Secondly, I am to show that we are apt to suspect his truth in keep- ing his promise. When straits and difficulties come, and things go cross to our expectation, we had need of more than God's single word. There is not one of an hundred that lives by faith, and can bottom his comfort on a single promise, and can rejoice in the Lord his God when outward supports fail. We are led altogether by sense, and therefore in cross providences we look upon promises as woi'ds of course, and are apt to say. Where are his promises, and the soundings of his bowels? and where is the ready help which God hath promised in the time of trouble ? And therefore, as a prop to the soul, lie hath backed his pro- mise with an oath. Mark it, christians, it is very usual, even with God's dearest children, to unravel their hopes, and to question all upon a cross providence; as David: Ps. cxvi. 11, 'I said in my haste, All men are liars.' Why doth David retract that charge, and impute it to his haste ? The apostle saith, Eom. iii. 4, ' Let God be true, and every
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mau a liar,' We are changeable creatures, our beings are a lie ; to- day we are, and to-morrow we are not ; and so our promises are a lie ; we say, and do not ; and therefore why doth David impute it to his haste, as if he had spoken something that were untrue ? Certainly, there was some blame in the expression, for he acknowledgeth it was spoken in haste. Tiie speech hath respect to those messages and assurances which were brought to him from the mouth of God by Samuel, Nathan, and other prophets. They comforted him with God's promises, and now he was thunderstruck, blasted with some sore afflic- tion, far enough from the case of a man that had many assurances from heaven ; now ' all men are liars,' prophets and all. Once more, Ps. xxxi. 22, ' I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes ; nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications, when I cried unto thee.' God hath cast off all care of David ; he doth not look after a poor banished man, which wandereth up and down in the wil- derness, a poor flea that is chased and hunted to and fro. Such pets and passions of distrust, such irregular and unbelieving thoughts usually have we upon any cross providence, when sense contradicts the pro- mise. Always we find sense and distrust making lies of God ; there- fore a single promise will not serve the turn, but we need an oath. Surely if God hath sworn, we may wait upon him. Doubts, now God hath passed his oath, do but accuse him of perjury. And therefore you shall see the oath of God hath always been the refuge of the saints even in the worst of times, when they seemed most of all to lour upon their hopes and expectations, Hab. iii. 9. The affairs of the church were at that time desperate ; but saith the prophet, ' Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word. Selah.' God for his covenant and oath's sake revived the affairs of the church when they were at a desperate pass. It is there expressed in the plural number, oaths, because they were often renewed with the church ; and they are called ' the oaths of the tribes,' because this was the church's treasure, because of the oath God made with the tribes, for it is not mean! of the oaths the church made with God. Look, as the covenant of Abraham is God's covenant made with Abraham, and the mercies of David were God's mercies bestowed upon David, so the oaths of the tribes are not taken actively for the oaths which the tribes deposited with God, but passively for the oath God deposited with the tribes, that is, the church. God took this bow out of the case, and bestows the arrows of his vengeance upon the adversaries of the churck That this exposition is true, it appeareth in what follows, * Even thy word. Selah.' There is his word, and that confirmed by an oath, the two immutable things ; these relieve the sinking state of the church. It goes ill with the church a long time, that we might have experience what God can do. Look what Florus said of the state of Rome, Bomani i^rcelio scepe victi, hello nunquam — The Romans were often overcome in battle, but never in war. So of the church ; they go by the worst in some particular cases, and in some particular times, that we might try God, and God may try us : but we are safe ; God will re- member the oaths of the tribes ; the oath of God will relieve the most desperate case. It is rude blasphemy to say God will not make good his oath. Thus you see why God would deposit his oath.
302 SERMONS UPON HEBREWS VI. IS.