provoke God to be wroth and angry, as men's talcing encouragement from God's goodness and mercy to do wickedly. This you may see by that wrath that fell upon the old world, and by God's raining hell out of heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah. This is clear in Jere- miah xliv., from ver. 20 to ver. 28. The words are worthy of your best meditation. Oh that they were engraven in all your hearts, and constant in all your thoughts ! Though they are too large for me to transcribe them, yet they are not too large for me to remember them. To argue from mercy to sinful liberty, is the devil's logic, and such logicians do ever walk as upon a mine of gunpowder ready to be blown up. No such soul can ever avert or avoid the wrath of God. This is wickedness at the height, for a man to be very bad, because God is very good. A worse spirit than this is not in hell. Ah, Lord, doth not wrath, yea, the greatest wrath, lie at this man's door ? Are not the strongest chains of darkness prepared for such a soul ? To sin against mercy is to sin against humanity. It is bestial; nay, it is worse. To render good for evil is divine, to render good for good is human, to render evil for evil is brutish ; but to render evil for good is devilish ; and from this evil deliver my soul, O God.1
Remedy (3). The third remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, lhat there is no greater misery in this life, than not to be in misery; no greater affliction, than not to be afflicted. Woe, woe to that soul that God will not spend a rod upon ! This is the saddest stroke of all, when God refuses to strike at all : Hos. iv. 17, 'Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone.' 'Why should you be smitten any more ? you will revolt more and more,' Isa. i. 5. When the physician gives over the patient, you say, ' Ring out his knell, the man is dead.' So when God gives over a soul to sin without control, you may truly say, ' This soul is lost/ you may ring out his knell, for he is twice dead, and plucked up by the roots. Free- dom from punishment is the mother of security, the step-mother of virtue, the poison of religion, the moth of holiness, and the introducer of wickedness. ' Nothing,' said one, ' seems more unhappy to me, than he to whom no adversity hath happened/ Outward mercies ofttimes prove a snare to our souls. ' I will lay a stumbling-block,' Ezek. iii. 20. Vatablus his note there is, ' I will prosper him in all things, and not by affliction restrain him from sin.'2 Prosperity hath been a stumbling-block, at which millions have stumbled and fallen, and broke the neck of their souls for ever.3
Remedy (4). The fourth remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider, That the wants of wicked men, under all their outward mercy and freedom from adversity, is far greater than all their outward enjoyments. They have many mercies, yet they want more than they enjoy; the mercies which they enjoy are nothing to the
1 Such souls make God a god of clouts, one that will not do as he saith ; hut they shall find God to he as severe in punishing as he is to others gracious in pardoning. Good turns aggravate unkindnesses, and our guilt is increased by our obligations.
2 Faciam ut omnia habeat prospera; calamitatibus euru a peccato non revocabo. [Annot. in Lib. Vet. Test. Paris, 1557.— G-]
3 Religio peperit divitias, et filia devoravit malrem ; religion brought forth riches, and the daughter soon devoured the mother, saith Augustine.
44 PRECIOUS REMEDIES [2 COR. II. 11.
mercies they want. It is true, they have honours and riches, and plea- sures and friends, and are mighty in power; their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes : 'Their houses are sate from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them;' • They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They lake the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ;9 'They spend their days in wealth, their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart can wish : and they have no bands in their death, but their strength is firm ; they are not in trouble as other men,' as David and Job speak.1 Yet all this is nothing to what they want.2 They want interest in God, Christ, the Spirit, the promises, the covenant of grace, and everlasting glory ; they want acceptation and reconciliation with God ; they want righteousness, justification, sanctification, adoption, and redemption ; they want the pardon of sin, and power against sin, and freedom from the dominion of sin ; they want that favour that is better than life, and that joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, and that peace that passes under- standing, and that grace, the least spark of which is more worth than heaven and earth ; they want a house that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God ; they want those riches that perish not, the glory that fades not, that kingdom that shakes not. Wicked men are the most needy men in the world, yea, they want those two things that should render their mercies sweet, viz., the blessing of God, and content with their condition, and without which their heaven is but hell on this side hell.3 When their hearts are lifted up and grown big upon the thoughts of their abundance, if conscience does but put in a word and say, It is true, here is this and that outward mercy. Oh, but where is an interest in Christ? Where is the favour of God? Where are the comforts of the Holy Ghost? Where are the evidences for heaven? &c. This word from conscience makes the man's counte- nance to change, his thoughts to be troubled, his heart to be amazed, and all his mercies on the right hand and left to be as dead and withered. Ah, were but the eyes of wicked men open to see their wants under their abundance, they would cry out and say, as Absalom did, ' What are all these tome so loner as I cannot see the king's face?' 2 Sam. xiv. 24, 33. What is honour, and riches, and the favour of creatures, so long as I want the favour of God, the pardon of my sins, an interest in Christ, and the hopes of glory! O Lord, give me these, or I die; give me these, or else 1 shall eternally die.
Remedy (5). The fifth remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, That outivard things are not as they seem, and are esteemed They have, indeed, a glorious outside, but if you view
1 Cf. Psalm xlix. 11, lxxiii. 7 ; Job xxi. 12, &c, &c— G.
'-' Men thai enjoy all worldly comforts may truly say, Omncs humancc consolationes SUfU dfsolationes.
3 ATec C/tristus nee caelum patitur hyperbolem, neither Christ nor heaven can he hyper- ed. A crown of gold cannot cure the headache, nor a velvet slipper cannot ease the goul ; DO more can honour or riches quiet and still the conscience. The heart of man is a three-square triangle, which the whole round circle of the world cannot till, as mathematicians say, but all the corners will complain of emptiness, and hunger for Bomethins else.