To draw to a conclusion, with some general application of all that hath been spoken, and then in particular to the present occasion.
You know how God hath dealt of late with this city,* and with ourselves indeed ; for we are all of one body politic, and however God visited them, yet it was our sins also that provoked him. We brought sticks to the common fu-e. A physician lets the arm blood, but the whole body is dis- tempered. God let the city blood, but the whole kingdom was in a distemper. So that it was for our sins as well as theirs. We all brought, I say, something to the common flame, and God afilicted us even in them. God hath now stayed the sickness almost as miraculously as he sent it. It was a wonder that so many should be swept away in so short a time. It is almost as great a wonder that God should stay it so soon. And what may we impute it unto ? Surely as it is in the text. ' They cried unto the Lord.' God put it into the hearts of. the governors of the State to appoint humiliation and ' crying to God,' and therefore since God hath * In margin here, ' In the great visitation, 1625.' — G.
154 A RESCUE FROM DEATH,
been so merciful upon our humiliation, it is religiously and worthily done of the State, that there should bo a time to ' bless God.'
Again, God did it with a word, with a command. It was both in the inflicting and delivery, as it were, without means ; for what could the physician do in staying the plague ? Alas, all the skill in the world is at a loss in these kinds of sicknesses ! It comes with God's command. It is God's arrow more especially than other sicknesses. God sent it by his command, first to humble us for our sin ; and now he hath stayed it with a word of command, that from above five thousand a week it is come to three persons. ' God hath sent his word and healed us.'
It was a pitiful state we were in before ; for indeed it was not only a sickness upon the city, but a civil sickness. The whole state was dis- tempered ; for as there is sickness in the body when there is obstruction, when there is not a passage for the spirits and the blood from the liver, and from the heart, and from the head, these obstructions cause weakness, and faintings, and consumption. So was there not an obstruction in the State of late ? "Were not the veins of the kingdom stopped ? Was not civil commerce sta3'ed ? The affliction of this great city, it was as the affliction of the head, or of the heart, or of the liver. If the main vital part be sick, the whole is sick; so the whole kingdom, not only by way of sympathy, but it was civilty sick, in regard that all trading and intercourse was stopped ; it was a heavy visitation. And we have much cause to bless God that now the ' ways of this Sion ' of ours ' mourn not ; ' that there is free commerce and intercourse as before ; that we can meet thus peaceably and quietly at God's ordinances, and about our ordinary callings. Those that have an apprehension of the thing, cannot choose but break out in thanksgiving to God in divers respects.
1. First of all, have not we matter to praise God that he tvould correct iis at all / He might have sufi'ered us to have gone on and been ' damned with the wicked world;' as it is 1 Cor. xi. 32, 'We are therefore chastened of the Lord, that we should not be damned with the world.' It is his mercy that he would take us into his hands as children, that he would visit us at all.
2. Another ground of thanksgiving is this, that since he would correct us, he icould use this kind of correction, that he would take us into his own hands. Might he not have sufi'ered a furious, bloody, dark-spirited, devilish- spirited enemy to have invaded us ? to have fallen into the hard hands of men acted with devilish malice ? David thought this a favour, even that God would single him out to punish him with the plague of pestilence, that he might not 'fall before his enemies,' 2 Sam. xxiv. 14. The mercies of God are wondrous great when we ' fall into his hands.' Ho is a ' merciful God.' He hath tender bowels full of pity and compassion. But the very mercies of wicked idolaters * are cruel.' There was a mercy, therefore, in that, that God would take us into his own hands.
3. In the third place, We see when he had taken us into his own hands, how he hath stopped the raging of the pestilence, and hath inhibited the destroying angel even in a wondrous manner ; that the plague, when it was so raging, that it should come to decrease upon a sudden. God was won- drous in this work. Is not here matter of praise ?
4. Then again. It is a mercy to us all here that he should ' give us our lives for a prey ; ' as God saith in Jeremiah to Baruch, ' Wheresoever thou gocst, thou shalt have thy life for a prey,' Jer. xxi. 9. Might not God's arrow have followed us wheresoever we went ?