* Exod. xvi. 7-9 ; Numb. xii. 14, xvii. 5, 10 ; Exod. xv. 24 ; Deut. i. 27 ; Ps. cvi. 25.
PS. XXXIX. 9.] UNDER THE SMARTING ROD. 321
and we that have deserved a damning have no reason to charge God for being too severe, if we escape with a fatherly lashing.1 Rather than a man will take the blame, and quietly bear the shame of his own folly, he will put it off upon God himself, Gen. iii. 12. It is a very evil thing, when we shall go to accuse God, that we may excuse ourselves, and unblame ourselves, that we may blame our God, and lay the fault anywhere rather than upon our own hearts and ways. Job was a man of a more noble spirit : Job i. 22, ' In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly/ When God charges many men home, then they presently charge God foolishly ; they put him to bear the brunt and blame of all ; but this will be bitterness in the end. When thou art under affliction, thou rnayest humbly tell God that thou feelest his hand heavy ; but thou must not blame him because his hand is heavy. No man hath ever yet been able to make good a charge against God ; and wilt thou be able ? Surely no. By charging God foolishly in the day of thy calamity, thou dost but provoke the Lord to charge thee through and through, more fiercely and furiously, with his most deadly darts of renewed misery. It is thy greatest wisdom to blame thy sins, and lay thy hand upon thy mouth ; for why should folly charge inno- cency ? That man is far enough off from being mute and silent under the hand of God, who dares charge God himself for laying his hand upon him. But,
4 Fourthly, This truth looks sourly and sadly upon such as luill not be silent nor satisfied under the afflicting hand of God,2 eoccept the Lord will give them the particular reasons why he lays his hand upon them,. Good men sometimes dash their feet against this stumbling- stone : Jer. xv. 18, 'Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound in- curable ?' &c. Though God hath always reason for what he doth, yet he is not bound to shew us the reasons of his doings. Jeremiah's pas- sion was up, his blood was hot ; and now nothing will silence nor satisfy him but the reasons why his pain was perpetual, and his wound in- curable. So Job, chap. vii. 20, ' Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself ?' It is an evil and a dangerous thing to cavil at or to question his proceedings, who is the chief Lord of all, and who may do with his own what he pleaseth, Rom. ix. 20, Dan. iv. 3, 36. He is unaccountable and uncontrollable ; and therefore who shall say, What doest thou ? As no man may question his right to afflict him, nor his righteousness in afflicting of him, so no man may question the reasons why he afflicts him. As no man can compel him to give a reason of his doings, so no man may dare to ask him the particular reasons of his doings. Kings think themselves are not bound to give their subjects a reason of their doings ; and shall we bind God to give us a reason of his doings, who is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and whose will is the true reason and only rule of justice ? Eccles. viii. 4, Rev. i. 5. The general grounds and reasons that God hath laid down in his word why he afflicts his people, as, viz., for their profit, Heb. xii. 10 ; for the purging away of their sins, Isa. i. 25 ;
1 Lam. i. 12 ; Ps. lxxvii. 7, i. 2 ; Ezek. xviii. 25 ; xix. 38 ; xvii. 20, 29. Some of the heathens, as Homer observes, would lay the evils that they did incur by their own folly upon their gods : so do many upon the true God.
2 Exod. xxxii. 1 ; Ps. xxii. 1, 2 ; Job iii. 11, 12 ; xix. 11, 13, 14. VOL. I. « X
322 THE Mi TK CHRISTIAN [Ps. XXXIX. 9.
for the reforming of their lives, Ps. cxix. 67, 71 ; and for the saving of their souls, 1 Cor. xi. 32, — should work them to be silent and satisfied under all their afflictions, though God should never satisfy their curiosity in giving them an account of some more hidden causes which may lie secret in the abysses of his eternal knowledge and infallible will. Curiosity is the spiritual drunkenness of the soul; and Look, as the drunkard will never be satisfied, be the cup never so deep, unless he see the bottom of it, so some curious Christians, whose souls are over- spread with the leprosy of curiosity, will never be satisfied till they come to see the bottom and the most secret reasons of all God's deal- ings towards them ; but they are fools in folio, who affect to know more than God would have them. Did not Adam's curiosity render him and his posterity fools in folio ? And what pleasure can we take to see our- selves every day fools in print ? As a man by gazing and prying into the body of the sun may grow dark and dim, and see less than other- wise he might, so many, by a curious prying into the secret reasons of Cod's dealings with them, come to grow so dark and dim, that they cannot see those plain reasons that God hath laid down in his word why he afflicts and tries the children of men.
1 have read of one Sir William Champney, in the reign of King Henry the Third, once living in Tower Street, London, who was the first man that ever built a turret on the top of his house, that he might the better overlook all his neighbours, but so it fell out, that not long after he was struck blind ; so that he that could not be satisfied to see as others did see, but would needs see more than others, saw just nothing at all, through the just judgment of God upon him.1 And so it is a just and righteous thing with God to strike such with spiritual blind- ness, who will not be satisfied with seeing the reasons laid down in the word why he afflicts them, but they must be curiously prying and searching into the hidden and more secret reasons of his severity towards them. Ah, Christian ! it is your wisdom and duty to sit silent and mute under the afflicting hand of God upon the account of revealed reasons, without making any curious inquiry into those more secret reasons that are locked up in the golden cabinet of God's own breast, Deut. xxix. 29.