solve that a wretched king of Israel made under a pressing judgment, incumbent upon him from God, in 2 Kings vi. 33, And he said, Behold, this evil is of the Lord; why should I wait for the Lord any longer? When a man, instead of being humbled by an evil, is enraged; and, instead of lying at God's feet, flies in his face; we may be sure that his final judgment and damnation lingers not. For if such works of God, as have in them naturally a convincing quality, do not actually convince; but that the sinner can account all God's arrows as stubble, and laugh at the shaking of his spear; we may look upon that man as one that hardens himself against God. And what will prove the issue of such a behaviour is not difficult to conclude, from that in Job. ix. 4, That none ever hardened himself against God, and prospered.

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3dly, The third sort of providences, in which God often speaks convincingly, is by signal, unexpected deliverances. These are both the strongest and the sweetest ways of conviction they are properly God's drawing us with the cords of a man: all persuasion, without any mixture of terror or compulsion by these, God does, as it were, allure, and even court us into subjection.

Now all deliverance, in the nature of it, presupposing some evil, from which we are delivered; God first brings us under an evil, that we may see our sin, and then rescues us from perishing by it, that we may repent. He shews us death in the punishment, to affright, and afterwards removes it in the deliverance, to endear the soul. And surely, upon all the accounts of reason and common humanity, it should be natural from hence to draw an argu

ment for repentance. For to sin against mercy, shining in a deliverance, is disingenuous; and, since it provokes the judgment to return, equally dangerous. The most proper and genuine deduction that is to be made from God's mercy, is his fear, in Psalm cxxx. 4, There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. But now, if any man, from a deliverance from punishment, shall draw a consequence for boldness in sin; and if, from compassion, he shall argue himself into presumption, this is not the discourse of his reason, but the sophistry and baseness of his corruption. And such a way of arguing as God reproached the children of Israel for, as equally wicked and irrational, in Jerem. vii.10, Will ye stand before me, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? For can we imagine that the great and just God should concern himself to deliver us, and to knock off our shackles, only that we may sin against him so much the more freely? When God has got the sinner upon the advantage, and is making him feel, in some measure, the evil of his sin, in the smart of his punishment, what is it that makes God, after all this, let him go, and choose rather to release, than to despatch him? Is it because he could not destroy him in justice? or because it would not stand with the reputation of his goodness? No, assuredly; it was wholly out of free, spontaneous, undeserved mercy, to see whether or no he will improve such an act of favour into a motive and occasion of amendment. But if, for all this, the sinner will not hear what God speaks in such a dealing; but shuts his eyes and stops his ears, and, after so many endearments, loves God never the better, nor his sin at all the worse, (as

this frame of spirit often befalls sturdy, overgrown sinners,) we may assuredly conclude, that God is taking another course with such an one; and fairly fitting him for the final stroke of his revenging justice.

And thus much for the second way, by which I shew, that God seals and prepares a sinner for destruction; namely, by restraining the convincing force of his providences. The

3d and last that I shall mention is, by delivering up the sinner to a stupidity, or searedness of conscience. And here it will be requisite to shew what this searedness of conscience means: which I shall endeavour to explain from that place of scripture in 1 Tim. iv. 2, having their consciences seared with a hot iron ; κεκαυτηριασμένων τὴν ἰδίαν συνείδησιν. Where some, by a seared conscience, understand a pros‐ titute, branded, filthy conscience; alluding to such notorious criminals as are branded for their vil lainies which, though it be in itself a truth, yet others, I think, more significantly, make it an allusion to the practice of surgeons and physicians, who use cuttings and burnings for the healing of corrupt flesh which being once thus cauterized, or seared, becomes afterwards insensible. And like such flesh are the consciences of some men; which are, as it were, seared into a kind of insensibility.

Now for the nature of conscience, we must know that it is God's vicegerent in the soul, placed there by him, as superintendent over all our actions, severely to examine and supervise them, and impartially to excuse or accuse, according to their conformity or inconformity to the rule prescribed by God's law. And it is, withal, naturally of the ten

derest, the quickest, and the most exact sense of any of the faculties; impatient of the least irregularity, and not conniving at the smallest deviation from the rule a man ought to act by.

But now, when this becomes gross, stupid, and insensible, the soul may sin on as it pleases: for what can hinder sin from reigning, when conscience is hardened, and cannot so much as check it? If, when the watchman is but asleep, the city or castle committed to him is in danger of a surprise from the enemy, how much more must it needs be so, when he is blind! When there is a benumbedness, or searedness, upon the grand principle of spiritual sense, so that, as it is expressed in Ephes. iv. 19, we come to be past feeling, no wonder then if sin and Satan inflict blow after blow, in the most fatal manner, upon the soul: for this is most certain, that unless we feel the evil of sin, we shall never resist it. Such a conscience will brook and digest the foulest sins. As when a man has lost his taste, any thing will go down with him.

But still we must here note, that it is not at once, but by degrees, that the conscience comes to be trained on to this insensible, obdurate temper. As first, if a man's conscience will serve him to be worldly, from thence it shall allow him to proceed to ambition and covetousness; and then, following the scent of gain through thick and thin, he shall be able to mould and cast himself into any kind even of the wickedest and the basest compliances; and from thence, at last, if need be, he shall not stick at perjury itself. And now, when conscience, by going this cursed round, is become hardy, and the man made an experienced, thoroughpaced sinner; what

sin will he not dare to commit? Any lie, any oath, any treachery, shall be readily swallowed and digested by him.

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But how dangerous, and even desperate, is such a frame of mind! and yet God sometimes delivers sinners to it; as he did Pharaoh, to hardness of heart. But how? not by any positive infusion of such an evil habit into the conscience; but by substracting his grace, as also providentially administering occasions, by which the sinner, thus deprived of grace, is more and more hardened. And further than this, I see not how any evil or sinful disposition in the creature can be said to be from God. It is sufficient that God effectually works his end upon sinners this way. As the sun is the cause of night and darkness, not by any causal influence producing it, but only by withdrawing his light; the corruption of a man's heart, unrenewed by grace, is the cause of its own hardness: as, when you melt wax, remove but the fire, and the wax will harden itself. But now, there is no way so sure and dreadful, by which God binds over a sinner to death, as this. For thus God dealt with the Jews: He gave them eyes, that seeing, they might not perceive; and ears, that hearing, they might not understand: but made the heart of that people gross, that they might not be converted, and healed; that is, that they might be hardened and ruined; as it is in Isaiah vi. 9, 10.

The same appears also from that opposite way that God takes to save. Because God had thoughts of mercy for king Joshua, therefore he gave him a tender heart, to relent, upon the hearing of the law, 2 Kings xxii. 19, Because thine heart was ten