happened, hath not God threatened you all, and forborne to smite you? or smitten you, and forborne to kill you? That is evident. But if you had been a privado, and of the cabinetcouncil with your guardian angel, that from him you might have known how many dangers you have escaped, how often you have been near a ruin, so near, that if you had seen your danger with a sober spirit, the fear of it would have half killed you; if he had but told you how often God had sent out his warrants to the exterminating angel, and our blessed Saviour by his intercession hath obtained a reprieve, that he might have the content of rejoicing at thy conversion and repentance; if you had known from him the secrets of that providence which governs us in secret, and how many thousand times the devil would have done thee hurt, and how often himself, as a ministering spirit of God's "goodness and forbearance," did interpose and abate, or divert a mischief which was falling on thy head: it must needs cover thy head with a cloud of shame and blushing at that ingratitude and that folly, that neither will give God thanks, nor secure thy own well-being.

Hadst thou never any dangerous fall in thy intemperance? Then God shewed thee thy danger, and that he was angry at thy sin; but yet did so pity thy person, that he would forbear thee a little longer, else that fall had been into thy grave. When thy gluttony gave thee a surfeit, and God gave thee a remedy, his meaning then was, that thy gluttony rather should be cured than thy surfeit; that repentance should have been thy remedy, and abstinence and fasting should be thy cure. Did ever thy proud or revengeful spirit engage thee upon a duel, or a vexatious lawsuit, and God brought thee off with life or peace? His purpose then was, that his mercy should teach thee charity. And he that cannot read the purposes of God written with the finger of judgment (for as yet his whole hand is not laid on), either is consigned to eternal ruin, because God will no more endeavour his cure; or, if his mercy still continues and goes on in long-suffering, it shall be by such vexatious instruments, such caustics and corrosives, such tormenting and desperate medicaments, such which, in the very cure, will soundly punish thy folly and ingratitude. For, deceive not yourselves, God's mercy cannot be made a patron for any man's impiety; the purpose of it is to bring us to repentance: and God will

do it by the mercies of his mercies, or by mercies of his judgments; he either will break our hearts into a thousand fragments of contrition, or break our bones in the ruins of the grave and hell. And since God rejoices in his mercy above all his works, he will be most impatient that we shall despise that in which he most delights, and in which we have the greatest reason to delight; the riches of that goodness which is essential, and part of his glory, and is communicated to us, to bring us to repentance, that we may partake of that goodness, and behold that glory.

SERMON XIII.

PART II.

3. Makρo@vμía, 'Long-suffering.'-In this one word are contained all the treasures of the divine goodness: here is the length and extension of his mercy: "Pertrahit spiritum super nos Dominus," so the Syrian interpreter reads, Luke, xviii. 7. "God holds his breath :" he retains his anger within him, lest it should come forth and blast us. And here is also much of the divine justice: for although God suffers long, yet he does not let us alone; he forbears to destroy us, but not to punish us: and in both he, by many accidents, gives probation of his power; according to the prayer of the wise man, Ελεεῖς δὲ πάντας, ὅτι πάντα δύνασαι· καὶ παρορᾷς ἁμαρτήματα ἀνθρώπων εἰς μετάνοιαν Thou art merciful towards us all, because thou canst do all things; and thou passest by the sins of men, that they may repent." And, that God shall support our spirit, and preserve our patience, and nourish our hope, and correct our stubbornness, and mortify our pride, and bring us to him, whether we will or no, by such gracious violences and merciful judgments, which he uses towards us as his last remedies, is not only the demonstration of a mighty mercy, but of an almighty power. So hard a thing it is to make us leave our follies and become wise, that, were not the mercies of God an effective pity, and clothed in all the way of its progress with mightiness and power, every sinner should perish irrevocably. But this is the fiery trial, the last purgatory fire which God uses, to burn the

t Wisd. xi. 24.

thistles, and purify the dross. When the gentle influence of a sunbeam will not wither them, nor the weeding hook of a short affliction cut them out; then God comes with fire to burn us, with the axe laid to the root of the tree. But then observe, that when we are under this state of cure, we are so near destruction, that the same instrument that God uses for remedy to us, is also prepared to destroy us; the fire is as apt to burn us to ashes, as to cleanse us when we are so overgrown; and the axe as instrumental to cut us down for fuel, as to square us for building in God's temple: and therefore when it comes thus far, it will be hard discerning what the purpose of the axe is; and, whether the fire means to burn, we shall know it by the change wrought upon ourselves. For what Plato said concerning his dream of purgatory, is true here: "Quicunque non purgatus migrat ad inferos, jacebit in luto; quicunque vero mitratus illuc accesserit, habitabit cum Deis:" "He that dies in his impurity, shall lie in it for ever; but he that descends to his grave purged and mitred,— that is, having quitted his vices, et superinduens justitiam,' 'being clothed with righteousness,' shall dwell in light and immortality." It is sad that we put God to such extremities: and, as it happens in long diseases, those which physicians use for the last remedies, seldom prevail; and when consumptive persons come to have their heads shaven, they do not often escape: so it is when we put God to his last remedies: God indeed hath the glory of his patience and his long-suffering, but we seldom have the benefit and the use of it. For if when our sin was young, and our strength more active, and our habits less, and virtue not so much a stranger to us, we suffered sin to prevail upon us, to grow stronger than the ruins of our spirit, and to lessen us into the state of sickness and disability, in the midst of all those remedies which God used to our beginning-diseases: much more de sperate is our recovery, when our disease is stronger, and our faculties weaker; when our sins reign in us, and our thoughts of virtue are not alive.

