Margin answered him 1 Sam. 7.9 10 and as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering the Philistins drew neer to battel against Israel but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistins and discomfitted them and they were smitten before Israel 2. Somtimes it is successive or effected by degrees when the servants of the Lord in their straits and needs call upon him he often helps them gradatim or by successive steps Two steps more frequently he makes in this work 1. He sends strength and support under and during the affliction or want of the benefit desired 2. And then after he gives them deliverance from it he loosens the bands of their distress and they escape out of it both these we have distinctly noted in divers Scriptures as in that of the Psalm He shall call upon me and I will answer him and mark the degree of the answer which follows I will be with him in trouble there 's the one I will deliver him and honor him there 's the other And again In the day when I cryed thou answeredst me and strengthened me with strength in my Soul there 's the first present support in his exigence which is further amplified after Though I walk in the midst of trouble Psa 138.3 7 thou wilt revive me and then follows in the next words recovery out Thou shalt stretch out thine hands against the wrath of mine Enemies and thy right hand shall save me This double step of relief from God to his people upon their prayer is notably set forth in the Prophet Malachi When the state of things was grown so forlorn Mal. 3.14 c. as that the ordinary sort of Fasters and Prayers concluded it a vain thing to sâ—â—ve God and a profitless course to keep his Ordinances and to walk mournfully before him yet there were some left that truly feared the Lord that spake often one to another in mutual corroborations unto piety and that thought upon the Name of God in diligent and constant calling upon it and observe the issue these have a twofold day set for them and in them have those 2 degrees of help from God successively 1. There is a day when God makes up his Jewels or as Drusius interprets a day when he makes Judgment or proceeds in Judgment and in that day they saith the Lord of Hoasts shall be my Jewels and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him that 's the first day and first step of succor The Lord will own them for his in the evil day he will take care of them as of his choycest and preciousest goods and he will moderate their share of troubles and support them therein so that as it is in the next words there shall be a palpable difference put and discerned betwixt them and the wicked in their sufferings 2. There is another day cometh after a day that shall burn as an oven and in this latter day is that other step of the help of those fearers and seekers of God that is their deliverance and full satisfaction For in that day the proud yea and all that do wickedly shall be stubble and the day that cometh shall burn them up saith the Lord of Hoasts that it shall leave them neither root nor branch But unto you that fear my Name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings and ye shall tread down the wicked for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this saith the Lord of Hoasts I will further note that the latter of these two degrees of Gods return to prayer viz. Deliverance out of trouble or fruition of the thing asked may have its several degrees also As 1. When God raiseth up the means and secondary causes which he will use and sets himself to work by them 2. When he doth carry on and consummate deliverance with them This order he pursued in bringing Israel out of Egypt upon the hearing of their cries and groans he first appears to Moses in Midian and gives him a Call Commission and Instructions to go into Egypt and fetch them out I have heard saith he to them out of the burning Bush their groaning Acts 7.34 and am come down to deliver them and now come I will send thee into Egypt And then Moses and Aaron being joyned together in Egypt and after many goings in there unto Pharaoh for dismission of them and many additions of oppressions upon the Israelites and many miraculous plagues upon Pharaoh his People and Land they are led or posted out of Egypt in one night And in the recovery of the same people long after from their captivity and ruines under the Babylonian the Lord proposeth in his promise several degrees as in the Prophet Hosea And it shall come to pass in that day I will hear saith the Lord Hos 2.21 22 21 I will hear the Heavens and they shall hear the Earth And the Earth shall hear the Corn and the Wine and the Oyl and they shall hear Jezreel and I will sow her unto me in the Earth and I will have mercy on her c. Such a series of causes and operations the Providence of God doth often go through in delivering his people This is spoken figuratively in the Prophet not as if the Heavens and the rest of the inferior Creatures here had a voyce or did pray and we must not understand it as spoken of the order of Gods receiving but of his performing prayers In order of receiving prayer God immediately and only hears Jezreel his people but in order of answer and execution he first hears or answers the Heavens that is puts efficacy and influence into them and then by them into the Earth and by the Earth into its fruits and so comes home to Jezreel and then also Jezreel must be sown in the Earth that is must be cast into the ground and lie under the clods of affliction and be in appearance as dead for a time and then spring up and be restored The smoke of incense which came with the prayers of the Saints Rev. 8.4 and ascended up before God out of the Angels hand by it and them were procured the seven following Trumpets Now these Trumpets the issue and execution of those prayers sounded successively one after another and did accomplish those prayers by so many degrees and the term of their succession and continuance ere all be finished is supposed to be for many years yea divers ages Thus of the second way of prayers receiving its answer and the several steps of it The third and last is that of Commutation The Lord doth sometimes hear and answer the prayer when he doth not give the very thing prayed for There is an answer by way of exchange to wit when God gives in lieu of that which is asked another thing which is as good or better for
