Use 1. Let us consider these things, that we may profit by all the chastenings of the Lord. It is now a time of affliction, both as to pub- lic judgments and as to the private condition of many of the people of God. We have been long straying from God, from our duty, from one another ; it was high time for the Lord to take his tod in his hand, and to scourge us home again. Upon these three nations there is somewhat of God's three great judgments — war, pestilence, and famine; they are all dreadful. The pestilence is such a judgment as turneth populous cities into deserts and solitudes in a short time ; then one cannot help another : riches and honours profit nothing then, and friends and kinsfolks stand afar off: many die without any spiritual helps. In war, what destructions and slaughters, expense of blood and treasure ! In famine, you feel yourselves to die without a disease, know not where to have fuel to allay and feed the fire which nature hath kindled in your bodies. But, blessed be God, all these are in moderation. Pestilence doth not ragingly spread, the war is at a dis- tance, the famine only a scarcity. Before God stirreth up all his wrath, he observeth what we do with these beginnings. Besides, the people of God are involved in a heap of miseries on all hands ; the op- pressed, dejected party burdened wath jealousies, and ready to be haled to prison and put under restraint. Holy men sometimes have personal afflictions added to the public calamities. Jeremiah Avas cast into the dungeon when the city was besieged. The chaft' and grain both are threshed together, but the grain is, besides, ground in the mill and baked in the oven. Besides, who thinks of his strayings, and re- turning with a more serious resolution to his duty ? If w^e would pro- fit by afilictions we must avoid both the faulty extremes : Heb. xii. 5, ' My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him.' Slighting and fainting must be avoided.
1. Let us not slight them. When we bear them with a stupid senseless mind, surely that hindereth all profit. None can endure to have their anger despised, no more than their love : a father is displeased when his child slights his correction. That we may not slight it, let us consider: —
[1.] Their author, God. We think them fortuitous, from chance.
Ver. G7.] sermons upon psalm cxix. 233
but they ' do not rise out of the dust,' Job v. 6. Whoever be the in- struments, or whatever be the means, the wise God hath the whole ordering of it. He is the first cause ; he is to be sought to, he is to be appeased, if we would stop evil at the fountain-head ; for all creatures- willingly or unwillingly obey him, and are subject to his empire and government : Amos iii. 6, * Is there any evil in the city, and I have not done it, saith the Lord ? ' Isa. xlv. 7, ' I form the light, and create darkness ; I make peace and create evil ; I the Lord do all these things ;' Job i. 21, ' The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.'
[2.] The meritorious cause is sin : Lam. iii. 39, 'Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin ? ' That first brought mischief into the world, and still continueth it. God never afflicts without a cause ; either we need it, or we deserve it : Micah vii. 9, ' I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me : he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.' We should search for the particular sins that provoke God to atilict us ; for while we only speak of sin in general, we do but inveigh against a notion, and personate mourning ; but those we can charge upon our- selves are most proper and powerful to break the heart.
[3.] The end is our repentance and amendment, to correct sin past, or prevent sin to come.
(1.) For correction, to make us more penitent for sin past. We being in a lower sphere of understanding, know things better by their effects than their nature : Jer. ii. 19, ' Thine own wickedness shall cor- rect thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee : know, therefore, and see that it is an evil and bitter thing that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord of hosts.' Moral evil is represented to us by natural evil ; pain showeth what sin is.
(2.) For prevention of sin for time to come. The smart should make us cautious and watchful against sin : Josh. xxii. 17, 18, ' Is the iniquity of Peer too little for us, from which we are not cleansed to this day, although there was a plague in the congregation of the Lord, but that ye must turn away this day from following the Lord ? And it will be, seeing ye rebel to-day against the Lord, that to-morrow he will be wroth with the whole congregation of Israel.' Afflictions also should stir up in us heavenly thoughts, heavenly desires, and more lively diligence in the exercise of those graces which before lay dor- mant in us through our neglect. Only I must tell you, that sometimes the affliction may be merely for prevention, and may go before sin. God hath always a cause, but he doth not always suppose a fault in act, but sometimes in possibility ; looking into thy actions or thy tem- per, what thou hast done, or wouldst do, to cure or prevent a distem- per in thy spirit, as well as a disorder in thy conversation.