However, although I say this, and it is highly considerable to the purpose that we never suffer things to come to this extremity, yet, if it be upon us, we must do as well as we can: but then we are to look upon it as a design of God's last mercy, beyond which, if we protract our repentance, our condition is desperately miserable. The whole state of which

mercy we understand by the parable of the king reckoning with his servants, that were in arrears to him: "One was brought to him which owed him ten thousand talents: but forasmuch as he had not to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made." The man, you see, was under the arrest; the sentence was passed upon him, he was a condemned man: but, before the execution of it, he fell down and worshipped, and said, Kúpiɛ, μaкpolúμnoov; “Lord, 'suffer me longer awhile;' have patience with me, and I will pay thee all." This tells its meaning: this is a long-sufferance,' by being a forbearance' only of execution of the last sentence, a putting off damnation upon a longer trial of our emendation; but in the meantime it implies no other case, but that, together with his long-sufferance, God may use all other severities and scourges to break our untamed spirits, and to soften them with hammers; so death be put off, no matter else what hardships and loads of sufferance we have. "Hic ure, hic seca, ut in æternum parcas;" so St. Austin prayed: "Here, O Lord, cut me, here burn me; spare me not now, that thou mayest spare me for ever." And it is just like the mercy used to a madman, when he is kept in a dark room, and tamed with whips; it is a cruel mercy, but such as his condition requires; he can receive no other mercy, all things else were cruelly unmerciful.

I remember what Bion observed wittily of the punishment inflicted upon the daughters of Danaus, whom the old poets feigned to be condemned in hell to fill a bottomless tub with water, and, to increase the pain (as they fancied), this water they were to carry in sieves, and never to leave work till the tub were full; it is well (says he), since their labour must be eternal, that it is so gentle; for it were more pains to carry their water in whole vessels, and a sad burden to go loaden to a leaking tub with unfruitful labours.-Just so is the condition of those persons, upon whom a wrath is gone out: it is a sad sentence, but acted with a gentle instrument; and since they are condemned to pay the scores of their sins with the sufferance of a load of judgments, it is well they are such as will run quite through them, and not stick upon them to eternity. "Omnes enim pœnæ non exterminantes, sunt medicinales;" "All punishments whatsoever, which do not destroy us, are intended to save us;" they are lancets which

make a wound, but to let forth the venom of our ulcers. When God slew twenty-three thousand of the Assyrians for their fornication, that was a final justice upon their persons, and consigned them to a sad eternity: for beyond such an infliction there was no remedy. But when God sent lions to the Assyrian inhabitants of Samaria, and the judgment drove them to inquire after the manner of the God of the land, and they sent for priests from Jerusalem to teach them. how to worship the God of Israel; that was a mercy and a judgment too: the long forbearance of God,' who destroyed not all the inhabitants, 'led' the rest unto repentance.'

1. And I must make this observation to you; that when things come to this pass, that God is forced to the last remedies of judgments, this long-sufferance will little or nothing concern particular persons, but nations and communities of men for those who are smitten with judgment, if God takes his hands off again, and so opens a way for their repentance by prolonging their time; that comes under the second part of God's method, the avoxn, or forbearance:' but if he smites a single person with a final judgment, that is a long-suffering,' not of him, but towards others; and God hath destroyed my neighbour, to make me repent, my neighbour's time being expired, and the date of his possibility determined. For a man's death-bed is but an ill station for a penitent; and a final judgment is no good monitor to him, to whom it is a severe executioner. They that perished in the gainsaying of Korah, were out of the conditions of repentance. But the people that were affrighted with the neighbourhood of the judgment, and the expresses of God's anger manifested in such visible remonstrances, they were the men called unto repentance. But concerning the whole nations or communities of men, this long-sufferance is a sermon of repentance; loud, clamorous, and highly argumentative. When God suffered the mutinies, the affronts, the baseness and ingratitude, the follies and relapses, of the children of Israel, who murmured against God ten times in the wilderness; God sent evil angels among them, and fiery serpents, and pestilence, and fire from heaven, and prodigies from the earth, and a prevailing sword of the enemies : and in all these accidents, although some innocent persons felt the 'contingencies and variety of mortality, yet those wicked persons who fell by the design of God's anger, were made ex