[2.] Of corrective providences. The body is a tender part with wicked men ; when they are straitened for bodily conveniences, they will complain ; yet the hard heart is still insensible of judgments. They are insensible of the author or deserving cause ; they do not look upward nor inward ; and though doctrinally right in these things, yet they do not seriously consider it, and recall it to mind. Opinion is one thing, and consideration is another. Wicked men may take up good opinions, but they do not consider the force and consequence of them.
(1.) They do not see the hand of God in them : Isa. xxvi. 11, ' Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see.' They look on these things but as a chance : 1 Sam. vi. 9, ' And see, if it goeth up by the way of his own coasts to Bethshemesh, then he hath done us this great evil ; but if not, then we shall know that it was not his hand that smote us, it was a chance that happened to us.' If men own God's hand, they should take up the matter with him ; but they own it doctrinally, though not practically. A godly man hath explicit thoughts of God. Job doth not say, The Sabeans and the Chaldeans, but, ' The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,' Job i. 21. They do not com- plain, when they are crossed, of chance, but the Lord is angry ; and when they are stricken, they consult with him, and humble themselves before him. Wicked men are sensible of the smart of the rod, but not of the hand that holds it.
(2.) They do not see the deserving cause of them, which is sin : Lam. iii. 39, 40, ' Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins ? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord.' If sickness cometh, if a relation be taken away, if an estate be blasted, a waking conscience looks to the cause ; they would see the mind of God in the rod. When Israel fell before the men of Ai, Joshua looketh out for the troubler ; so do God's children.
2. Insensible of the power of the word ; they have no taste, no feel- ing of the powers of the world to come : Jer. xxiii. 29, ' Is not my word like a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ? ' There is a breaking and a melting power in the word.
[1.] What law-work hath been wrought on you ? what shakings of heart, and feeling of the powers of the world to come ? Have you
SERMONS UPON MARK III. 5. 211
been roused and startled out of 3'our natural condition ? Many will assent to this truth, that all are miserable by nature ; but wast thou ever sensible that this was thy case, and accordingly affected ? Wert thou ever feelingly convinced of thy misery ? Otherwise we do but learn these things as a parrot learneth them, by rote. What feeling have you of your cursed estate by nature ? Have you had any expei-- ience of the terrors of the Lord ? You know the misery of man by nature, but have you ever felt it ?
[2.] What gospel-work hath been wrought on you ? what taste have you had of the good word of God ? what experience of the efficacy of the Spirit ? 1 Peter ii. 3, ' If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.'
3. Insensible of the state of the soul ; they never look after it. If the body feel but the scratch of a pin, or want but a night's sleep, we complain presently ; but the poor soul, though oppressed with lusts and unfit for duties, is never minded nor regarded, and they have no heart to pray for a release out of that spiritual judgment. To own the plague of our own hearts argueth tenderness : 1 Kings viii. 38, ' Which shall know every man the plague of his own heart.' When we complain of lusts more than fevers, and indisposition of soul more than weakness of body, the languishing of grace more than outward consumption, the stone in the heart more than the stone in the bladder and kidneys. W^e find Ephraim bemoaning himself, being ill at ease for an untoward heart : Jer. xxxi. 18, ' I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning him- self thus : Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke.' Did you ever complain of the hardness of your heart, and lay it before God ? Do you not bemoan your spiritual distempers when lazy and backward ? Where is your relish for the word ? your delight in spiritual things ? Isa. Ixiii. 17, ' 0 Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear ? '
Secondly, A hard heart is inflexible. That will be known where it is more gross.
1. By a refusal of the word, when men will not give God the hearing : Zech. vii. 11, 12, ' But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear ; yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in his Spirit by the former prophets,' They refused to hear, either to vouchsafe their pre- sence or attention : Acts xiii. 46, ' Ye put it from you, and judge yom-- selves unworthy of eternal life.' The case is clear in these, whereas to others it is doubtful ; what needeth more dispute in the matter ?