have fallen by llie sword, and by the liand of tlie destroying angel, when many thousands of Balaks and Balaams, I mean the worst of men, have escaped the sword, the plague, &c. ! And is there anything more obvious and notorious this day than this ? Surely not.
V. The fifth divine maxim or conclusion is this — viz., The Lord sometimes takes away his dearest people by some one judgment^ that so he tnay by that means deliver them from many Judgments ; and sometimes he takes aivay his people by one great judgment, that so they may escape many other greater judgments that he intends to bring npon the earth.
And thus good Josiah was slain in battle ; yet because he lived not to see the woeful miseries of succeeding times, he is said to go to his grave in peace, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 27, 28. Turn to it. Enoch lived long in a little time, and God took him to heaven before he brought a sweeping flood upon the world ; but he foreseeing the flood, named his son Methuselah, that is to say, ' he dieth,' and the dart or flood cometh, and so it fell out ; for no sooner was his head laid, but in came the flood. And so Augustine was taken out of the world before Hippo was taken by the Vandals. And so Pareus was gotten to his better country before Heidelberg and the Palatinate was delivered into the power of the enemies. Ambrose is said to have been the walls of Italy, and when he died the Earl Stilico said, ' that his death did threaten destruction to that country;' and when Luther was laid in his grave, then troubles, wars, desolations, and confusions came in upon Germany like a flood. ' The righteous are taken away from the evil to come,' Isa. Ivii. 1 ; and their death is a sad presage of sore and signal calamities that are hastening upon the world. Of late many precious servants of Christ are fallen asleep ; but who knows what a day of wrath is coming ? When a man cuts down his chiefest timber trees, it is an argument that he intends to part with his land ; and how many tall cedars in this our Lebanon hath God lately cut down in the midst of us ! Therefore we have eminent cause to be importunate with God, that he would neither part with this nation, nor depart from this nation. When some fatal judgment hovers like a flying fiery scroll over a nation, God many times gathers many of his choice servants unto himself, that he may preserve them from the evil to come.
VI. The sixth divine maxim or conclusion is this — viz.. None of God's judgments upon his 2)eople ever make any change or alteration of God's affections towards his people.
However his liand may be against them, yet his love, his heart, his favour, his attections in Jesus, is still one and the same to them, Isa. liv. 7-10, and xlix. 14-16; Ps. Ixxxix. 31-34; Jer. xxxi. 34-37, compared ; Mai. iii. 6 ; John xiii. 3 ; James i. 17. Ponder seriously upon all those scriptures. So when God sent the plague upon David's people, and that for David's sin too, yet how sweetly, how lovingly, how tenderly, how com])assionately, how indulgently, doth the Lord carry it towards David himself ! 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 1-13, 18,11), and 25 com- pared. And some learned men are of opinion that Lazarus died of the ])lague ; and yet the text tells us that he was carried by angels into Abraham's bosom. Q^colampadius and many other worthies also
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died of it. When Munster lay sick, and his friends asked him liow he did, and how he felt himself ? he pointed to his sores and ulcers, whereof he was full, and said, ' These are God's gems and jewels wherewith he decketh his best friends ; and to me they are more precious than all the gold and silver in the world.' God's dear love to his people is not founded upon anything in his people, nor upon anything that is done by his people, but only upon his own free grace and goodness, Deut. vii, 7, 8.
The ethnics 1 feign that their gods and goddesses loved certain trees for some lovely good that was in them : as Jupiter, the oak, for durance; Neptune, the cedar, for stature; Apollo, the laurel, for green- ness ; Venus, the poplar, for whiteness ; Pallas, the vine, for fruitful- ness. But what should move the God of gods and the Lord of lords to love us, who are poor, worthless, fruitless fruit-trees, twice dead, and plucked up by the roots, Jude 12 ; Ezek. xvi. This question is best resolved in three words, amat quia amat, he loves us because he loves us. The root of his love to us lieth in himself, and by his com- municative goodness the fruit is ours. God's love to his people is a lasting love, yea, an everlasting love, Jer. xxxi, 35-37; it is a love that never decays nor waxes cold. It is like the stone asbestos, of which Solinus writes, that being once hot, it can never be cooled again.
VII. The seventh divine maxim or conclusion is this — viz., Many times ivhen the poor people of God cannot carry it with God for the pi-eservation of a luhole land or nation, yet tliey shall then he' sure to have the honour and the happiness to he so potent and so prevalent with God as to prevail ivith him for their oiu7i personal preservation and pro- tection. Jer. XV. 1 ; Ezek. xiv. 14-21, compared. So Ezek. ix. 4, 6.
VIII. The eighth divine maxim or conclusion is this — viz.. Sword, famine, and pestilence can only reach our outward man — they only reach our bodies and our bodily concernments, they cannot reach our souls, nor our internal nor our eterrial concernments. No outivard judg- ments can reach the favour of God, or the light of his countenance, or our communion with him, or our spiritual enjoyments of him, or the joys of the Spirit, or the teachings of the Spirit, or the leadings of the Spirit, or the earnest of the Spirit, or the luitness of the Spirit, or the seekings of the Spirit, or the quickenings of the Spirit, or the peace that passeth understanding, or our secret trade ivith heaven.
IX. The ninth divine maxim or conclusion is this — viz., There are no people upon the earth that in times of common calamity stand upon such fair grounds for their preservation and protection, as the people of God do.
And this I shall make evident by an induction of ten particulars: — [1.] First, They are the only people in all the world that are iinder divine p)romises of protection and preservcdion, Exod. xv. 26 ; Job v. 20, 21 : Isa. iv. 5, 6, viii. 13, 14, xxvi. 20, 21, xxxi. 5, and xxxii. 1,2; Ps. xci. throughout. Turn to those sweet promises, and re- member that there are no men on eartli that can or may lay their hands on these precious promises, and say, these promises are mine but only the godly man. Those promises are God's bonds, which the godly man may put in suit, and urge God with, and plead hard in
416 A HEAVENLY CORDIAL.