supports under their sufferings their innocency is taken away from them as far as censure can do it For the most part the Faithfuls troubles come upon them because they dare not know not how to run a course of wickedness with others this then is a very hard case that when men suffer because they dare not sin they must be said to sin because they suffer This usage of Job by his friends of which even now exceedingly battered his spirit and drew from him high language and somewhat distempered in his contestation with them How long said he will ye vex my Soul and break me in pieces with words These ten times have ye reproached me c. Have pity upon me Job 19.2 3 21 22. O ye my friends for the hand of God hath touched me Why do ye persecute me as God and are not satisfied with my flesh q. d. The scourge of God being layd thus smartly upon me it would become you to pity me and not to arraign and condemn mine Integrity and if you will take pleasure to rake in my wounds my bodily sufferings should suffice and glut your cruel delight and you should spare my Soul and state of Conscience which is peculiar to divine Cognizance I the rather take notice of this incentive of Corruption in the Saints under pressing afflictions because I am perswaded it was never so much practised at least never so ex professo or Magisterially made use of as now it is It is now become a current proof yea one of the chiefest Topicks or Common-places from which men draw their arguments against the persons and cause of their distressed opposites and for their own justification This argument hath been so artificially adorned so imperiously consigned and which is more so smiled upon and applauded with subsequent events and observations that although in true divinity it be but meerly fallacious and even with rational men it hath been denyed admission among probable reasons yet it now seems to pass as demonstrative Yea it is at present grown a wonderment mixt with some indignation that the continued disappointments and miscarriages on the one part and the constant successes following if not out-going the designs and expectations of the other do not convince all men It is besides my business to discuss this Argument there hath been enough said to it And if the Evidence of Scripture and the experience and acknowledgment of all sound Judgments in all Ages will not cast off the scales of some mens minds against the present sense of worldly advancement a little time with the turn of the tyde may possibly do it Cosmographers observe That though the common course of the Sea to be ebb and flow every twenty four hours yet there is a place in Affrica towards the Equator from whence the Sea flows continually towards the East This Sea is not the figure of a worldly condition If Affrica can shew such a wonder in Nature no place can yield the like in Civil Affairs There never was any where a continual afflux in temporal attainments These know a West as well as an East an ebb as well as an increase And those that fix their anchor or bottom the equity or approveableness of their way upon this Argument may ride at full Sea but when it ebbs they shall be left on the sand and their own Argument shall serve to gravel them 3. The nature of the sufferings of the servants and Church of God The Measure Multitude and Multiplicity of them When the time of their calamity and day of their visitation is come when the Lord cometh cut of his place to punish the inhabitants of the Earth for their iniquity and in special hath a Controversie with his people and will plead with Israel their miseries fall heavy and thick upon them and in various kinds 1. For their Measure or Heaviness They are resembled to the pains of birth-travel What wilt thou say when he shall punish thee Jer. 13.21 Lam. 1.15 Lam. 3.15 Shall not sorrows take thee as a woman in travel And to the treading of the Vintage The Lord hath troden the Virgin the daughter of Judah as in a wine-press And to a sad drunkenness He hath filled me with bitterness he hath made me drunken with wormwood The Prophet Jeremiah further representing and personating the Churches miseries in the Lamentations sets them forth as perfect admirable incomparable and incredible 1. Perfect or compleat The Lord hath accomplished his fury he hath poured forth his fierce anger and hath kindled a fire in Zion and it hath devoured the foundations thereof 2. Admirable and astonishing She came down wonderfully How doth the City sit solitary how is she become a widow how is she become tributary 3. Incomparable and surpassing Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done unto me wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger What thing shall I take to witness for thee What thing shall I liken to thee O daughter of Jerusalem What shall I equal to thee that I may comfort thee O Virgin daughter of Sion For the punishment of the daughter of my people is greater then the punishment of the sin of Sodom that was overthrown as in a moment and no hands stayed on her 4. Incredible The Kings of the Earth and all the Inhabitants of the world would not have beleeved that the adversary and enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem 2. And then for their Number or Multitude In the Churches or Saints day of trouble or hour of temptation it pleaseth God oftentimes to multiply their miseries to heap affliction upon affliction to add grief to grief and to bring one adversity in the neck of another The Scripture compareth their evils in such a time to waves of the Sea that pursue and overtake one another So David Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts Psal 42.7 all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me And to Armies that come in companies and thousands upon a party So Job saith of God His troops come together and raise up their way against me and encamp round about my tabernacle Job 19.12 And to a Leaguer that besets a place on all hands So the Church in the Lamentations Lam. 3.5 7. He hath builded against me and compassed me about with gall and travel he hath hedged me about that I cannot get out And to a festival Congregation as the Church in the same Song Cap. 2. 22. Thou hast called me as in a solemn day my terrors round about And to a chain made of many links as the Church again Chap. 3. 7. He hath made my chain heavy And the Prophet Ezekiel Make a chain c. mischief shall come upon mischief Ezek. 7.23 26. and rumor shall be upon rumor And to the arrows of a quiver as the Church He hath bent his bow Lam.
