(5.) Fifthly, No man can tell what is in the breasts, in the womb, of divine Providence. No man can tell what a day, a night, an hour, may- bring forth.^ Who can sum up the many possible deaths that are still lurking in his own bowels, or the innumerable hosts of external dangers which beleaguer hiin on every side, or how many invisible arrows fly about his ears continually; and how soon he may have his mortal wound given him by one or other of them, who can tell ? Now, how sad would it be for a man to have a summons to appear before God in that other world before his heart and life are changed, and his evidences for heaven cleared up to him ! The life of a man is but a shadow, a post, a span, a vapour, a flower, &c. Though there is but one way to come into the world, yet there are many thousand ways to be sent out of the world ; and this should bespeak every Christian to have his evidences for heaven always ready and at hand, yea, in his hand as well as in his heart, and then he will find it an easy thing to die. The king of terrors will then be the king of desires to him, and he will then travel to glory under a spirit of joy and triumph. We carry about in our bodies the matter of a thousand deaths, and may die a thousand several ways several hours. As many senses, as many members, nay, as many pores as there are in the body, so many windows there are for death to enter in at. Death needs not spend all his arrows upon us ; a worm, a gnat, a fly, a hair, a stone of a raisin, a kernel of a gTape, the fall of a horse, the stumble of a foot, the prick of a pin, the paring of a nail, the cutting out of a corn ; all these have been to others, and any of them may be to us, the means of our death within the space of a few days, nay, of a few hours. Does not it therefore highly concern us to have our evidences for heaven cleared, sealed, shining, and at hand ? Naturalists tell us that if a man sees a cockatrice first, the cockatrice dieth ; but if the cockatrice sees a man first, the man dies. Certainly if we so see death first as to prepare for it, as to get our evidences for heaven ready, we shall kill it ; but if death sees us first, and arrests us first before we are prepared, and before our evidences for heaven are cleared, it will kill us everlastingly, it will kill us eternally. Time travaileth with God's decrees, and in their season brings them forth ; but little doth any man know what is in the womb of to-morrow till God hath signified his will by the event: ' Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest uot what a day may bring forth,' Prov. xxvii. 1. That man that knows what himself intends to bring forth, does not know what the day will bring forth ; the next day is not so near the former in time as it may be remote from it in the effects of it. Seneca could say, iS^ihil estmiserius dubitationevenientium, quo evadant, There is nothing more miserable than the doubtfulness of things to come, to what they will come.'^ Providence in this life is the map of changes, the picture of mutability. Who can sum up the strange circumferences, and rare circuits, and labyrinths of providence ? Providence is as a wheel in the midst of a wheel, whose motion, and work, and end in turning is not discerned by every common eye, Ezek. i. 16. Three dreadful judgments
* Tlio Brachmanni had their graves before their doors. The Sybarites at banquets had a death's head delivered from hand to hand by every gnest at tlie table. The Egyptians, in the midst of their feasts, used to have the anatomy of a dead man set before them, as a memorandum to the guests of their mortality. The poor heathen could say that the whole life of man should be medilatio mortis, a meditation of death. Dwell upon that. Deut. xxxii. 2'J, I'rov. xxvii. 1. * Sieneca, epist. cii.
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God hath lately visited us with, viz., sword, pestilence, and fire. But who repents; who smites upon his thigh ; who finds out the plague of his own heart ; who says, What have I done ? who ceases from doino- evil • who learns to do well ; who turns to the Most High ; who lays hold on ever- lasting strength; who makes peace with God; who throws himself into the gap ? &c., Isa. i. 16, 17, Ps. cvi. 23. Are not multitudes grown much worse after judgments than they were before ? Do not they bid hicrher defiance to heaven than ever ? And, therefore, Avho can tell what further controversy God may have with such a people, especially considerino- that terrible scripture. Lev. xxvi. 14th to the 34th verse, with scores of others that sound that way ? Were our forefathers alive, how sadly would they blush to see such a horrid, degenerate posterity as is to be found in the midst of us ! How is our forefathers' hospitality converted into riot and luxury, their frugality into pride and prodigality, their simplicity into subtilty, their sincerity into hypocrisy, their charity into cruelty, their chastity into chambering and wantonness, their sobriety into drunkenness, their plain-dealing into dissembling, and their works of compassion into works of oppression, &c. And may we not fear that even for these things God may once more visit us ? The nations are angry, and we are low in their eyes ; our enemies are not asleep abroad, and are not we too secure at home ? And what further confusions may be in the world, who can divine ? I point at these things only to pro- voke all those into whose hands this treatise may fall to make sure work for another world, to make sure their evidences for heaven, and to keep their evidences for life and glory always sparkling and shinino-- and then I am sure the worst of calamities, the sorest of judgments, shall but translate them from earth to heaven, from a wilderness to a paradise, from misery to glory, and from mixed and mutable enjoyments to the pure and everlasting enjoyments of God, Christ, the angels, and 'the spirits of just men made perfect,' Heb. xii. 22-24. But,