rejoice in death and long for a resurrection, and with delight and a greedy hope can think of the day of judgment; we must conclude that their glass gems and finest pageantry, their splendid out-sides and great powers of evil, cannot make amends for that estate of misery which is their portion, with a certainty as great as is the truth of God, and all the articles of the Christian creed. Miserable men are they who cannot be blessed, unless there be no day of judgment; who must perish, unless the word of God should fail. If that be all their hopes, then we may with a sad spirit and a soul of pity inquire into the question of the text, Where shall the ungodly and sinner appear? Even there where God's face shall never shine, where there shall be fire and no light, where there shall be no angels, but what are many thousand years turned into devils, where no good man shall ever dwell, and from whence the evil and the accursed shall never be dismissed. O my God, let my soul never come into their counsels, nor lie down in their

sorrows.

SERMON XII.

THE

MERCY OF THE DIVINE JUDGMENTS:

OR,

GOD'S METHOD IN CURING SINNERS.

ROMANS ii. 4.

Despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?

FROM the beginning of time till now, all effluxes which have come from God have been nothing but emanations of his goodness clothed in variety of circumstances. He made man with no other design than that man should be happy, and by receiving derivations from his fountain of mercy, might reflect glory to him. And therefore God making man for his own glory, made also a paradise for man's use; and did him good, to invite him to do himself a greater for God gave forth demonstrations of his power by instances of mercy, and he who might have made ten thousand worlds of wonder and prodigy, and created man with faculties able only to stare upon and admire those miracles of mightiness, did choose

to instance his power in the effusions of mercy, that at the same instant he might represent himself desirable and adorable, in all the capacities of amiability; viz. as excellent in himself, and profitable to us. For as the sun sends forth a benign and gentle influence on the seed of plants, that it may invite forth the active and plastick power from its recess and secrecy, that by rising into the tallness and dimensions of a tree it may still receive a greater and more refreshing influence from its fosterfather, the prince of all the bodies of light; and in all these emanations the sun itself receives no advantage, but the honour of doing benefits: so doth the Almighty Father of all the creatures; he at first sends forth his blessings upon us, that we by using them aright should make ourselves capable of greater; while the giving glory to God, and doing homage to him, are nothing for his advantage, but only for ours; our duties towards him being like vapours ascending from the earth, not at all to refresh the region of the clouds, but to return back in a fruitful and refreshing shower; and God created us, not that we can increase his felicity, but that he might have a subject receptive of felicity from him. Thus he causes us to be born, that we may be capable of his blessings; he causes us to be baptized, that we may have a title to the glorious promises evangelical; he gives us his son, that we may be rescued from hell. And when we constrain him to use harsh courses towards us, it is also in mercy: he smites us to cure a disease; he sends us sickness, to procure our health. And as if God were all mercy, he is merciful in his first design, in all his instruments, in the way, and in the end of the journey; and does not only shew the riches of his goodness to them that do well, but to all men that they may do well: He is good, to make us good; he does us benefits, to make us hap

py. And if we, by despising such gracious rays of light and heat, stop their progress and interrupt their design, the loss is not God's, but ours; we shall be the miserable and accursed people. This is the sense and paraphrase of my text; Despisest thou the riches of his goodness, &c? Thou dost not know, that is, thou considerest not, that it is for farther benefit that God does thee this: the goodness of God is not a design to serve his own ends upon thee, but thine upon him: The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.

ανέχειν,

Here then is God's method of curing mankind, Xenoτorne, avoxn, panpodum. First, goodness, or inviting us to him by sugared words, by the placid arguments of temporal favour, and the propositions of excellent promises. Secondly, a, at the same time. Although God is provoked every day, yet he does anur, he tolerates our stubbornness, he forbears to punish; and when he does begin to strike, takes his hand off, and gives us truce and respite. For so avox, signifies laxamentum, and inducias too. Thirdly, Mapa, still a long putting off and deferring his final destroying anger, by using all means to force us to repentance; and this especially by the way of judgments; these being the last reserves of the divine mercy, and however we esteem it, is the greatest instance of the divine long suffering that is in the world. After these instruments, we may consider the end, the strand upon which these land us, the purpose of this variety, of these labours and admirable arts, with which God so studies and contrives the happiness and salvation of man: it is only that man may be brought by these means unto repentance, and by repentance may be brought to eternal life. This is the treasure of the divine goodness, the great and admirable efflux of the eternal beneficence, the #AUTOS gørks, the riches of his goodness,

which whosoever despises, despises himself and the great interest of his own felicity; he shall die in his impenitence, and perish in his folly.

1. The first great instrument that God chooses to bring us to him, is xeons, profit, or benefit; and this must needs be first, for those instruments whereby we have a being are so great mercies, that besides that they are such which give us the capacities of all other mercies, they are the advances of us in the greatest instances of promotion in the world. For from nothing to something is an infinite space: and a man must have a measure of infinite passed upon him, before he can perceive himself to be either happy or miserable: he is not able to give God thanks for one blessing, until he hath received many. But then God intends we should enter upon his service at the beginning of our days, because even then he is before-hand with us, and hath already given us great instances of his goodness. What a prodigy of favour is it to us, that he hath passed by so many forms of his creatures, and hath not set us down in the rank of any of them, till we came to be paulo minores angelis, a little lower than the angels? and yet from the meanest of them God can perfect his own praise. The deeps and the snows, the hail and the rain, the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea, they can and do glorify God, and give him praise in their capacity; and yet he gave them no speech, no reason, no immortal spirit, or capacity of eternal blessedness: But he hath distinguished us from them by the absolute issues of his predestination, and hath given us a lasting and eternal spirit, excellent organs of perception, and wonderful instruments of expression, that we may join in consort with the morning star, and bear a part in the chorus with the angels of light, to sing hallelujah to the great Father of men and angels.