Nay, more than so, ' God hears the very young ravens,' Job xxxviii. 41, and spreads a table for every living thing ; and will not sutler them to die for hunger, but provides for them, because they are his creatures. And ■will he not for his children, those that he hath taken to be so near him, to be heirs of heaven and happiness ? Let us, I say, be encouraged to cry unto the Lord upon all occasions. If God be so good as to deliver sinful men, — that have nothing in them but the principles of nature, — when they fly to God in prayer, as the author and preserver of nature, much more
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will he hear his own children. ' He will give his Spirit to them that ask him ' Luke xi. 13.
Ohj. But here may an objection be made, I have cried long ! I am hoarse with cr3'ing ! I have waited a long time ! I have been a long time sick, or annoyed with some particular trouble !f and God seems, as it were, to stop his ears, to harden his heart against me, to shut up his bowels of compassion and pity, therefore I were as good give over as continue still crying and not be heard.
Alls. I answer, there is no one duty almost, more pressed in Scripture than ' waiting and watching to prayer.' Wait still. Hath not God waited thy leisure long enough, and wilt not thou wait on him ?
A patient, when he feels his body distempered by physic. Oh, he cries out, partly for the physic, and partly for the sickness, that trouble him both together, and make civil war in his body, yet notwithstanding the physician wisely lets it work. He shall have no cordial, nor nothing to hinder it ; he lets it go on till the physic have wrought well, and carried away the malignant matter, that he may be the better for it, and [in] that, he is a loving and tender physician. Yet so God, when we are in trouble, it is as physic. We cry, but God he turns the glass* as the physicians do. Nay, this time shall be expired. It shall work so long. Till thy pride be taken away, thou shalt be humbled thoroughly ; till thou be weaned from thy former wicked pleasures ; till thou be prepared to receive further blessings. Therefore they cry and cry, and God defers to hear the ' voice of his chil- dren.' In the mean time he loves to hear the ' cry of his children,' and their prayer is as ' sweet incense ;' yet he defers still. " -But all is for the patient's good. Be not weary of waiting. It is a g"eat mercy that he makes thee able to continue crying, that thou hast the Spirit of prayer ; that thou canst pour out thy soul to God. It is a great mercy, and so account of it.
Perhaps thou hast not cast out thy Jonah, thy Achan ; that there is some particular sin unrepented of; and thou criest and criest, but thy sin cries louder. Thy pride or thy oppression cries, thy wicked course cries. Thou criest unto God, and there is another thing cries in thee, that cries vengeance as thou doest for mercy. Therefore search out thy Achan ; cast out thy beloved sin ; see * if thou regard iniquity in thy heart,' if thou regard any pleasing, or profitable, or gainful sin ; and never think that God will hear thee till that be out, for it will outcry thy prayers.
The next thing is the manner of God's cure.
' He sent his word and healed them.'
What word ?
His secret command, his will.
Let such a thing be, as in the creation, * Let there be light,' &c. Besides his word written, there is his word creating, and preserving things created ; and so here, restoring them that were sick, ' He sent his word and healed them ;' and so at the resurrection, his word, his voice shall raise our bodies again. It is a strange manner of cure for God to cure by his word, by his command. It shews that God hath an universal command of all things in the world, in heaven and earth, over devils, and over sicknesses ; as it is said in the gospel, * He rebuked the sicknesses,' Mat. xvii. 18. He can rebuke the agues, the plague, and the pestilence, and they shall be gone by his word, as the centurion said, ' I am a man that have servants under me : and I say to one. Come, and he cometh ; and to another, Go, and he * That is, ' hour or time-glass.' — G.
113 A RESCUE FROM DEATH,
goeth,' Mat. viii. 8, seq. ; so tliou hast all things under thee, thou art God ; and if thou say to a disease, ' Come, it cometh ;' and if thou say, ' Go, it goeth.' God ' sent his word of command and healed them.' It is hut ' a word of God' to heal, hut ' a word of God' to strike. He is the ' Lord of hosts.' ' If he do hut hiss,' as the prophet saith, ' for the fly of Egypt,' Isa. vii. 18, if he do hut call for an enemy, they come at his word ; as we see in Pharaoh's plagues, the flies and frogs, all things, ohey his word.