144 A RESCUE FROM DEATH,
US, as I salil, unless ho scud some mcsscnjrer after us, some affliction to bring us home, as Absalom dealt by Joab when he ' fired his corn.' In the gospel, Christ had never heard of many people, had it not been for some infirmity. But blessed arc those sicknesses and infirmities that occasion us to go to God, that makes us cry to God. It was the speech of a heathen, ' We are best when wo are weakest' ((/). Why? As he saith very well, ' Who is ambitious, voluptuous, or covetous for the world when he is sick, when he sees the vanity of these things ? '
This should make us submit more meekly unto God, w'hcn we are under his hand, when wo are his pi'isoners by sickness, when he casts us on our sick beds, because God is working our good, he is drawing us nearer to him.
* Then they cried to him.'
So wo sec, then, that ivayer it is a remcrhj in a remedileHU estate, when there is no other remedy ; and this is one diflcrencc between a child of God and another. In extremity, a carnal man that hath not grace, he hath not a spirit of prayer to go to God ; but a child of God he cries to God. He had acquaintance with God in the time of health. Therefore he goes boldly to God as a father in the time of extremity. God's children can answer God's dealing ; for as he brings his children to extremity, when there is no second cause to help, so they answer him by faith. In extremity, when there is nothing to trust unto, they trust him ; when there is no physic in the world that can charm the disease, they have a spirit of faith to answer God's dealing in the greatest misery, as Job saith, ' Though he kill me, yet will I trust in him,' Job xiii. 15.
For God is not tied to second causes, and therefore if he have * delight in us,' and if he have any service for us to do, he can recover us from the 'gates of death,' nay, from death itself; as we see Christ in the gospel raised from the dead — and at the resurrection he will raise us from death — much more can ho raise us from the ' gates of death,' when we are ' near death.'
Therefore, considering that prayer is a remedy in all maladies, in a remediless estate, let us labour to have a spirit of prayer, and to be in such a state as v e may pray.
What state is that ?
1. First, Take heed of being in league ivilh any mi. ' If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear my prayer,' Ps, Ixvi. 18 ; nay, he will not hear others' prayers for us. Oh what a pitiful state is it when God will not hear us nor others for us. ' Pray not for this people,' saith God to Jeremiah,.' and if Noah, Daniel, and Job stood before me, they should but deliver their own souls,' Ezek. xiv. 14. If a man be in a peremptory course of sin, and will not be reclaimed, but is like the ' deaf adder, that will not be charmed,' Ps. Iviii. 4, God will not hear prayers for him. Will God hear a rebel when he comes to him for mercy, and is in a course opposite to God's will ? As if a traitor should come to sue for pardon with a dagger in his hand, which were to increase the treason ; so when a man comes to God and cries to him, and yet pui'poseth to live in sin, and his conscience tells him that ho offers violence to God by his sins, and lives in rebeUious courses, God will not hear his prayers.
2. Again, If we would be in such a state as God may accept us when we come to him, let us hear God ivhen he cries to us. He cries to us in the ministry of the word : ' Wisdom hath lift up her voice,' Prov. i. 20 ; and this is God's course. He will hear us when we hear him. ' He that turns
WITH A RETURN OF PRAISE. 145
his ear from hearing of the law, his prayer shall be abominable,' Prov. xxviii. 9. Those that do not attend upon God's ordinances, that will have a kind of devotion private to themselves, and avoid the public ordinance, that fear perhaps tliej shall hear somewhat that would awaken their con- science, and they would not ' be tormented before their time,' Mat. viii. 29, let them consider — it is a terrible speech of Solomon — ' He that turns his ear from hearing the law, his prayer shall be abominable.' Let us take heed. It is a fearful thing to be in such an estate, that neither our own prayers nor others, shall be regarded for us ; and let any man judge, if we will not hear God speak to us, is it fit that he should hear us speaking to him ?
And before I leave the point, let me press it a little further. At this time we have cause to bless God for the deliverance of the cit3\"''- Oh, but let all that have the spirit of prayer, that have any familiarity with God, improve all their interest in heaven at this time. Do we not conceive what danger we are in ? what enemies we have provoked ? What if we be free from the sickness, are we not in danger of worse matters than the sickness ? ' Is it not worse to fall into the hands of our enemies ?' 2 Sam. xxiv. 14. Have we not great, provoked, cruel, idolatrous enemies ? Therefore let us jointly now, all cry to God, and importune him, that he would be good to the State ; that as he hath given us a pledge of his favour in delivering us from the plague, so he would not be weary of doing good unto us, but that he would still make it a token of further favours and deliverances hereafter ; that as he delivered us in former times, in '88, f and magnified his mercy to us, so now he would not expose us to the cruelty of -idolatrous enemies, * whose mercies are cruel,' Prov. xii. 10. Let us stir up ourselves. Security and carelessness alway foreruns one destruction or other.