and suffers none of the evils of jealousy. Men by simplicity converse as do the angels, they do their own work, and secure their proper interest, and serve the publick, and do glory to God: but hypocrites, and liars, and dissemblers, spread darkness over the face of affairs, and make men, like the blind, to walk softly and timorously: and crafty men, like the close air, suck that which is open, and devour its portion, and destroy its liberty: and it is the guise of devils, and the dishonour of the soul, and the cauker of society, and the enemy of justice, and truth, and peace, of wealth and honour, of courage and merchandize.

He is a good man with whom a blind man may safely converse. dignus quicum in tenebris mices, to whom in respect of his fair treatings the darkness and light are both alike: but he that bears light upon the face, with a dark heart, is like him that transforms himself into an angel of light, when he means to do most mischief. Remember this only; that false colours laid upon the face besmear the skin and dirty it, but they neither make a beauty nor mend it.

Apocal. xxii. 15.

For without shall be dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murtherers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

SERMON XXV.

THE

MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.

PSALM IXXVi. 5.

For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee.

MAN having destroyed that which God delighted in, that is, the beauty of his soul, fell into an evil portion, and being seized upon by the divine justice, grew miserable, and condemned to an incurable sorrow. Poor Adam, being banished and undone, went and lived a sad life in the mountains of India, and turned his face and his prayers towards Paradise; thither he sent his sighs, to that place he directed his devotions, there was his heart now where his felicity sometimes had been but he knew not how to return thither, for God was his enemy, and by many of his attributes opposed himself against him. God's power was armed against him; and poor man, whom a fly or a fish could kill, was assaulted and beaten with a sword of fire in the hand of a cherubim. God's eye watched him, his omniscience was man's accuser, his severity was the judge, his justice the

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executioner. It was a mighty calamity that man was to undergo, when he that made him armed himself against his creature, which would have died or turned to nothing, if he had but withdrawn the miracles and the almightiness of his power: if God had taken his arm from under him, man had perished. But it was therefore a greater evil when God laid his arm upon him and against him, and seemed to support him, that he might be longer killing him. In the midst of these sadnesses God remembered his own creature, and pitied it, and by his mercy rescued him from the hand of his power, and the sword of his justice, and the guilt of his punishment, and the disorder of his sin, and placed him in that order of good things where he ought to have stood. It was mercy that preserved the noblest of God's creatures here below; he who stood condemned and undone under all the other attributes of God, was only saved and rescued by his mercy that it may be evident that God's mercy is above all his works, and above all ours, greater than the creation, and greater than our sins. As is his majesty, so is his mercy, that is, without measures and without rules, sitting in heaven and filling all the world, calling for a duty that he may give a blessing, making man that he may save him, punishing him that he may preserve him. And God's justice bowed down to his mercy, and all his power passed into mercy, and his omniscience converted into care and watchful ness, into providence and observation for man's avail; and heaven gave its influence for man, and rained showers for our food and drink; and the attributes and acts of God sat at the foot of mercy, and all that mercy descended upon the head of man. For so the light of the world in the morning of the creation was spread abroad like a curtain, and dwelt no where, but filled the expansum with a dissemination great as the unfoldings of the air's looser garment, or the

wilder fringes of the fire, without knots, or order, or combination; but God gathered the beams in his hand, and united them into a globe of fire, and all the light of the world became the body of the sun: and he lent some to his weaker sister that walks in the night, and guides a traveller, and teaches him to distinguish a house from a river, or a rock from a plain field. So is the mercy of God, a vast expansum and a huge ocean: from eternal ages it dwelt round about the throne of God, and it filled all that infinite distance and space that hath no measures but the will of God: until God, desiring to communicate that excellence and make it relative, created angels, that he might have persons capable of huge gifts; and man, who he knew would need forgiveness. For so the angels, our elder brothers, dwelt for ever in the house of their father, and never break his commandments; but we, the younger, like prodigals, forsook our father's house, and went into a strange country, and followed stranger courses, and spent the portion of our nature, and forfeited all our title to the family, and came to need another portion. For, ever since the fall of Adam, who, like an unfortunate man, spent all that a wretched man could need, or a happy man could have, our life is repentance, and forgiveness is all our portion; and though angels were objects of God's bounty, yet man only is (in proper speaking) the object of his mercy and the mercy which dwelt in an infinite circle, became confined to a little ring, and dwelt here below, and here shall dwell below, till it hath carried all God's portion up to heaven, where it shall reign and glory upon our crowned heads for ever and ever.

But for him that considers God's mercies, and dwells a while in that depth, it is hard not to talk wildly and without art and order of discoursing. St. Peter talked he knew not what, when he entered

into a cloud with Jesus upon mount Tabor, though it passed over him like the little curtains that ride upon the north wind, and pass between the sun and us. And when we converse with a light greater than the sun, and taste a sweetness more delicious than the dew of heaven, and in our thoughts entertain the ravishments and harmony of that atonement which reconciles God to man, and man to felicity, it will be more easily pardoned, if we should be like persons that admire much, and say but little; and indeed we can best confess the glories of the Lord by dazzled eyes, and a stammering tongue, and a heart overcharged with the miracles of this infinity. For so those little drops that run over, though they be not much in themselves, yet they tell that the vessel was full, and could express the greatness of the shower no otherwise but by spilling, and inartificial expressions and runnings over. But because I have undertaken to tell the drops of the ocean, and to span the measures of eternity, I must do it by the great lines of revelation and experience, and tell concerning God's mercy as we do concerning God himself, that he is that great fountain of which we all drink, and the great rock of which we all eat, and on which we all dwell, and under whose shadow we are all refreshed. God's mercy is all this; and we can only draw great lines of it, and reckon the constellations of our hemisphere instead of telling the number of the stars, we only can reckon what we feel and what we live by and though there be in every one of these lines of life, enough to engage us for ever to do God service, and to give him praises; yet it is certain there are very many mercies of God upon us, and towards us, and concerning us, which we neither feel, nor see, nor understand as yet; but yet we are blessed by them, and are preserved and secured, and we shall then know them when we come