sometimes in such Visions as the bare representations thereof and foresight thereby of the Calamities of the Church of God under the Grecian Seleucian and Roman Powers drove him much out of heart and brought him into deep distemper both of mind and body O my Lord saith he by the Vision my sorrows are turned upon me and I have retained no strength Dan. 10.16 7.28 8 27. And at another time As for me Daniel my cogitations troubled me and my countenance changed in me And at a third time And I Daniel fainted and was sick certain days and I was astonished at the Vision And if that foreknowledg of the Events of the Church whereabout his prayers were employed were such an amazement and burden to his spirit what think we would the sight and sense of them be to those praying Saints that should live to see them acted and endured The Apostle Paul knowing what an advantage to Christianity in the Protection and Propagation of it it would be to have the Civil Magistrate Christian he giveth Christians a Precept in their private and publique Supplications in special to pray for Kings 1 Tim. 2.1 2. and for all that are in Authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty And no doubt the primitive Christians in and after the Apostles time were mindful and constant in the practise hereof besides the Authority of the Command their own conveniency would lead them to it That woman in St Johns Vision in the Revelations that appeared clothed with the Sun Rev. 12.12 treading under her feet the Moon and crowned with twelve Stars Divines take to be a figure of the Christian primitive Church And whereas it is said She being with child cryed travelling in birth and pained to be delivered they understand that to intend the said Churches crying unto God by dayly prayers to obtain a Christian Emperor that would cease their Persecutions and establish their Religion in Peace and Freedom yet was it near three hundred years ere she could bring forth that her Man-child Constantine the Great the first Emperor that set up the Christian Profession So long was the Church put to travel in prayer together with hot and painful persecutions ere they received therein their Answer The Church indeed brought forth a Christian Emperor before viz. Anno 245. Julius Philippus Euseb l. 6. c 31. Chron. Carian p. 245. Speed lib. 6. c. 31. but him she brought forth for Heaven and not for her Militant state here he lived not to establish Christianity in the Empire but was soon cut off by Decius the Author of the seventh Persecution who slew him and his son and Caesar a Christian also odio Christiani nominis of hatred to the Christian name So that in him the Churches pregnancy and travel in prayer proved abortive she continued travelling still until she brought forth Constantine We see though the Churches striving together in prayer be compared to the pains of a laboring woman yet it is so resembled in respect of Vehemency not of Duration a womans labour is but for a few hours the Churches travel may be for a multitude of years and some ages ere she bring forth Being thus passed out of Scripture into Ecclesiastical History I will add out of it a few Examples more of the overclouding or suspense put upon the prayers of the people of God Who hath not read or heard of the thundering Legion that Legion of Christian Souldiers which by their prayers relieved the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his Army who in an Expedition against the Quadi and others being ready to perish having an Army of Enemies against them of nine hundred seventy five thousand and being withall destitute of water for five days together this Legion of Christians then in the Emperors Leaguer drew apart and falling prostrate upon the Earth in ardent prayer they prevailed with God so that they had plentious showres of Rain to satisfie the Armies thirst and Thunder and Lightening to disperse and destroy their Enemies and upon this that Legion was named by the Emperor though a Heathen the Thundering Legion These Christians and the rest of those times that were so earnest with God in the behalf of a Papan Emperor and Civil Cause were as much or rather more serious and fervent no doubt in dayly prayer for the Churches Rest and Enlargement then under bloody Persecution they must needs be granted to bear a part in the travelling womans pains and cry afore spoken of as also in that cry unto God of the Souls under the Altar at the opening of the fifth Seal which before also I insisted on But though they did and were so mighty in prayer and exercised those Arms of prayers and tears which were the Arms which the primitive Christians only owned as allowable wherewith to resist the Tyranny of their lawful Superiors they being then but of a private and plebeian capacity as diligently as they did their secular Arms for defence of the Emperor yet they could not thereby obtain a present period of those fiery Persecutions See Mr. Clarks Martyrolog p. 44 45 Mr Fox vol. 1. p. 67 c. which then had so long lasted but they went on by times for above a hundred years longer and although Aurelius upon the aforesaid Wonders decreed the stay of the fourth Persecution then on foot yet was it carried on still by the Judges and by his son Commodus After that the Roman Emperors were become Christian Gratian one of the most pious Mr Medeâ— Comment in Apoc. part 1. p 58. And Rosses Hist Book 3. c. 3. An. Chr. 379. zealous and orthodox Emperors we find in Story he was the first Christian Emperor as Mr Mede noteth that refused the Title and Pontifical Robe of the High priest-hood anciently annexed to the Imperial Majesty and a branch of the old Heathenish Idolatry He commanded a general Embracement of the Nicene Creed He suppressed Hereticks and restored the Orthodox banished by his Predecessor Valens an Arian This godly Emperor in his Expeditions of War was generally and affectionately prayed for by the Christian Churches A Historian saith of him At non Ambrosius duntaxat pro Gratiani victoriâ solicitus juges obtulit Deo preces sed fidelium omnium vota publica nuncupata sunt Schulting Thesaur Tom. 4. cap. 321. frequensque tunc pro eo piorum ad basilicas concursus prospera illi assidus postulantium But not only Ambrose offered up dayly prayers to God being solicitous for Gratians victory but the publique supplications of all the faithful were made for him and there was a great flocking together of the godly to the Cathedrals Chron. Caâ—ion l. 3. p. 293 Speed hist book 6. c. 51. p. 178. Rosses Hist B. 3. c. 3. to pray dayly for his prosperity Yet this good young Emperor was first overthrown in Battel and quickly after trayterously slain by Maximus the Usurper In this
