord wait patiently for him Vers 8. Cease from anger and forsake wrath fret not thy self in any wise to do evil THe point I am upon is to clear up the justice equity and reasonableness of the motions of Gods Actual Providence in the prosperity of wicked men his afflictings and chastiseings of his own people and delivering them up into the hands of those who although the best of Gods People are sinners and deserve the severities of God yet are more wicked more unrighteous than they This I have cleared and made Application of my discourse so far as may concern wicked men That which only yet remains is to inform the People of God of their duty under such a dispensation This has been the case of God's people in former times the estates at least of many who truly fear God and desire to worship him according to his Will have been exposed to the vilest men and this may be a sore temptation to Gods own people I will therefore enlarge this discourse a little shewing you the duty of Gods People at such a time and for this I have chosen this Text. No other portion of Scripture so fully setting it out together as the 7 or 8 first verses of this Psalm which partly shew them 1. What they are to avoid 2. And then what they are to do The prohibitive directions are three 1. They must not fret this is repeated three times v. 1. Fret not thy self because of evil doers v. 7. Fret not thy self because of him that prospereth in his way because of the man that bringeth wicked devices to pass v. 8. Fret not thy self in any wise to do evil 2. They must not be envious v. 1. Neither be thou envious at the workers of iniquity 3. They must not be angry v. 8. Cease from anger forsake wrath The instructive directions are four The first is the exercise of faith v. 3. Trust in the Lord. v. 5. Commit thy way unto the Lord trust in him v. 7. Rest on the Lord. 2. The second is the practice of holiness 1. They must not do evil v. 8. so v. 27. They must depart from evil 2. They must do good v. 3. v. 27. The same is repeated 3. The third is They must delight themselves in the Lord. v. 4. Delight thy self also in the Lord. 4. They must wait patiently for God v. 7. You have it again repeated v. 34. Wait patiently for him Wait on the Lord and keep his way In these 6 or 7 particulars I shall open to you and press upon you your duty under such dispensations as these I will put the three first together because they have a great affinity and cognation one with another 1. It is your duty under such a dispensation Not to fret to be envious or angry The words in the Hebrew Text are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifie to inflame to kindle to burn and in a secondary sense to be angry because anger puts a man into an heat the heating of the blood about the heart by the disorder and disturbance of the gall is assigned as the natural cause of it The moral Philosopher calleth Anger the irrational perturbation of the mind others tell us it is a desire of Revenge and use to distinguish betwixt ira and iracundia making the first to be where we have a just cause the other where there is no cause but in short as to our purpose anger is to be considered 1. As a passion a natural passion and so is not in it self sinful it is a power created in us by God which we may use well or ill 2. As a Vertue when it is used in a good and justifiable cause when a man is troubled and desireth the punishment of another secundum ordinem rationis where according to Gods will he ought to be punished 3. As a Vice such the exercise of this passion proveth when a man is angry either for no just cause or in an irrational and undue manner When wicked men prosper we are commanded not to be angry not to fret wickedly and sinfully so as either to be displeased at Gods Providence as Jonah was for the gourd when God asking him if he did well to be angry plainly implieth that he did ill and not well or to desire an unjust and undue revenge upon him either when the person hath not deserved it or in an undue order or measure This Anger first boileth in the heart and there discovereth it self in evil wishes and thoughts of sinful revenge then breaketh out at the lips and sheweth it self in uncomely speeches reproaches and revilings and lastly sheweth it self in rendring evil for evil The anger which is here forbidden us under this dispensation of God is such as tendeth to the dishonor of God to the disturbance of our own Spirits wiling them and putting them into disorder and to the unjust disturbance of others From this anger it is the will of God that his people under such dispensations should cease This is the wrath they should forsake The word translated envy signifieth to envy or emulate Envy is properly an hatred of or a trouble for the felicity of another whether the cause of it be a fear of some hurt to our selves or a discontent that it is well with them or that they are in a better estate than our selves Hence is hatred detraction rejoicing in the evil of our neighbour Affliction at their prosperity c. There is a just anger at the prosperity of wicked men as God is dishonoured by reason of it and the interest of God in the world suffereth by it for the heart of a man to be hot and zealous for God yea and to desire Gods just revenge of his own name and glory upon sinners is but what he may and ought to crave and do Thus we find Moses the meekest men on the Earth often angry and executing the vengeance upon God but for a man to be displeased and discontented at Gods Providence for it or to be angry at their Bretherns good this is sinful the first is against the love which we owe to God the second against the love which we owe unto our Neighbour To desire an undue or unjust punishment of them is a sin against Justice that Justice which we owe unto all men this envying at the prosperity of sinners is forbidden also in other Texts Prov. 3.31 Envy not thou the oppressor chuse none of his ways Prov. 24.1 Be not envious as the evil doers neither desire thou to be with them In sum God in this precept forbiddeth his people under such
