to the whole world that Jerusalem is no longer the place of his rest that he has forsook his Footstool abhorred his Sanctuary and cast off his Altar If I had now time to pursue all the fatal circumstances of that dreadful story what incredible numbers most miserably perisht by the Pestilence and the Famine how many were destroyed by the Roman Armies and which was yet more tragical and frightful how many became the executioners of Gods vengeance upon themselves and how visibly the hand of God appeared in all we should quickly conclude it to be the most fearful calamity that was ever executed upon a people on this side Hell so that nothing but the day of Judgment can give us a resemblance of the horror of it Upon this occasion we may fitly use the words of the Prophet Daniel Under the whole heavens has not been done Dan. ix 12. as has been done upon Jerusalem I have no design to make any Application of this fearful story to our selves We have not yet had the voice in the Temple the terrible Earthquake or the flaming Sword and from these late discoveries that have been made amongst us we have some reason to hope that our destruction is not so near But though we have no Commission to forebode destruction yet we have loud Alarms to provide against it And if our impenitence under Gods Judgments continue at the same rate with theirs what can we otherwise expect but that we shall also perish in the like dreadful desolation I cannot here pretend to describe the successive advances of afflicting Providences which God Almighty hath sent upon this unfortunate Generation How fatal were the miseries of the Civil-war How sad and dismal the confusions that succeeded it We heard nothing among us but the cries of the oppressed the confused noise of the Battel of the warrier and garments rould in blood But after we had been long exercised with this severe discipline God at length turns our Captivity brings back our Royal Sovereign to sit upon the Throne of his Fathers and establishes the whole Nation in a full possession of their Rights and Laws their Liberties and Religion And which ought the more to endear our deliverance all this was brought about by a Miracle of Mercy far beyond all our hopes and contrivances at a time when we were quite lost without all visible means of a Restoration And now what ought have been the Natural result of this What language could have been more suitable for a redeemed people than those words of Ezra Ezra ix 14.15 Seeing thou hast punisht us less than our iniquities have deserved and hast given us such a deliverance as this shall we again break thy Commandments But lo thus has it come to pass by a prodigy of Ingratitude more astonishing than the Mercy that we have again provoked the Lord to take the Sword into his Hand to Commission his destroying Angel to bring the Pestilence into our Streets to send upon us a raging and devouring Fire which laid wast the Metropolis of the Kingdom Together with these Calamities he raises up against us a Foreign Enemy to make war upon our Coasts to scoff at Kings and make Princes a scorn unto them to break our chains deride our strong holds Hab. i. 10. and gather our captivity as the sands And ever since that time we have continued under the sad apprehensions of more fearful Judgments than these There has remained upon the Nation great distress and perplexity Luke xxi 25. mens hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things that are coming upon the earth We have long stood in fear of a Famine of the Word of the removal of the Candlestick of the glory of God in his Church ready to depart from us To be plain and in a word we are threatned with the return of Popery upon the Kingdom that is to have the practice of the grossest Impiety Superstition and dolatry introduced among us and all the sincere professors of the Truth of the Gospel in every corner of the Land Massacred Burnt Rackt and Tormented because they will not receive the mark of the beast in their forehead nor comply with these abominations This is the Sword which the Lord seems to hang over us this day And is there any way left to prevent or stop it from the intended execution If instead of our gratitude to God for such signal mercies as he has reacht forth unto us we begin to fret and murmur at our enjoyments and are ready to make us a Captain to return into Aegypt is it not Just with God to cause Aegypt to return to us and enslave both King and People to the merciless Usurpation of a Foreign Power If after we have so long lived under a Faithful Preaching of the Word a sincere Administration of the Sacraments a liberal provision of all the means of Grace we have loathed our Manna and despised our Mercies if we have either quite withdrawn from the Publick Assemblies or not brought forth fruit in any wise answerable to those great advantages which we have of being saved may we not reasonably presume that we have so far provoked the Lord as to give us up to a people who will deprive us of these blessings who with the cruelty of Dioclesian will kindle a Fire either for our Bibles or our Selves who instead of the word of God will obtrude upon us their own inventions rob us of one half of the blessed Sacrament and set up the Idol of the Mass instead of the other 2 Thes ii 10 11 12. If we have not received the love of the truth that we might be saved Is it not greatly to be feared that for this cause God will send us strong delusions that we shall believe lies that all may be damned who believe not the truth but