their place To give some instances Daniel fasts and prays for the return of the captivity in the first year of Darius and he prays That the Lord would haâ—ken and do and not defer but God did defer until the first year of Cyrus which was two years current * Dan. 9.1 19. Darius imperium accepit A. M. 3466. imperavit annis duobus Cyrus Monarchia potitus est A. M. 3468 Vide Annales Usser pag. 145 146. Dan. 10.2 12.13 Luk. 18.7 And again at another time of his fasting and praying he is told in a Vision That from the first day he set his heart to understand and to chasten himself before God his words were heard yet he continued mourning three full weeks and the Angel appearing to him in the end thereof telleth him his answer was stopped in the way just so long to wit one and twenty days God doth hear his own Elect which cry day and night unto him under their pressures but there is a long bearing with their adversaries interposed betwixt his hearing and avenging of them Rev. 6.10 11 The Souls under the Altar that cry with a loud voyce How long O Lord holy and true dost thou not judg and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the Earth They were heard but withall they are told They must rest for a little season until their fellow servants also and their Brethren that should be killed as they were should be fulfilled This little season of stay for the issue of their prayers is computed by a very judicious Commentator to be above a hundred years Mr Mede who begineth the fift Seal an 268. and the first Trumpet which he makes the beginning of the answer of their cry an 395. See his Key Comment part 1. pag. 52. 81 85. In the Song of Solomon the Spouse twice had lost her beloved and missing sought him and seeking was yet disappointed for some time of meeting with him yet this missing and not finding Cant. 3.1.5 6 was not a dereluction or divorce but a stepping aside of him only for a time The prayers of the Saints in the Book of the Revelation are resembled by the smoke of Incense Rev. 8.3.5 their answer or return by voyces thunderings lightenings and earthquakes There is in this resemblance a great congruity to the work of Nature for smoke or such hot and dry vapors ascending into the upper region do produce thunder and lightening which are the voyce of God and inclosed in the Earth do cause Earthquakes but as there is naturally a good time after the exhaling of these vapors for the altering and forming of them ere they break forth into Thunder Lightening or Earthquakes so it is with the Saints prayers there is often an intervall of time betwixt their ascent and effect and as it is the folly of the vulgar to think when they see smoke or vapors gone up out of their sight that they are quite vanished or annihilated so is it for us to judg those prayers of none effect that are a good while a working above ere they come down in visible impressions here below I have thus endevored to shew the diversity of the ways of God towards the prayers of men both in appearing to and hiding from them The second thing proposed now is to follow viz. the diversity of grounds or impulsives whereupon he doth either This will not hold us long as being not altogether so various and intricate First for the Lords appearing unto prayer the difference of grounds may be thus taken He doth appear to prayer 1. In Anger 2. In Favor 1. God doth sometimes hear and grant mens prayers in anger he gives men their desires and it is sometimes not in mercy but in displeasure Numb 11 20 33 Psa 78.21 26.106.15 1 Sam. 8.21 22 so God gave quails to Israel in the wilderness he sent them out of wrath and wrath was the sauce with which they did eat them Thus also God gave a King to Israel in the days of Samuel Questionless the Quails were in themselves very good and wholesom food and did not naturally engender the plague but they asked them lustfully Satius erat non audiri a Dominó quam cum carnibus ejus indignationem vocare Calv. not for need and diffidently not in faith and God gave them accordingly out of anger and with the plague they were the last meat that many of them ever ate they brought them to their graves the graves of them that lusted Doubtless Monarchy was and is in it self a good Government and was promised long before as a blessing to that people and as it appeared by the sequel was intended them shortly as a mercy and it is as a mercy promised to the Church of after times Gen. 17.6 16 2 Sam. 7.8 c. 23.3 c. 2 Chro. 2 11 Isai 49.23 Rev. 17.16 21.24 but they asked a King not by vertue of or in the way of promise but rebelliously ambitiously distrustfully and God gave them a King suitably Saul an impious tyrannical despairing King And we may note God gives sometimes evil and unlawful requests in wrath or for correction to others besides the askers The curses or enchantments of malice or witchery God sometimes brings to pass as means of punishment or affliction to those against whom they are intended by the maleficous Judg. 9.20 Vide Calv. Instit l. 3. c. 20. S. 15 Thus he gave success to Jothams curse upon the men of Sechem Thus he yielded to Satans desire against Job in his goods children and body and thus our Saviour granted the Devils request touching entering into the Gadarens herd of swine Mat. 8.32 yea Satan had his desire of Peter so far as to have him to sift him as wheat Luk. 22.31 though not to destroy his Faith 2. God appeareth to prayer in mercy and favor and this may be more ways then one It may be 1. Out of his general goodness and common pity God hath a propension to shew mercy a disposition to extend favor towards all as they are his creatures as they are in want and misery Vide Aqui. 22. qu. 83 Art 16 Job 34.28 Exo 22.23 Gen. 21.17 as they may put forth and express their natural desires before him He heareth the cry of the afflicted saith Elihu I will surely hear their cry saith he himself of the widow and fatherless child God heard the voyce of the lad Ishmael Under this notion are those hearings and deliverings taken to be of the solitary hungry thirsty and harborless of the imprisoned Psalmus docet non carere effectu preces quae tamen fide in coelum non penetrant Colligit enim quas incredulus non minus quam piis necessitas extorquet preces ex naturae sensu quibus tamen Deum propitium esse ex eventu demonstrat Calv. Instit l. 3. c. 20. sect 15. scultet de prec c. 15. p. 54. of the sick and
