SERMON XXVIII.

PREACHED AT ST. MARY'S, OXFORD, SEPT. 12, 1658.

A FEW DAYS AFTER CROMWELL'S DEATH, WHO DIED ON THE THIRD INSTANT BEFORE.

DEUTER. xxix. 4.

Yet the Lord has not given you an heart to perceive, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear, unto this day.

To complete the sense of the words, we must have recourse to the two precedent verses; which being compared with the text, present us with a description of such a brutish and irrational temper, such an invincible hardness, as is not to be found in any people mentioned throughout the whole book of God, or any history whatsoever. Israel, the peculiar inheritance of God, the darlings of heaven; yet by their strange deportment under God's dealings, may leave this report of themselves, that they were the greatest enjoyers and the greatest abusers of mercy that ever lived. The whole story of the transactions between God and them is a continued miracle. On God's side there is strange unheard of power and goodness, on theirs a prodigious unheard of stupidity. Here we have miracles of strength and wisdom, there we have miracles of disobedience. None ever possessed mercy so much to the reproach of mercy as they did. Miracles are the rarities and the reserves of Heaven, kept to bear testimony

a contemplation of his works in the ordinary course of nature will not serve turn. Yet God was pleased to make these common with his people, that he might engage their hearts to him beyond all plea of unbelief. He delivered them by miracles, in Exod. xiv. 29. He led and guided them by miracles, Exod. xiii. 21. He fed them by miracles, Exod. xvi. 13, 17. He clothed them by miracles, Deut. xxix. 5. And, what was the greatest and the crowning miracle of all, he did not consume them in the midst of their frequent rebellions. Yet they had hardness and unbelief enough to encounter all these dealings: they still remained the same, a perverse, obstinate people, whose neck (as the Spirit's expression is) was an iron sinew, and their brow brass. In short, the bare report and fame of those miracles made many proselytes and converts, the very sight whereof could not convert them. It will not be amiss, to take a short survey of their strange, unreasonable unbelief in some particular passages of it. When God had delivered them out of Egypt by an outstretched arm, by such wonders as never were before, nor ever since; and while the memory of these was yet fresh upon their mind, even then, upon the pursuit of Pharaoh, they distrust and murmur, Exod. xiv. 11. Hence David puts such a repeated emphasis upon this, in Psalm cvi. 7, They provoked him at the Red sea, even at the Red sea. As if the same power that could deliver them from an enemy, when he actually possessed them, could not rescue them from him when he only pursued them. After this deliverance they murmur for meat: Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Psalm lxxviii. 19. Can God? They

question not only his will, but his power, of which they had an immediate experience. Well, God gives them meat, even the bread of angels, and then they murmur for flesh: Psalm lxxviii. 20, Can he provide flesh also for his people? Still they doubt of his power; they live upon it one day, and they question it the next. An interchange of mercies on God's part, and murmurings on theirs, was the continual custom and manner of their whole life. But the most horrid, and almost incredible passage of their unbelief, was when, after all the wonders, both in Egypt and out of Egypt, when Moses had but only turned his back; as if in Moses they had lost their God, as if he had been the only Deity they acknowledged; and all their worship and religion had been directed to his person: in his absence they address themselves to Aaron, with this impious, absurd argument; Moses is gone, therefore make us gods, Exod. xxxii. 1. I am confident, if an intelligent infidel should read this history, the miracles here mentioned would not seem so improbable to him, as their carriage and behaviour upon these miracles. From the consideration of this, Moses might here very well proem the repetition of the covenant with this upbraiding reprehension; The Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear. Which words are only an increpation of them, not any reflection upon God, as shall appear afterwards.

As for the explication of the words, I suppose I need not tell you, that they cannot be understood strictly according to the letter: for if God had given them no bodily eyes to see, nor ears to hear, they

were blind spiritually, herein the sin of their obstinacy did consist.

We have here several phrases, but they all concentre in the same signification. A heart to perceive, eyes to see, and ears to hear. It is a pleonasm, a figure usual in scripture, by a multiplicity of expressions, to signify some one notable thing: so that from this congeries of similary words, we may collect the exceeding stupidity and total ignorance of the Jews, in apprehending the divine dispensations.

Or, secondly, we may refer these several expressions to those several means which God suited to every apprehensive faculty of their soul. He proposed an excellent law to their understanding or their heart he declared himself in prodigious miracles visible to the eye. He spoke to them in a wonderful manner from mount Sinai in thunders, and a voice audible to the ear. He did (as I may so speak) lay siege to every faculty, if through any one of them he might force his convictions into the soul. He proposed that which might win the eyes and inform the ear, and that which might strike the understanding through both; but nothing could find entrance, where the doors both of sense and reason were shut through gross unbelief.

And thus we see the words have no difficulty in them. They will afford us these observations.

1 Observ. That the heart may remain unaffected and unconvinced in the midst of convincing means.

That this is so, scripture and experience leave it beyond dispute. But the reason why it is so, is this: because the clearness and perspicuity of the object does not at all supply or repair the defects of the fa

culty. The goodness and excellency of the things proposed to be understood and embraced do not give any ability to an hard heart to apprehend or embrace them; as the most visible, conspicuous thing contributes no power to a weak, indisposed eye to discern it.

Now I term these means convincing,

(1.) Because they do actually convince some, although they miscarry in others.

(2.) Because they have a fitness or aptitude to convince all.

2 Observ. issuing from the words is this:

That such a frame of spirit, such a perceiving heart, as enables the soul to apprehend and improve the means of grace, is totally and entirely the free gift of God: Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive. It is a product of that mercy which has no argument but itself.

1. In respect of the motive, which is the mere compassion of God: there is nothing in man that could engage God to bestow grace upon him. We are by nature wholly in a state of sin and enmity against God; and how these qualifications should merit grace at his hands, I know not, unless, by an unheard of, strange antiperistasis, the most hateful object should excite an act of the greatest love.

2. It is free, in respect of the persons upon whom it is conferred. When God comes first to work upon us, we are presented to him in the lump, all equally odious, equally desirable. And that God gives grace to one, and denies it to another, it is not from any precedent difference in them; for it is only the gift