have pleasure in unrighteousness If after all those mixtures and vicissitudes of Providence that we have had as Salvian says of the Spaniards Mutata sors sed non mutata vitiositas there remains still the same senslesness under Gods Judgments the same unthankfulness for his Mercies the same Atheism Prophaneness and Infidelity from which God by all this variety of his methods has indeavoured to reclaim us If the Nation is full of Whoredoms and because of swearing the Land mourneth If Treason dares appear with an open Face and spread dayly Libels and Defamations against the Government If Schisms and Factions thrive and prosper and again threaten the best of Churches in the world surely God will visit for these things his soul will yet further be avenged upon such a Nation as this May we not justly fear that God will raise up against us a bitter and hasty Nation to land upon our Coasts to march through the breadth of the Land and possess the dwelling places that are not theirs that he will henceforth forget to be gracious and shut up his loving kindness in an utter displeasure that he will bring upon us that heavy doom which our Saviour of old denounced to his own people Therefore I say unto you Matth. xxi 43. that the Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a Nation bringing forth the fruits of it I know but one way left to prevent the approach of these dreadful Judgments which is seriously to put in practice that great duty which we are called to this day to repent and turn from our transgressions that so iniquity may not be our ruine This is the only course left us to rescue us from our present miseries and preserve us from the evil which is otherwise certainly to come upon us And how great soever our fears are we have yet some comfortable grounds to hope that our day of Grace is not yet past the door is not shut against us but that we are still within the possibilities of Repentance It seems that we are not yet quite cast off by that wonderful discovery which God hath made amongst us of a Hellish Plot for the Assassinating of our King and the Subversion of our Government and Religion And therefore though we might be apt to conclude with Manoah in the Book of Judges We shall surely die because we have seen God so terrible in his Judgments in the midst of us Yet we may now with Manoahs wife make a better and more reasonable inference Judg. xiii 12 23. If the Lord were pleased to kill us he would not have shewed us all these things nor would he as at this time have told us such things as these Let us be careful therefore to improve this signal Providence to those serious purposes for which God intends it which are to break off our sins by Repentance to reform and amend our lives Lest by continuing in our transgressions we defeat the designs of his goodness and hinder him from going on to compleat our deliverance Lest this great Mercy prove but a lightning before death and notwithstanding this if we still do wickedly we be consumed both we and our King So that we see a way still lies open for us to appease the wrath of God and procure his favor which if we all sincerely resolve to walk in he will shine upon your Counsels bless your Enterprizes and prosper your Undertakings he will be a wall of fire round about us when he is thus the glory in the midst of us he will heal our back-slidings and make up our breaches he will defeat the designs of the enemies of our Peace and he will remember the Land FINIS
a closer dependence upon God When mens houses are safe from fear Jo2 xxi 9. neither is the rod of God upon them they are apt to say to the Almighty Depart from us to center in themselves and ascribe their prosperity to their own conduct and contrivance Hab. i. 16. When their portion is fat and their meat plenteous then they sacrifice to their own net and burn incense to their drag It is a great vanity in a manner rooted in the nature of mankind to affect an absoluteness and sufficiency in themselves and an independence upon any superior Cause They think it too great a disparagement to them an upbraiding of their weakness as if they were unable to help themselves to be a burden to Providence and live in a precarious dependence upon him that made them And therefore so long as succor and relief can be expected from Power or Policy from Horses or Horsemen from any thing within them or about them from Foreign Interests Domestic Treasures or even Idolatrous compliances they will keep their distance stand at defiance with the Almighty and never think of placing their trust upon the hope of Israel upon him who is the confidence of all the ends of the earth Jer. xiv 8. Psal lxv 5. and of them that remain in the broad sea Jeroboam was sensible enough that the Law of God would not countenance his usurpation and thereupon sets himself to contrive how he might live without him and stand in no need of the influence of his Providence He makes two Calves at Dan and Bethel and then grows confident and secure that the work of his hands would Establish him in his Throne And therefore God Almighty often finds it necessary to frustrate the Counsels blast the designs and curse the Policies and attempts of all such as usurp upon his Prerogative and aspire to an absolute Sovereignty of their own Exod. xiv 25. He takes off Pharaohs Chariot-wheels puts a hook into the nose of Sennacherib 2 King xix 28. crushes the impious Politician upon the very brink of his designs Job v. 12. disappoints the devices of the crafty so that their hands cannot