heart this is a pestilence that too often walketh in darkness as to mens taking notice of it 2. Unhumbledness of heart There is to be in all especially in our solemn and extraordinary prayers an humbled Spirit in regard of needs judgments and sins So the Lords promise upon Solomons prayer runs 2 Chro. 7 14 If my people which are called by my Name shall humble themselves and pray c. and so it was before to Moses If then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity c. The want of this affectedness of heart was one cause that though the people of Iudah sought God dayly and fasted and afflicted their Souls by bodily interdiction yet the wrath of God would not be averted They bowed down the head as a bulrush Isa 58.3 5 and spred sackcloth and ashes under them but they still found pleasure in sin 3. Hypocrisie word or lip-devotion without the power of piety to wit the true love and fear of God and seeking after him in the heart Of the Hypocrite Iob saith Job 27.9 Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him Solomons prayer which seems to be the square both according to which we should pray and God will accept and hear was 2 Chro. 6 30 and render unto every man according unto all his ways whose heart thou knowest The thing intimated hereby as I conceive is this Men that pray shall have a return from God not meerly according to their present form of prayer but according to the universal course of their lives If their prayer be for its composure good and their ways be good too they may expect from God a good answer but though that be good if they be peccant in these they can look for no good answer and the reason here may be for that God looketh at and for the heart and the integrity of it and there is not any such true character or picture of a mans heart as is the general course and frame of his ways it and these do exactly answer each other as do the signet and the impression 4. The proposing of indirect by and unworthy ends in prayer The Apostle saith Ye ask and receive not because you ask amiss that you may consume it upon your lusts Jam. 4.3 It is intolerable that holy and godly desires for the matter of them should travel to and traffique with Heaven to serve and bring in provisions for sensual or vile lusts The Lord taxeth it upon Israel that they cryed not unto him when they howled upon their beds Hos 7.14 they assembled themselves for corn and wine their end was not God it seems but their own belly It was an hainous crime for any man of Israel to make a perfume like to that which was holy Exo. 30.37 38 and compounded for the incense of the Sanctuary or to turn it to a civil and private use as for himself to smell to this was to be punished with cutting off from his people Accordingly it must needs be very displeasing unto God for a man to convert the sacred incense of prayer from its own proper and religious end to any carnal or sinful purpose or design 5. A contentious quarrelous or malicious heart in prayer Our blessed Saviour thus instructs us for prayer And when you stand praying Mark 11.25 forgive if you have ought against any that your Father also which is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses but if you do not forgive neither will your Father which is in Heaven forgive your trespasses A Rule to be well taken notice of at all times especially in these warring and jarring times wherein there is not only party against party in more divisions then can be mustered up but even prayer against prayer and if withall there should be strife and rancor within and so heart against heart as alass how hard is it to be avoyded who can hope it is any better among many This default would be enough it self alone both to keep back their prayers from them and to bind on their sins upon them As two persons cannot walk together except they be agreed so neither can their prayers ascend up to Heaven together except they be agreed the one at least and if both be from a strife-enflamed Censer what ever the matter be both must needs be shut out The Apostle wills That men pray every where lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting 1 Tim. 2.8 or without wrath and disceptation and so both terms may exclude debate in devotion When Israel went to war in their Land against the enemy that oppressed them the Priests were to blow an alarm against the enemy with both the Trumpets of the Sanctuary Num. 10 9 and then they should be remembred before the Lord their God and be saved from their Enemies But what might be expected if they should sound Trumpet against Trumpet and Priest against Priest 6. Infidelity or weakness of Faith or trust in God The Apostle James requires us to ask in Faith nothing wavering for let not that man that wavereth think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. Jam 1.6 7 Mr Medes Diatr part 2. p. 297 This wavering saith one is when we reel from God to rest upon second means It is a hard matter to use friends wisdom or strength and not to relie upon them and it is as hard to go to God in prayer and sincerely and stedfastly to trust in him It is wont to be said we must use the means but trust in God but the usual practise is to invert that and to use prayer use God but trust in the means Our Saviour saith that God will avenge his own Elect which cry day and night to him though he bear long with them Lu. 18 7 8 he will avenge them speedily nevertheless when the Son of man cometh shall he find Faith on the Earth How is this Can it be long and yet speedy We must take it in divers respects or in relation to divers persons It is long in the account and sense of them that pray but it is speedy to the wicked that are the subjects of that avenging It is long because God waits for strength of faith as well as assiduity of cries in his Elect it is speedy because God is quicker in coming on in his work then they are in their advance of faith Though he bear long yet he comes sooner then their faith is ready for when he cometh he shall scarce find faith in the Earth 7. A continuance of sin in heart and life If I regard iniquity in my heart Psa 66.18 the Lord will not hear me saith David And the Lord tells Israel Lev. 26 27 31 If ye will not for all this harken unto me but walk contrary unto me I will bring your Sanctuaries unto desolation and I will not smell the savor of your sweet
