among us? what can we think, but a judgment is breeding by the lowering coun- tenances of Christians, their swellings of heart, and discontented passions vented from their swollen spirits, like the murmuring of waters, or rumbling of thunder in the air before a tempest ? When children fight and wrangle, now is the time they may expect their father to come, and part them with his rod. Mai. iv. 6 : ' He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I smite the earth with a curse ;' strife and conten- tion set a people next door to a curse. God makes account he brings a heavy judgment upon a people, when himself leaves them. If the master leaves the ship, it is near sinking indeed ; and truly no readier way to send him going, than by contentions ; these smoke him out of his own house. ' Be of one mind,' saiththe apostle, 'live in peace, and the God of peace shall be with you,' 2 Cor. xiii. 11 ; implying if they did not live in peace, they must not look to have his company long with them. God was coming in Moses with a great salvation to the Israelites, and as an earnest of the good services he was to do for them, he begins to make peace between two discontented brethren as they sti-ove; but his kindness was not accepted, and this was the occasion of many years' misery more, that they endured in Egypt. ' Then fled Moses at tlris saying, and was a stranger in the land of Midian,' Acts vii. 29 ; and no news of deliverance for the space of forty years after, ver. 30. And have not our dissensions, or rather our rejecting those overtures which God by men of healing spirits hath offered for peace, been the cause why mercy hath fled so fast from us, and we left to groan under those sad misei'ies that are upon us at this day ? and who knows how long ? O who can think what a glorious morning shone upon Eng- land in that famous parliament, begun 1610, and not weep and weep again to see our hopes for a glorious reformation, that opened with them, now shut up in blood and war, contention and confusion? miseries too, like the fire and brimstone that fell from heaven upon those unhappy cities of the plain.
Section III. — Thirdly and lastly, O labour forpeace and unity for other's sake. I mean those who at present are wicked and luigodly, among whom ye live. We are not, saith Austin, to despair of the wicked, but do our utmost that they may be made good and godly. Quia numerus sanctorum, semper de numero inipiorum auc/us est. Because God ever calls his number out of the heap and multitude of the ungodly world. Now, no more winning means to work upon them, and pave a way for their conversion, than to commend the truths and ways of God to them, by the amiableness of your love and unity that profess the same. This is the cuminin-seed that would draw souls like doves to the windows. This is the gold to overlay the temple of God (the church) so as to make all in love with its beauty that look into it. Every one is afraid to dwell in a house haunted with evil spirits. And hath hell a worse than the spirit of division ? O Christians, agree together, and j^our number will increase. It is said, Acts ii. 46 : ' They continued daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.' And mark what follows, ver. 47 : ' They had favour with all the people, and the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.' The world was so great a stranger to love and peace, that it was amused, and set of considering what heavenly doctrine that was which could so mollify men's hearts, plane their rugged natures, and join them so close in love together, and were the more easily persuaded to adopt themselves into that true family of love. But alas, when this gold became dim (I mean peace among Christians faded) the gospel lost credit in the world, and the doctrine of it came under more suspicion in their thoughts, who seeing such clefts gape in her walls, were more afraid to put their heads under its roof, Cant. ii. 7 : 'I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up nor wake my love till he please.' INIaster Cotton on the place, by ' the roes and hinds of the field,' (which are fearful creatiu-es, easily scared away, yet otherwise willing to feed with the sheep,) takes the Gentiles to be meant, inclinable to embrace the Jewish religion, but very soon scared away by the troublesome state of it, or any offensive carriage of the Jews. And what )nore offensive carriage than divisions and strifes? see them joined together, Rom. xvi. 17; 'Mark them which cause divisions and offences.' If divisions, then there are sure to be ofiences taken, and many possibly hardened in their
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