Query 2. Wast thou never cast upon miserable straits and extre- mities, wherein the good providence of God reheved and supphed thee ? How many of you have been beaten so long at sea, by rea- son of contrary winds and other accidents, until your provisions have been exhausted and spent. To how short allowance have you been kept. And what a mercy would you have esteemed it, if you could but have satisfied nature with a full draught of water. Certainly, this hath ben the case with many of you. O what a price and value did you then set upon these common mercies, which at other times have been slightly overlooked ! And when you have seen no hopes of relief, have you not looked sadly one upon another? and, it may be, said, as that widow of Sarepta did to the prophet, 1 Kings xvii. 12. " And she said, as the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a " cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a " cruse ; and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in " and dress it for me and my son, that we mav eat it and die."" Even such hath been your case ; yet hath that God, whose mercies are over all his works, heard your sorrows, and provided relief for you, either by some ship, which providence sent to relieve you in that distress, or by altering the winds, and sending you safe to the land before all your provisions have been spent. And hast thou kept no records of these gracious providences ? Yea, dost thou abuse the creature, when thou art brought again to the full enjoyment of it ; and possibly receivest the creatures, (whose worth thou hast lately seen in the want of them) without thanksgiving, or a sensible acknowledgment of the goodness of God in them? I say, dost thou thus answer the expec- tations of God ? Well, beware lest God teach such an unworthy creature, by woeful experience, that the opening of his hand to give thee a mercy, is worth the opening thy lips to bless him for it. Be- ware lest that unthankful mouth that wiU not bless the Lord for bread and water, have neither the one nor the other to bless him for. I can give you a sad instance in the case, and I have found it it in the writing of an eminent divine, who said he had it from an eye and ear- witness of the truth of it. A young man lying upon his sick- bed, was alw^ays calling for meat ; but when the meat he called for was brought unto him, he shook and trembled dreadfully at the sight of it, and that in every part of his body, and so continued until his food was carried away. And thus he did as often as any food was brought into his presence ; and not being able to eat one bit, piijed away; but before his death he freely acknowledged the justice of God in his punishment : For, said he, in the time of my health, I ordinarily received my meat without thanksgiving. O let the abu- sers and despisers of such mercies fear and tremble !
Quer. 3. Have you not been eminently protected and saved by thft.
S2S MERCIES AXD PROMISES.
Lord, in tJie greatest dangers and hazards of life ; in fights at sea", when men have dropt down at your right hand, and at your left, and yet the Lord hath covered your heads in the day of battle ? And though you have been equally obnoxious to death and danger ivith others, yet your name was not found among theirs in the list of the dead. Or, in shipwrecks, ah, how narrowly have some of you escaped ! a plank hath been cast in, you know not how, to save you, when your companions, for want of it, have gone down to the bottom ; or you have been enabled to swim to the shore, when others have tainted in the way, and perished ? In what variety of strange and astonishing providences hath God worked towards some of you, and what returns have you made to God for it ? Oh, sirs ! I beseech you, consider but these two or three things that I shall now lay before you to consider of.
Consid. I. An heathen will do more for a dung-hill deity than thou, that callest thyself a Christian, wilt do for the true God, that made heaven and earth, Dan. v. 4. They praised the gods of sil- ver, and of gold, and of brass, of iron, wood, and stone. When the Philistines were delivered from the hand of Samson, the text saith, Judg. xvi. 24. " They praised their god,'' &c. Then Dagon must be extolled. O let shame cover thy face !
Consid. 2. That the abuse of mercy and love is a sin that goes near to the heart of God. Oh ! he cannot bear it. It is not the giving out of mercy that troubles him, for that he doth with delight ; but the recoihng of his mercies upon him by the creatures' ingratitude, this wounds. " Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be ye hor- " ribly afraid." And again, " Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O " earth," Isa. i. 2. q. d. O you innocent creatures, which inviolably observe the law of your creation, be you all astonished and clothed in black, to see nature cast by sin so far below itself, and that in a creature so much superior to you as man, who in the very womb was crowned a king, and admitted into the highest order of creatures, and set as lord and master over you ; yet doth he act not only below himself, but below the very beasts. " The ox knoweth his owner ; (i. e.) there is a kind of gratitude in the beasts, by which they ac- knowledge their benefactors that feed and preserve them. Oh ! what a pathetical exclamation is that, Deut. xxxii. 6. " Do you thus « requite the Lord, O foolish people, and unwise.""
Consid. 3. It is a sin that kindles the wrath of God, and will make it burn dreadfully against thee, unthankful sinner : It stirs up the anger of God, in whomsoever it be found, though in the person of a saint, 2 Cron. xxxii. 25. '' But Hezekiah rendered not again ac- " cording to the benefit done unto him : for his heart was lifted up, *' therefore there was wrath upon him and upon Jerusalem." And «o you read, Rom. i. that the heathens, because they were not thank- ful, were given up to vile affections ; the sorest plague in the world. It is a sin that the God of mercy scarce knows how to pardon, Jer. v.
MEJiciEs AXD rno:\rTSES. 35^9
Y. '* How shall I pardon thee for this ?'' This forgetting of the God that saves us in our extremities is a sin that brings desolation and ruin, the effects of God's high displeasure upon all our temporal enjoy- ments. See that remarkable scripture, Isa. xvii. 10, 11. " Because *« thou hast [forgotten] the God of [thy salvation,] and hast not " been [mindful] of the rock of [thy strength:] Therefore shalt thou " plant pleasant plants, and shall set it with strange slips : In the day " shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the mornhig shalt thou " make thy seed to flourish ; but the harvest shall be an heap in the " day of grief, and desperate sorrow." The meaning is, that God will blast and curse all thine employments, and thou shalt be under desperate sorrow. The meaning is, that God will blast and curse all thine employments, and thou shalt be under desperate sorrow, by reason of the disappointment of thy hopes.