places and fountains in the midst of the valleys I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water I will plant in the wilderness the Cedar c. And the end or issue first of that protracted indigence and then of this exceeding affluence first of that low ebb and then of this full tyde is that they may see and know and consider and understand together that the hand of the Lord hath done this and the holy one of Israel hath created it Here we have the effect notably exprest it is not meerly said that the hand of the Lord and his work may be visible but the act of acknowledgment of it is set forth by a multiplicity of words by a fourfold term to note both the conspicuity of the object to be observed and the intentness of the observer of it that they may see and know and consider and understand together In our prayers which are ordinarily put up and as continually answered we scarce see or confess God in the return but when as we are put to seek God long ere we speed and are hard pinched with the want and delayed expectation of the thing and are even wearied and faint with our waiting and crying and when at last our requests are granted us then we apprehend God clearly in the issue we own him expresly and take solemn notice of him in it As Hagar when the Lord appeared to her by the well in the wilderness gave unto God this appellation Gen. 16.13 Thou Lord seest me and said Have I also here looked after him that seeth me in like manner do the servants of God now on such an appearance of him Or as it is in another passage of Isaiah of a suitable import to this they say Lo this is our God we have waited for him and he will save us Isai 25.9 this is the Lord we have waited for him we will be glad and rejoyce in his Salvation Observe what the occasion is of this exultation in Gods appearing and of this pointing out of God as it were with the finger the preface to those words denoteth it to us Verse 8. And it shal be said in that day Lo this is our God c. In that day to wit when the Lord God will swallow up death in victory and will wipe away tears from off all faces and the rebuke of his people shall be taken away from off all the earth that 's the day in which this shall be said This then is one intent of God in withholding himself for a time from his peoples prayers that his appearance to them in the upshot may be the more grateful and glorious Therefore will the Lord wait that he may be gracious unto you Isai 30.18 that is not as if God were not gracious in disposition and affection unto his servants at all times but the meaning is the Lord hath his special season of exercising and bringing forth the eminent effects of his grace and favour to them and the special season is when mercy will appear to be mercy indeed and grace will look like grace and shine forth in its orient brightness and this season is brought on ripened by the Lords deferring or waiting for a time even until his people be come to that extremity of affliction and inability as is there described in the context Mar. 8.24 Mark 4 37 If Christ had not slept in the ship while the storm arose and came to that height that his Disciples and the rest of the company in it apprehended themselves at the point of perâ—shing the divine Power of Christ had not so appeared and been so admired by them as it was when he upon their awakening him with their cries rebuked the wind and stilled the Sea and made it calm in an instant Mat. 14.24 And at another time of their passing by Sea had it not been that they had been so tossed by waves and contrary winds and that he tarried from them until the fourth watch of the night and that when he came unto them he came walking upon the Sea and when he was come into the ship the wind and waves immediately ceased they in the ship had not been so moved to worship him and to conclude him of a certain to be the Son of God Ye have heard saith St James of the patience of Job Jam. 5.11 and have seen the end of the Lord that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy The end of the Lord I conceive here may be not so much or not only the conclusion which God put to Jobs afflictions in the happy change and recovery of his outward estate double to his former prosperity as the end which the Lord accomplished upon the spirit of Job and doth still work upon the hearts also of all others that look upon and make a right use of the dealings of God with him which is the demonstration of Gods exceeding pitifulness and tender mercifulness unto him in pardoning his infirmities dispelling his temptations and raising him up from so miserable a state to flourish again and this was the end of Jobs endurings and the exercise of his patience in so great a measure by them the end I â—ay it was of his endurings not which they by their own natural efficacy produced but which the Lord by his ordering brought forth it 's therefore termed the end of the Lord that is the end which the Lord proposed and at length attained by his proceedings in that manner with him Gen. 32.31 Jacob when he so stoutly wrestled with the Angel of God as that he prevailed and carried the blessing withall he got a halt and came off sinew shrunk by the Angels touch of the hollow of his thigh The reason which is commonly rendered was that by this mark of infirmity it might appear that he got not the victory by his own strength but by his with whom he prevailed it was the will and not the weakness of him with whom Jacob wrestled by reason whereof he got the upper hand As the hollow of Jacobs thigh was touched before he obtained the blessing so do the servants of God not seldom get a halt or come on slowly to the enjoyment of their desires in prayer and it is for that very reason that the divine power and grace may be the more magnified in the end 5. A further end of the Lords deferring to answer his peoples prayers may be to inhance the price of the benefit prayed for to teach them by the long want of it and by their painful and sollicitous seeking for it to set a due rate upon it That which costs us dear we usually account dearly of The mâ—rcy which is gotten by hard begging and long craving will be more acceptable and better improved when it comes it will be both more pleasing and more profitable when it is possessed we shall by that means learn better to
