As we say of providence, providence is nothing but a continued act of creation. And it is true. The same power that created all things of nothing, the same power sustains all things. God upholds all things with his right hand.
For even as it is with a stone which is upheld by a man's hand, let him withdraw his hand, and down it falls. So naturally all things, as they are raised out of nothing, so they will fall to their first principles except they be sustained by that continual act of creation which we call providence, to maintain them in the order wherein they were set at the first. So there is a continual act of deliverance till we be delivered out of all troubles, and set in a place where there shall be no more annoyance at all, either from within us or without us. God doth still deliver.
Use. Oh ! let this move us to a renounce* of the eye and majesty of the great God, of the presence of God. Who will willingly provoke him of whom he stands in need to deliver him ?
Let God withdraw his deliverance, his preventing deliverance, or his rescuing deliverance. For, as I said, there is a double deliverance. He prevents us from trouble, he delivers us that we do not fall into it ; and
* That is, ' renunciation.' And yet thia can hardly be what Sibbcs intended here. Query, does he use it etymologically, as = to report, and by inference, recognise ? — G.
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■when wo are fallen into it ho rescues us. If God should not thus deliver us, there is no mischief that any others fall into but we should fall into the like were it not for his preventing deliverance.
As St Austin saith well, A man that is freed from sin oufrht to thank God as well for the sins that he hath not conmiitted as for the sins that he hath had forgiven ; for it is an equal mercy that a man fall not into sin as for his sin to be pardoned. And so for troubles too. It is God's mercy to prevent troubles as well as to deliver out of trouble when we are fallen into it.
Who would not reverence this great God ? AVhat miscreant wi'etches are they that inure their tongue to swearing, to tear that majestj^ that if he should withdraw his deliverance and protection from them, what would be- come of them ?
Wliere there is perpetual dependence upon any man, how doth it enforce reverence and respect even amongst men ? It is atheism, therefore, for men to inure their tongues to speak cursed language, to inure their hearts to entertain profane thoughts of God, and to neglect the consideration of his majesty. Holy men in Scripture are said to walk with God, that is, to have God in their eye in all times, in all places, as he had them in his eye to delight in them, to prevent troubles, and to deliver them from troubles ■when they were in them.
We should take notice of God's special providence in this kind, that God by deliverance often gives us our lives, and it should teach us to consecrate our lives to God, ' who doth deliver us.'
^ In ivJiom we hope,' or trust, or have affiance, ' that he mil yet deliver tts.' The holy apostle doth take in trust here the time to come. He speaks as if he were assured of that as of anything past ; and he doth found his hope for the time to come upon that which was past and present. As he saith in Rom. v. 4, ' Experience breeds hope,' so it doth here in the blessed apostle, ' He hath delivered, and he doth deliver,' and why should I not trust in so good a God for the time to come ? I hope he will deliver me. And surely so may we do. . Doct. A Christian maij rely on God for the time to come.
Upon what ground, upon what pillars is this confidence built of the holy apostle ?
1. Zfj^^'^- ^^'^ name of God, the name of his nature, ' Jehovah,' * I am,' which signifies a constant being, ' I was, I am, and am to come.'
There was danger, there is danger, and there will come danger. There •was a God, there is a God, and there will be a God, Jehovah, I am. If there be a flux, a perpetual succession of ill, there is a perpetual being and hving of the living Jehovah. So Christ is proved to be Jehovah, because he calls himself. Rev. i. 8, ' He that was, and is, and is to come,' Jehovah, alway like himself.
Now, if God be Jehovah, alway like himself, then if he have delivered, if he doth deliver, he will deliver. He is I AM in himself. ) ' 2. Now, as his name is, so is his nature and properties. He is ' I AM ' in his love to his church. He is alway in the present tense. ' Whom he loves, he loves to the end,' John xiii. 1. He is unchangeable. 'I, the Lord your God, change not ; therefore, you are not consumed,' Mai. iii. 6. The reason why, notwithstanding our many provocations of him, that we are not consumed, it is because his love to us is unchangeable. Though we are up and down, ' he cannot deny himself,' 2 Tim. ii. 13 ; and there is