landed upon the desired haven, it cannot but be an unspeakable delight to him to reflect upon what he has escaped; they are the dangers of the sea which commend and set off the pleasures and securities of the shore. The passage out of one contrary estate into another gives us a quicker and more lively sense of that into which we pass; for as when the wicked perish, the remembrance of their former pleasures and enjoyments mightily heightens the apprehensions of their present torments; so when the righteous are readmitted into fresh assurances of God's favour, all the former sad conflicts they had with the dreadful sense of his wrath serve highly to put a lustre upon present grace. A reconcilement after a falling out, a refreshing spring after a sharp winter, a glorious and triumphant ascension after a bitter and a bloody passion, are things not only commended by their own native goodness, but also by the extreme malignity of their contraries; things that raise enjoyment into rapture, and common pleasure into transport and ecstasy. As that which put a peculiar honour and circle of glory about the head of Christ, was not so much God's exalting and giving him a name, at which all things in heaven and earth should bow, as that he should rise to such a stupendous height of royalty by a wretched, infamous, and accursed death; that from being the scorn of men, he should command the adoration of angels; and from suffering amongst felons and malefactors, ascend far above principalities and powers. Such are the astonishing methods of divine mercy, where God afflicts with the mind of a father, and kills for no other purpose but that he may raise again.

In Psalm cxxvi. 1, 2, When the Lord turned the

captivity of Sion, (says the Psalmist,) then were we like to them that dream. So here in this spiritual deliverance, when a man passes from the agonies and distresses of a wounded spirit into a condition of joy and sereneness of mind, grounded upon a rational hope of God's reconcilement with him, he is so overcome and ravished with delight, that he doubts almost of the reality of what he sees and feels, and even questions the truth of actual fruition.

And thus much for the fourth particular proposed from the words, which was to shew what God's ends and designs are in casting men into such a perplexed condition. Pass we now to the

Fifth and last, which was to draw some useful inferences from the whole. And for this, to prevent both the mistakes of the weak, and the misconstructions of the reverse, we shall, from the foregoing discourse, infer these three things by way of caution.

1st, Let no man presume to pronounce any thing scoffingly of the present, or severely of the final estate of such as he finds exercised with the distracting troubles of a wounded spirit. Let not all this seem to thee but an effect of thy brother's weakness or melancholy for he who was the great and the holy One, he whom God is said to have made strong for himself, he who was the Lord mighty to save, and he who must be thy Saviour if ever thou art saved; even he passed under all these agonies, endured all these horrors and consternations; and to that extremity, that wrath, and death, and hell itself seemed all with one united force to have poured in upon, and took absolute possession of his amazed faculties.

We live in an age of blaspheming all that is sacred, and scoffing at all that is serious: God forgive

us for it, and revenge not upon us those uncontrolled blasphemies and lewdnesses, which, in the sense of all wise and good men, proclaim us ripe for judgment. But surely, to scoff in this case, over and above the impiety of it, is cruel, barbarous, and inhuman; indeed, more cruel by far than to jeer a man upon the rack, or under the last executions of the most remorseless justice: it is indeed to act over the execrable malice of the Jews, mocking and flouting at our Saviour upon the very cross. Besides that, it may chance to prove a dangerous piece of raillery, to be passing jests where God is so much in earnest, especially since there is no man breathing but carries about him a sleeping lion in his bosom, which God can, and may, when he pleases, rouse up and let loose upon him, so as to tear and worry him to that degree, that in the very anguish of his soul he shall choose death rather than life, and be glad to take sanctuary in a quiet grave. But then, further, as this dismal estate of spiritual darkness is a condition by no means to be scoffed at, so neither ought it to represent the person under it to any one as a reprobate or castaway. For he who is in this case is under the immediate hand of God, who alone knows what will be the issue of these his dealings with him. We have seen and shewn that God may carry on very different designs in the same dispensation; and consequently that no man, from the bare feeling of God's hand, can certainly understand his mind.

2dly, In the next place, let no secure sinner applaud or soothe up himself in the presumed safety of his spiritual estate, because he finds no such trouble or anguish upon his spirit for sin. For as the best and most beloved of God's saints have lain under

this doleful and desponding condition, so, for the most part, the vilest persons breathing have passed their lives freely and jocundly, without the least misgiving or suspicion about their eternal concerns, who yet at length have met with a full payment of wrath and vengeance in the other world for all their confidence and jollity in this.

It is a common saying and observation in divinity, That where despair has slain its thousands, presumption has destroyed its ten thousands. The agonies of the former are indeed more terrible, but the securities of the latter not at all less fatal. And he who is carried off by a lethargy or an apoplex, though he dies more easily, yet he dies as surely as he, whose soul is forced and fired out of his body by the ragings of a burning fever.

The most confident sinner living knows not how soon God may deal with him in this manner; and then the sins that lie still and quiet in his mind for the present, when the fire of God's wrath comes to be applied to them, will be found to be quite other things. It is the very same water that cools and refreshes at one time, and that is made to scald and kill at another.

All which considered, if any one can be secure in nis vice, let him be secure still; only let him know, that if ever God thinks fit to wound his spirit, and to set the sense of sin home to his conscience, it will, of the most profane, daring, and resolved debauchee, make him the most pitiful, abject, broken-minded creature under heaven; and take too fast an hold of his stout heart, to be either hectored, or drunk, or drolled away.

3dly and lastly, Let no person on the contrary ex

138 A SERMON ON PROVERBS XVIII. 14. clude himself from the number of such as are sincere and truly regenerate, only because he never yet felt any of these amazing pangs of conscience for sin. For though God, out of his unsearchable counsel, is sometimes pleased to bring these terrors upon his saints, yet in themselves they are not things necessary to make men such. God knows the properest ways of bringing every soul to himself; and what he finds necessary for one, he does not always judge fit for another. No more trouble for sin is necessary to salvation, than so much as is sufficient to take a man off from sin. And if that be once done, he who is troubled for this, that he is not, as he thinks, troubled enough for his sins, gives an infallible proof that he is not in love with them.

And therefore let such persons rather acknowledge the goodness of God towards them, and not quarrel with the great physician of souls for having cured them by easy and gentle methods. It is the same God who speaks in thunders and earthquakes to the hearts of some sinners, and in a soft still voice to others. But whether in a storm or in a calm, in a cloud or in a sunshine, he is still that God who will in the end abundantly speak peace to all those, who with humility and fear depend upon him for it.

To whom, therefore, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.