yet they meet and agree in this in Mammonitism They agree not indeed in an unanimous prosecution and participation of the worlds Interest yea many times the reason of their jars is in truth though pretended to be for other things their being too much like-minded in the affection and pursuit of the world but they thus far agree in it that they are all competitors and designers for it 2. This is the common root or mother of most or all other sins among us The Prophet saith of those of his time Ezek. 7 19 Their silver and their gold was the stumbling block of their iniquity that is It was that which made them fall and cast them down into their other sins 1 Tim. 6.9 10 In like manner saith the Apostle They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts for the love of mony is the root of all evil So it is with us an excessive love a dear respect to earthly-self-concernments breeds and brings forth all the iniquities of the times This I might manifest in a multitude of particulars Take but these few What makes men Heretiques Inventers or Broachers and Advancers of erroneous and pernicious Doctrines The Apostle Peter will shew us Through covetousness it is and by having an heart exercised with covetous practices and by following the way of Balaam 2 Pet. 2.1 3 14 15 who loved the wages of unrighteousness that men become false Teachers and bring in damnable Heresies and in that trade make merchandize of people and beguile unstable Souls And the Apostle Paul also tells us in the passage even now cited 1 Tim. 6.10 While some have coveted after mony they have erred from the Faith * Some have derived the original of all Popish Errors from ambition and avarice or as others from the Cardinals Caps and the Monks Bellies Mr Gilespy Miscellan chap. 12. pag. 143. What hath stirred up and fomented all the unhappy Wars and Contentions among us The genuine and main cause hath been the competitions and emulous conivalship of the several adverse parties about this self-earthly-interest The true state of the many quarrels hath been which should be great in rule and riches I know other things have been more spoken of held forth and insisted on as being more specious We have been called out to appear for Religion the fundamental Government in the three Estates the Priviledges of Parliament the Liberty of the Subject the Peace and common Good of the three Kingdoms But the upshot of these agitations hath discovered what was the first moving cause of them in many persons We may I think infallibly conclude that to have been the end and last aym and first mover in any undertaking unto which it is used and improved when it is accomplished Now whether the victories power and peace attained by the adventures and commotions have been improved by the possessors of them unto Religion and those other interests held forth or unto self-worldly-interest I leave to the impartial observers yea to the persons themselves to judg What 's the reason Religion goes not forward the Reformation and Settlement of it is or hath until very newly been at the one end of every business and of every Declaration and yet it is not effected nor really promoted The reason is This Interest comes still in the way and crosseth it It sometimes consists with or forwardeth a private temporal design to seem zealous and resolved for Religion but a through zealous course unto activity and performance doth seldom stand with the said design and therefore when it becomes an impediment it is shifted off The Jews being set upon their Domestique Interests say The time is not come Hag. 1 2 the time that the Lords House should be built The like excuses men now find to lay down Reformation and from the same root Men say The time is not for it the way is not found out or clear the State is not secure men will not be brought in Superiors do not countenance there is little hope of doing any good they dare not strain upon mens consciences and such like put-offs are alledged But what Gehazi can make it a time to receive moneys and to strain for that to buy Lands to bring men in by the horn for his own purpose and to over-aw Conscience for his own turn What 's the reason of the discontents mutinies and tumults among us Men are generally possessed with a jealous repining and restless spirit No man scarce containeth himself within his place or enjoyeth his mind Nothing but murmuring and grudges at or clashing and thwarting with one another Whence is this Erinnis or malecontented turbulent disposition Why thus it is The heart is vehemently inordinately impatiently set upon this worldly Interest to have and enjoy it in peculiar The state of the World is a limited and scant possession there is not room or extent enough in it to suffice all its Paramours every one therefore labors to enclose and sequester it to himself Isai 5.8 that he may be placed alone in the midst of the Earth And hence it becomes the spawn of discontent and discords unto its admirers and adorers Gen. 26.19 Isaacs servants and the herdmen of Gerar strove for one Well after another until at length the former digged a Well called Rehoboth that is Room and so they rested We shall never be quiet among our selves while our minds are passionately addicted to this worlds goods wherein there is not room The scantiness of this Interest and the boundlessness of mens affections to it hurries us into uproars and confusions about it This oportet habere this Interest is the Diana the magnifico of these times and the jealousie that men are in of being hindred one by another in their prosecution of it is that which stirs them up like Demetrius and fellow craftsmen to make head and run into parties and fill all with noise and disorder The lower sort start up and strive to lay hold on and get it to themselves The higher sort having it travel and employ their heads and hands to keep and enlarge it for themselves and theirs The mean would be great the great would be greater the greater would be yet the greatest or great alone hence all our commotions and combustions and feaverish furies We are become like the raging waves of a tempestuous Sea that some at and break themselves one upon another It is observed that the Jews in Christs time being set upon the expecting and longing after an earthly Deliverance Kingdom and Happiness by their Messiah whom as about that time they looked for they were thereby become very prone to Sedition and Insurrections against the Roman State and exceeding apt to set up or embrace false Christs which was the reason of our Saviours cautions to his to beware of false Christs * Matt. 24 2 23 24 26 Mark 13.6 Luke 21.8 even any
