Section III. — Use 1. First, This may reprove such as wrestle ; but against whom ? — against God, not against sin and Satan. These are bold men, indeed, who dare try a fall with the Almighty ; yet such they are, and a woe pro- nounced against them, Isa. xlv. 9 : ' Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker.' It is easy to tell which of these will be worsted. What can he do but break his shins, that dasheth them against a rock ? A goodly battle there is like to be, when thorns contest with fire, and stubble with flame. But where live those giants that dare enter the list with the great God? What are their names, that we may know them, and brand them for creatures above all other unworthy to live ? Take heed, O thou who askest, that the wretclicd man whom thou seemest so to defy, be not found in thine own clothes itself! Judas was the traitor, though he would not answer to his name, but put it off with a ' Master, is it I V and so mayest thou be the fighter against God. The heart is deceitful. "Even holy David, for all his anger was so hot against the rich man that took away the poor man's ewe-lamb, that he bound it with an oath, the man shall not live who hath done it, yet proves at last to be himself the man, as the prophet told him, 2 Sam. xii.
Now there are two ways wherein men wrestle against God : First, When they wrestle against his Spirit. Secondly, When they wrestle against his Providence.
First, When they wrestle against his Spirit. We read of the Spirit's striving with the creature. Gen. vi. 3 : ' My Spirit shall not always. strive with man.' Where the striving is not in anger and wrath to destroy them, (that God could do witliout any stir or scuffle,) but a loving strife and contest with man. The old world was running with such a career headlong into their ruin, he sends his Spirit to interpose^ and by his counsels and reproofs to offer, as it were, to stop and reclaim them. As if one seeing another ready to offer violence on himself, should strive to get the knife out of his hand, with which he would do the mischief: or one that hath a purse of gold in his hand to give, should follow another by all manner of entreaties, striving with him to accept and take it. Such a kind of strife is this of the Spirit's \tith men. They are the lusts of men, those bloody instrmnents of death, with which sinners are mischieving themselves, that the Holy Spii'it strives by sweet counsels and entreaties, to get out of our hands. They are Christ's, his grace and eternal life, he strives to make us accept at the hands of God's mercy ; and for repulsing the Spirit thus striving with them, sinners are justly counted fighters against God : ' Ye stiff- necked, and uncircmiicised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost,' Acts vii. .51. Now there is a twofold striving of the Spirit, and so of our wrestling against it. First, The Spirit strives in his messengers with sinners ; they coming on his errand, and not their own, he voucheth the faith- ful coimsels, reproofs, and exhortations, which they give as his own act. ' Noah, that preacher of righteousness,' what he said to the old world, is called, ' the preaching of the Spirit,' 1 Pet. iii. 19. The pains that Moses, Aaron, and other servants of God took in instructing Israel, is called the instruction of the Spirit, Nehem. ix. 20. So that when the word, which God's ministers bring in his name, is rejected, the faithful coimsels they give arc thrown at sinners' heels, and made light of, then do they strive with the Spirit, and wrestle against Christ as really, as if he visibly, in bis own person, had been in the pulpit, and preached the sermon to them. When God comes to reckon with sinners, it will prove so ; then God will rub up your memories, and mind you of his striving with you, and your unkind resisting him. ' They, whether they will Hear, or whether they will forbear, shall know they had a Prophet among them,'
gQ FOR WE WRESTLE.