selves for it, and putting on your harness to enter the lists, carry your dearest enjoyments in your hands, and put on the shoe of preparation, to follow the Lord through the roughest ways of sufferings ; this would convince to purpose, and preach the excellency of Christ, the vanity of the creature, the rationality and certainty of Christian prin- ciples, in a more intelligihle and rousing dialect to them, than all our cheap and easy commendations of them did. And hence it is that Noah was said to condemn the world, Heb. xi. 7. " By faith " Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet," i. e. of the deluge that was coming, though no appearance of it yet, the heavens being as clear as ever; yet believing the threatening, " He was moved *' with fear."" The fear of God, an effect of his faith in the word of God, moved (i. e.) impelled him to his duty; set him about his pre- paration work to provide an ark^ and this was it by which he con^ demned the world, left them excuseless. For they not only heard of an approaching flood by his ministry, but now saw he himself be- lieved what he preached^ by his daily preparations against it came. O consider this, how much it would tend to the world's conviction ; now they will see that you are in good earnest, and that there is a reality in godliness: this will induce them to search into the matter more than ever, and remove those prejudices they have taken up against the good ways of God, as if they were but phantasms and conceits.
5. In the next place, this foresight and prepartion must needs be an excellent thing, because the Spirit of God every where sets an honourable character upon it, and always mentions such pertons with some singular commendation and respect. These only were wise men in the judgment of God, and all the rest (what great politicians so- ever they are famed to be among men) are accounted fools, Prov. xxii. 3. Eccl. ii. 14. " The wise man's eyes are in his head ;" that is, he is a fore-seeing man; "but the fool goes on, and is punished:" Rushes on without consideration, suspecting no danger that he at ]3resent sees not, and so smarts for his folly. Beloved, there are signs of the times, as well as of the weather, Mat. xvi. 3. You may see the clouds of j udgment gathering before the storm falls upon you. And this is the meaning of Zeph. ii. 1,2. " Gather yourselves together, " before the decree bring forth, and the day pass as the chaff. ' Where there is a conception of judgment there will be a birth, unless the reformations and prayers of the saints cause it to miscarry. But it requires wisdom to discern this; they must be men of much obser- vation that can descry it at a great distance ; yet this may be done by considerino; what God hath done in like cases in former acres, when nations have been guilty of the same sins as now they are : For God is as just now as then, and hates sin as much as ever he did; and partly by attending to things present, to what fulness and maturi- ty the sins of a nation are grown, Joel iii. 16. or what beginnings of ^
S2 rilEPARATlONS FOR SUlfERlXGS; OR,
judgment are already upon a}:)eople, as harbingers and forerunners of more at hand. Luke Hi. 30, 81. 1 Sam. ii. 12. Or what is the universal note and cry of God's ministers, who are his watchmen to foresee danger, Ezek. iii. 17. and his trumpeters to discover it. Num. X. 8. And when these have one mouth given them, certainly there is much in it, Lu^ei. 70. Or, lastly, by pondering those scripture- prophecies that yet remain to be fulfilled. They must all go out their times, and accomplish their full number of years and months ; but certainly they shall be fulfilled in their seasons.
By attending to these things, a Christian may give a near guess at the judgments that are approaching a nation, and so order himself accordingly. Eccl. viii. 5. " A wise man's heart discerns both time " and judgment.'"' And this is (even in the judgment of God) a choice point of wisdom ; whereas, on the contrary, heedless and care- less ones, that regard not these things are branded for fools, and up- braided with more brutishness than the beasts of the field, or fowls of the air. Mat. xvi. 3. Jer. viii. 7. " The stork in tlie heavens, the " swallow, turtle, and ci-ane," observe their seasons of departing, and returning upon the approach of the zcinternnd springs and that by a natural instinct, whereby the}- prolong their lives, which else must perish. But though God hath made man wiser than the fowls of the air, and beasts of the earth, which by instinct will quit colder cli- mates, or run to the hedges when winter, or storms approach ; yet the heavens may be astonished at this, to see nature cast by sin so far below itself; and that in reasonable creatures.
But nov/, if this be foreseen, then there is a singular advantage in a man's hand, either to use the means of preventing those approach- ing calamities, Zeph. ii. 3. or if it cannot be prevented, yet to take sanctuary in Christ, Mic.v. 5. to run to the promises and attributes, Isn. xxiv. 21. and so have a good roof over his head while the storm falls and the weather is tempestuous abroad. And therefore certainly this preparation is an excellent thing. Whatever the Spirit of God speaks in the commendation of foreseeing evils, is with respect to this duty of preparing for them ; for foresights of evils without preparation, rather increases than diminishes the misery.
6. A sixth excellency of preparation lies in the influence that it hath into a Christian's stabilit}^ in the evil day. You cannot but know that your stability in that critical hour of temptation, is a choice and singular mercy, inasmuch as all you are worth in the other world depends upon your standing then. Rev. xxi. 7, 8. Rom. ii. 6^ 7. Luke xxii. 27. neither can you be ignorant how much you are hke to be tried, and put to it then, whether you respect the enemy that engages you, Eph. vi. 12. or your own weakness, who have been so often Ibiled in lesser trials, Jer. xii. 5. All the grace you have will be httle enough to keep the field and bear you up from sinking ; and therefore it cannot but be a blessed thing, to be able to stand and cope with the greatest difficulties in such a time of trial as that will be.
THE BEST V/OrvK IX THE WORST TIMES. 23
** Now he that expects to do this must put on tlie whole armour of ** God/' See Ephes. vi. 12, 13, 14. There is no expectation of standing in the evil day, except 7/oiirJbot be shod,^i\vdt is, your wills prepared with the preparation i)f' the gospel of peace.