Religion next door to Atheism to reckon the warranting or condemning Will of God by such a measure How oft must such a Judgment be driven to tack about and change sides and dance Ecebolus his turns We may in these days observe iâ— some men that the Religion way or party which was most odious to them and most obstinately resolved against by them they have meerly upon this account been first melted into milder thoughts of and presently linked into deep affection and high admiration of it It is a miserable mind that in stead of embracing that rule of the Apostle for a principle Godliness is great gain with contentment will choose the reversed supposal of the worldling and say Gain is godliness We in this Age are the more culpable if misled into this â—rror having seen the vicissitudes that have come upon all interests successively none excepted no not theirs who have stood so much upon this argument having also so many Evangelical maxims and premonitions from our blessed Saviour and his Apostles in the Word to the contrary and having recorded before us in sacred Story so many examples of them that have grosly abused themselves yea and the Name and Honor of God with such collections For the two latter Considerations I will give a few Instances of each For Evangelical Maxims and Premonitions I will refer my Reader to peruse at his leasure Luke 6.20 unto 27. 16.25 Joh. 15.19 Act. 14.22 1 Cor. 4.8 to 14. 2 Tim. 2.12 Jam. 2.5 6 7. 5.1 to 7. vers 10 11. Rev. 11.2 to 11. 13.3 to 9. Aâ—d add the mention of thes◠〈◊〉 passages When our Saviour was pressâ—â— by the Pharisees and Sadduces the Jewish Sectaries to shew them a sign from Heaven to a warrant his actions or to prove that he was the Christ he telleth them Mat. 12 38 39 40. 16.1 to 5. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign and furthâ—r dâ—nyeth them utterly any sign such as they meant that is a solemn magnifical or signal token which should make him externally and publiquely pompous and glorious to the world only they should have the sign of the Prophet Jonas and that was a sign clean contrary to the strain of their thoughts even an emblem of humiliation and debasement to the lowest pitch which was therefore to them a stumbling stone and a sign to be spoken against rather then to confirm them For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the Whales belly so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the Earth Again for the Ages of the Church which follow that of Christ and his Apostles what do the Scriptures reveal to us touching the use or validity of Providential signs Why it forewarns us that the shewing of great signs and wonders a coming with all power the doing of great wonders and the working of miracles are the exploits of false Christs false Prophets the Man of Sin the second Beast Mat. 7.22 24.24 2 Thes 2.9 Rev. 13.13 14. 16.14 19.20 the false Prophet and the three unclean spirits that come out of the mouth of the Dragon the Beast and the false Prophet And the reason why Miracles Signs and Wonders do cease in the true Church before and in the times of Antichrist and do appear on the side and among the followers of Antichrist was rendered long since by John Hus and not only by him but before that long by Augustin Chrysostom Isiodore and Gregory alledged by him to wit because the Church of Christ must be persecuted and seem abject and forsaken and must overcome by the confession of the Truth See Mr Fox Acts and Mon. vol 1. pag. 593 c. by holiness and shining in good works and by love and patience and not by power and Antichrist must sway all and have full power to persecute and hypocrites that look after Temporals more then Spirituals must be discovered and the true Saints tryed and Carnalists justly punished with that snare of specious signs As for the Examples of such as have grosly mistaken and deluded themselves with such collections take these few Those stubborn Idolatrous Iews in Ieremiah having told him in answer to a solemn message from the Lord unto them that they would not harken unto him speaking unto them in the Name of the Lord but they would pertinaciously adhere to their own way in burning incense and pouring out drink-offerings to the Queen of Heaven they render this for their ground We and our fathers c. have done thus in Iudea Jer. 44.16 c. and then we had plenty of victuals and were well and saw no evil but since we left off that worship we have wanted all things and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine Saul hearing that David was come to Keilah he thought he had him then couped up and at his mercy and thereupon he would needs gather that God had done it in favor of his cause 1 Sam. 23.7 he said God hath delivered him into my hand Such use did Shimei make also against David of the providence of God to wit when Absalom had risen up and dispossessed him of his Kingdom Casting stones at him and cursing him he said Come out come out thou bloody man and thou man of Belial 2 Sam. 16.7 8. the Lord hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul in whose stead thou hast reigned and the Lord hath delivered the Kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son and behold thou art taken in thy mischief because thou art a bloody man Leah having given Zilpah her maid to her husband Iacob to wife and God after that harkening unto Leah so that she conceived and bare Iacob a fifth son Gen. 30.17 18. this was the interpretation she made of it God hath given me mine hire because I have given my maiden to my husband and she called his name Issachar an hire She applaudeth her promoting of Poligamy a trespass both against her husband and her self by the happy issue of her prayer in her bearing another son * See also Hos 12.8 Zech. 11 5 Mal. 2 17. But away with this silly religionless inference 4. Turn not out of the ways of God I mean the ways of his Word and Commandments decline not into any unwarranted path upon occasion of such Providences of God K â—p to the Law and to the Testimony and what ever Oracle it be that speaks not according to this Word Isai 8.20 refuse the pretended light thereof for in truâ—h there is no light in it The Prophet David in Psal 37. which he purposely peneth for the stablishment and consolation of the righteous under such tryals as this we are upon again and again inculcateth this lesson Trust in the Lord Psal 37.3 8 27 34. and do good Fret not thy self in any wise to do evil Depart from evil and do