* That is, 'bon-fire,' = boon-fire, or fire of joy, voluntarily kindled. Cf. Richard- son, sub voce. — G.
2 CORINTHIANS CHAP, I, VER. 11. 199
thankful for our wits, let us consider distracted persons. Wliat an ex- cellent engine to all things in this life, and the life to come, is this spark of reason ! If we want reason, what can we do in civil things ? What can we do in matters of grace ? Grace presupposeth nature. If we would be thankful for health, for strength, and for reason, if we would be thankful for common favours, consider the misery of those that want these things.
Would we be thankful for the blessed ordinance, consider but the misery of those that sit in dai'kness, and in the shadow of death, how they are led by Satan and want the means of salvation. Those that would be thankful for the government we have, let them consider those that live in anarchy, where every man lives as he lists, where a man cannot enjoy his own. The consideration of these things it should quicken us to thankfulness, the consideration of our own misery if we should want them, and the misery of those that do want them.
5. And let us keep a catalofjue of God's blesshu/s. It will serve us, as in regard of God to bless him the more, so in regard of ourselves, to establish our faith the more ; for God is Jehovah, alway like himself. Whom he hath done good unto, he will do good to. He is constant in his love. ' Whom he loves, he loves to the end,' John xiii. 1. God shall have more thanks, and we shall have more comfort.
Again, to add some encouragements and motives to thankfulness, which may be a forcible means to make us thankful, do but consider.
(1.) It is God's tribute, it is God's custom. Do but deny the king his custom, and what will come of it ? Deny him tribute, and you forfeit all. So you forfeit all for want of thankfulness.
What is the reason that God hath taken away the gospel from countries abroad, and may do from us if we be not more thankful ? Because they were not thankful. It is all the tribute, all the impost he sets upon his blessings, ' I will give you this,' but you shall glorify me with thanks- giving. It is all the honour he looks for. ' He that praiseth me honoureth me,' Ps. 1. 23. And ' now, O Israel, what doth the Lord require of thee,' for all his favours, but 'to serve him with a cheerful and good heart?' Deut. X. 12, to be thankful.
What is the reason that the earth denies her own to us, that sometimes we have unseasonable years ? We deny God his own. He stops the due of the creature, because we stop his due.
When we are not thankful he is forced to make the heavens as iron, and the earth as brass. We force him to make the creature otherwise than it is, because we deny him thankfulness.
The running of favours from heaven ceaseth when there is not a recourse back again of thankfulness to him. For unthankfulness is a dr\dng wind. It dries up the fountain of God's favours. It binds God. It will not sutler him to be as good as his word. If ever God give us up to public judgments, it will be because we are not thankful to God for favours and deliverances, as that in '88, by sea,* and from the gunpowder treason by land.f Was it not a sick state after Queen Mary, when Queen Elizabeth received the crown ? The church and commonwealth were sick. Now if we be to praise God for our particular persons, when we have recovered our health, much more should we praise God, when the state, when the church is de- livered, as it was at the coming in of Queen Elizabeth, and afterward in '88; and of late time, and continually he doth deliver us. And if we look that
* That is, from the Armada, 1588. See note, vol. I. p. 318.— G. t ' Treason.' See uote e. vol. I. p. 315. — G.
200 COMMENTAKY ON
he should deliver ns, not only our persons, but the state wherein we live, let us pray to Ciod tlml lu; would do so, and praise God for his former deliverance.
(2.) A<i;ain, this is another motive, the praising of God for former deliver- ances, it iiirilcs liini to licstoir lu'ic hh-ssiiN/s. Upon what ffronnd doth the husbandman bestow more seed '? Upon that which hath yielded most in time past. Will any man sow in the barren wilderness where it is lost ? No ; but where he looks to reap most, and hath done formerly. Where he sees a soil that is fruitful, he will sow it the more ; and where the heart is a barren wilderness, that it yields nothinj,' back again, he takes that away that he gave before.
You know there is a debt in giving. There must be a returning of thanksgiving alway ; and kindness requires kindness. There is an obliga- tion. And where benefits are taken, and men are thankful, that is the way to get more, to be thankful for that we have. For God minds his own glory above all things, and he will especially be bountiful to those from whom he sees he hath most glory. Therefore alway those that have been richest in grace, and in comfort, they were most in thankfulness, as we see in David, ' a man after God's own heart,' 1 Bam. xiii. 14, Acts xiii. 22, and in divers others. Let this encourage us.