perform their enterprize This is dignus vindice nodus he is as it were concerned in point of honor to vindicate his Authority and government to make them know that they are but men and that the most high ruleth over all He cuts off all their Provisions at home and stops all succors from abroad distresses them on every side that so he may convince them of the vanity and madness of their presumption that he is a refuge when all else fails and that there is no Sanctuary but in his protection We read in the xxxiii Ezekiel xxxiii of Ezekiel of a very severe threatning of misery and desolation Verse 28. I will lay the Land most desolate and the pomp of her strength shall cease c. And the result and issue of this severity is mentioned Verse 29. Then shall they know that I am the Lord. The same is assigned for the end and reason of Gods judgments in several other places of this Prophecy that they may know that I am the Lord. vii 27. xxiv 24. xxx 8. As if it were such a difficult matter for a people to know and to trust in God till all other support were taken from them till they had nothing left to lean upon of their own When Ephraim saw his sickness Hos v. 13. and Judah his wound then went Ephraim to the Assyrian and sent to King Jareb Menahem makes a Confederacy with Pul. 2 Kings xv 16. Hosea gives presents to Shalmaneser and Ahaz sends an Embassy to Tiglath-pileser xvii 3.2 Chronicl xxviii 20. and sacrifices to the gods of Damascus But alas while they endeavored to avoid the smoak they fell into the fire These were so far from curing of their wound that they both made it deeper and encreased the smart of it And the gods which Ahaz went unto for succor proved the ruin of him and of all Israel But when God takes the matter into his own hands becomes a Lion both to Ephraim and Judah blocks up all their passages leaves no way open to Aegypt or Assyria to Idols or Confederates they then begin to think of returning unto God In their affliction they will seek me early Hos v. 15. III. The Judgments of God upon a Nation conduce very much to take us off from too great an over-valuing of the Honors Riches and Pleasures of this world Though ordinarily in our sober judgments we set a greater value upon the everlasting concerns of another world than upon all the splendid gayeties and delights of this yet they lie under this great disadvantage that they are future and at a distance and by that means unable to make so deep an impression upon the mind as these temporal enjoyments which are present and continually in our eye And this makes most men so very fond of the world so eagerly desirous of building Tabernacles here and strangely indisposed to seek a better Country to reach after their everlasting hope and the price of their high calling But when God Almighty in the course of his Providence sends his judgments and calamities upon a people devests them of their possessions degrades them from their honors puts a fatal period to their choicest pleasures How effectually must this needs convince us of the transitory and perishable nature of all creature enjoyments and strip them of those deceitful disguises under which a deluded fancy is so apt to represent them When Baruch was sent upon a message which he fore-saw was likely to abridg him of some of his former satisfactions he grows melancholy and disconsolate at the news and cries out Wo is me for the Lord hath added grief unto my sorrow I fainted in my sighing and find no rest But thus shalt thou say unto him saith God by the Prophet Jeremy the Lord saith thus Jer. xlv 3 4. Behold that which I have built will I break down and that which I have planted will I pluck up even this whole land and seekest thou great things for thy self seek them not As if he should have said Wouldst thou live at ease in Sion when Sion is to be Plowed like a field and Jerusalem to become a desolation Wouldst thou swim in affluence and enjoy thy pleasures in a Land now ready to be overspread with Plagues and Vengeance Wouldst thou build thee a stately Palace over the blood and bones of thy slaughtered brethren What preferment canst thou promise to thy self in the ruines of thy Country Wouldst thou make a purchase when the world is at an end Ludicra ergò publica Trever petis It was Salvians expostulation with the Citizens of Treves when immediately after the sacking of their City they petitioned their Magistrates that the Stage-Plays might be restored In like manner does Jeremy here control Baruch for his now
to some more particular Causes of it which is the next point to be considered 1. And the first cause is a spirit of Atheism and Infidelity which has possest the minds of men which takes their eyes off from God and fixes them upon second and inferior causes The Plague is nothing else but some infectious atoms in the air which in certain determinate periods of time gather together for the annoyance of a City or a Nation Wars are caused meerly by the different interests of States which engage them in mutual provocations of one another and by that means dispose Princes to Choler and Revenge The Revolutions of Government proceed from the ambition and treachery of subjects who whenever they find an opportunity will be ready to break forth to disengage themselves from their subjection and involve a flourishing Kindom in blood ruine and confusion It was Jorams desperate resolution in the Siege of Samaria This evil is of the Lord wherefore should I wait upon the Lord any longer But the men whom we now speak of conclude