be such a sufficient grace granted to all It must be sufficient either as a Physical or Natural cause or as a Moral cause Physical causes we know act necessarily All that can be pretended is a sufficiency as a Moral cause Now certainly in the Gospel and the preaching of it there is only a proposition of things to be believed and done and arguments used to perswade the belief or doing of them the Question still is by what power it is that a man doth believe and do What is in the word written propounded in the word preached so persuaded and argued We say it is not of our selves it is the gift of God and it is given to them who believe on the behalf of Christ to believe Phil. 1.29 Now this means is not given unto all the Habits are not infused from whence as from their Roots and Principles these actions must proceed To this they have nothing to say but that these actings flow from a Principle in mans will yet all men have the same reasonable Souls thus God giveth Faith and Holiness no more to Paul than to Judas The upshot is therefore That there is in man a self sufficiency to his own Salvation and need not to be beholden to Father Son or Holy Ghost for it being once brought forth into the World and possessed of a reasonable Soul he hath a sufficiency to his own Slavation and may be a God unto himself but it is not proper to call this means we are otherwise taught from the Holy Scriptures and therefore cannot agree it That all men have an auxilium sufficiens a sufficiency of grace and gracious assistances in order to their obtaining Eternal life and Salvation 2. Quest But the Second Question still remains viz. How can God be just in the condemnation of any Sinner to whom he hath not given a sufficient aid and assistance of grace in order to his Salvation To this in my former discourses I have spoken sufficiently But yet I will speak something to it here falling so fully in my way Answ 1. I answer first God did give unto Adam sufficient aids and assistances of Divine grace to have carried him and all his posterity to Heaven What was given unto him was given to him and his to him as a publick Person in whom we all were Arnoldus contra Mol. c. 6. Sect. 2. Episcopius disp 5. thes 6. and fell Arminians stifly deny That Adam in his state of innocency had a power to believe in Christ because say they there was need of any Faith in Christ in that estate no Episcopius saith it is a silly Question considering we make Faith a Supernatural habit and such a one as in that state there was no need of This is no better then trifling and equivocating surely all habits of grace since the fall are Supernatural habits we must be taught of God to love God and to love one another to fear God to delight or to hope in him had Adam therefore no such powers in his state of innocency think we Further I would gladly know whether Adam had not a power in innocency to do whatsoever was necessary in order to the obtaining of everlasting Salvation If God doth not give now to every man such a sufficiency of power and Spiritual assistance yet he is just in the condemnation of Sinners Man had such a sufficiency of power and lost it but God hath not lost his right to require the exercise of it and to condemn Sinners for sin though they now want it 2. Especially considering that God hath given unto all such a sufficiency of external means as is sufficient to render them without excuse This the Apostle expresly saith Rom. 2.1 But you will say If God hath not given to all a sufficiency of means how shall man be without excuse shall not one say Lord I never heard of Christ I never saw thy Law how should I believe on him of whom I never heard how should I obey that Law which I never saw nor heard of Again shall not another say Lord I did indeed hear of a Saviour the Scripture I read I beard but I had no power to believe I could not chonge my own heart thou wouldst not change it thou indeed Lord didst stand at the door of my heart and knock but thou didst never put in thy hand at the hole of the door I answer these Sinners yet shall be inexcusable because they walked not up to that light and mercy which God gave them This is what the Apostle giveth in plea for God concerning the Heathen Rom. 1.18 21. The wrath of God saith he is revealed against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men for saith he That which may be known of God is manifested in them for God hath shewed it to them v. 21. Because when they knew God they glorified him not as God neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkned It is true we say the Heathens have not a light shining amongst them they have nothing but the light of Nature to guide them and this light maketh no discovery of Christ but yet the light shineth with them a light which will shew them there is a God and discover to them that this God is Eternal and powerful So that saith the Apostle they are without excuse because that when they knew God they glorified him not as God neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations they improved not what light they had nor became thankful for it nor obedient to it Christians are much more inexcusable for besides that they have an equal share in Natural light and have the same dictates of Natural conscience with others there is much more of Christ and his Gospel manifested to them Christ telleth the Jews Mat. 21.32 That John came unto them in a way of righteousness and they believed not but Publicans and Harlots believed in him and you saith he when you had seen it repented not afterwards that you might believe Christians have the preaching of the Gospel the preaching of Faith and of repentance and they repent not that they might believe you will say but it is God that must give a power to repent he gave unto Gentiles repentance unto life I answer repentance is taken either more largely or more strictly More stricty it signifieth the turning of the heart from all Sin unto God this indeed is the work of God he alone hath an hand upon the heart of man but more largely it is taken for the turning from some sin and the performance of external discipline now as to this the Lord denieth unto none a sufficiency of grace and if men do not what in them lyeth they are without excuse 3. Finally It is most certain that God whether he giveth sufficient grace to all or no condemneth none but for sin I have shewed you at large that a sinners destruction is of and from himself as