with a little better Logick but as bad Divinity These evils are not from the Lord therefore why should we wait upon him It is not he that has broken us neither is it he that must bind us up It was an error in the Heathens which their own reason might have corrected that they ascribed all their ordinary success or misfortune to themselves or their enemies but any great and extraordinary calamities either to fate or chance And this engaged them in a great deal of perplexity so that they knew not which way to turn themselves when difficulties pressed upon them But methinks those that live in a Christian Nation and call themselves Christians should be better taught who are instructed by the Sacred Oracles to impute all the miseries that befal them to an over-ruling Cause to discover the Finger of God in the hand of an enemy and ascribe all events whatsoever even such as are brought upon them by the instrumental mediation of secondary Agents to the Justice Wildom and Providence of God the Supreme Governour of the World It is the Lord 2 Sam xvi 31. that bids Shimei to curse David and that raises up to him enemies out of his own house xxi II. 1 Kings xii 15. If King Rehoboam will not hearken to Faithful Counsel the Cause is from the Lord. And through the anger of the Lord it came to pass 2 Kings xxiv 20. that Zedekiah Rebelled against the King of Babylon And when Babylon has filled up the measure of her iniquities it is the Lord that raises up Cyrus Isa xlv 4. that calls him by his name that marches forth with his Armies to bring upon her a swift sudden and surprizing desolation Can a bird saith the Prophet Amos fall in a suare upon the earth where no gin is laid for him Amos iii. 5. And shall there be any evil in the City which the Lord hath not done It is God and not the Air the Elements or the Stars that brings the Famine or Pestilence upon a Nation It is God and not man whether he be the Foreign Enemy or the Domestick Rebel that overturns a State and dissolves a Kingdom These instances are sufficient to evince the Divine efficiency in the works of second Causes And if the infidel notwithstanding will not be satisfied in the Doctrine of a Providence we must even leave him to be convinced as he certainly will either in this life or in another by Gods own immediate stroke This in the mean time is certain that this prodigious humour of Atheism Scepticism and Infidelity which so abounds in this Nation is both a real cause of mens impenitency under Judgments and a dreadful symptom that God will go on to judg and afflict them still And by this means I greatly fear our adversaries of Rome are more likely to compass their ends upon us than by any of their other artifices and stratagems whatsoever II. There is a great indifferency upon the spitits of men as to the truth or honesty of the Cause that they are engaged in Which makes them instead of thinking of the proper expedients to save their Country from ruine to plot and contrive how they may advance themselves in the next turn of affairs and the revolution of the Government Men that have been used to fish in troubled waters and by little tricks and devices of their own to wind themselves in with that side that gets uppermost will never in any National calamity entertain any thoughts of returning unto God as long as they can have recourse to the same arts to save and secure themselves And this seems to be the Case of Ephraim in the Text. He stood in no great fear of the Assyrian because he had no concern for his God and was not at all sensible of his misery in being carried away Captive into a Land of Idols as long as he was already prepared to worship after the manner of the gods of the Land Thus we find the people were in the time of Ahab 2 Kings xviii 21. when they halted between two opinions between God and Baal Such were those Nations whom the King of Assyria placed in the Cities of Samaria xvii 33. that feared the Lord and served Idols And the Jews in the Prophet Zephany who could swear by God Zeph i. 5. and swear by Melchom Such as these are men ready and prepared for a change whatever it be and resolved if the King of Babylon or whoever else get the upper hand that Idolatry and Superstition shall put no stop to their preferment Men that can counterfeit any Religion are really of none at all And therefore whatever pretences they may make for the present what is there that can hinder them when occasion serves from making the best advantages they can for themselves by coupling in with that side that wins the day But however such as these by their arts and disguises may make a shift for a while yet God will not be mocked The time will certainly come when the sinners in Sion shall be afraid when fear shall surprise the Hypocrites And perhaps it may be no lessening of their miseries that they are the men to be destroyed last The Gnosticks in the Primitive Church were a sort of Hereticks who profest the name of Christians and yet held it lawful to Apostatize in time of danger and comply with the Jews for fear of Persecution But when the days of vengeance and visitation came God makes a distinction between those Carnal pretenders and such as continued stedfast to the profession of his Truth He provides a Pella for the Christians a hiding place for them to retire to in that day of the Lords anger but leaves those abominable Hereticks to be destroyed with the Crucifiers of Christ and Hypocrites to perish with Unbelievers And this is said by some to be the accomplishment of that prediction