Some devils are not driven out but by prayer and fasting. Mat. xvii. 21. So some judgments, they will not away without prayer and fasting ; not only public, but private fasting and prayer. Sometimes there must be more than ordinary humiliation for some sins ; for some kind of tempta- tions there must be prayer and fasting ; for some malaJies prayer and fasting, and more than ordinary stirring and rousing up of ourselves to lay hold upon God. God will not be held with ordinary humiliation. That will not do it ; but there must be a resolution against, and a hatred of all sin, and to please God in all things. We must do it with extraordinary humiliation now, because the judgment is extraordinary. There is ordinary humiliation and extraordinary : as there are ordinary feasts and extra- ordinary, so there is ordinary humiliation for daily trespasses ; but in extra- ordinary judgments, extraordinary ftisting and humiliation. As there is ordinary washing daily, but there is washing and scouring at good times. God calls for extraordinary humiliation now ; not only prayers, but stirring and rousing up of ourselves. We should apprehend the danger as seizing on ourselves. This night it may seize upon us, for aught we know. It should affect us and make us stir up ourselves. This is the way to hold God by praj'er; and if we hold him, he will hold the destroying angel. He hath all creatures at his command. Thus you see how we should confess the sins of our persons, the sins of our good actions, our want of calling upon God. 'There is none that calls upon thy name, that stirs up himself to take hold of thee.' Thus far proceed the branches of their sinful dis- position in those times.
Now he complains likewise of the judgments of God.
' We all fade as a leaf; our iniquities, as the wind, have taken us away. Thou hast hid thy face, and we are consumed because of our iniquities.'
The complaint hath these four branches ; a little of each.
' We all fade as a leaf.'
Wicked men are 'as leaves;' and worse, they are 'as chaff.' Godly men, because they have a consistence, and are rooted in Christ, and set in a good soil, they are ' trees of righteousness.' But godly men in the state of their nature, and in regard of this life, they are as leaves. Wicked men are as leaves every way, and as ' chaff which the wind bloweth away,* as we shall see afterwards.
* That is, = • care for.'— G.
198 THE church's complaint and confidence.
' We all fade as a leaf.*
1. He means, first, in regard of cerevjomal performances that were witJwut vifjour and spirit of true devotion. There was no spirit in their legal perfor- mances. They were dead empty things. Therefore when judgment came they were as leaves. So an idle careless hearer, when judgment comes, all is as leaves. When conscience nips him, as his atheistical heart will do ere long, then he is as a leaf, all fades away. The Jews, when they were in trouble, all their legal performances faded, they were all as a leaf.
2. So it is time in regard of viortaUti/, the vanity of health and strength. We all as a leaf fade away when God's judgments come to nip ns. Men are as leaves ; as the leaves now in autumn fall, and there is a new gene- ration in the spring ; and then they fall away, and a new generation comes again ; so it is with men : some are blown ofi", and some come on again. ' We all fade as a leaf.' Not to be large in the point, at this time we are all as leaves. In this city now, there is a kind of wind that nips a world of men, many hundreds in the head,* It is an autumn wind that nips the leaves. Our autumn wind with us is before the time — a kind of autumn wind in the spring, in summer, that nips the leaves and takes away the vigour of health.
3. And so, as I said, /or all idle perfo^-maiices, that have not a foundation in substantial pieti/, they are all as leaves. When trouble of conscience comes, they are as Adam's fig-leaves. When God comes to search and examine, they all fall oft', both in respect of our performances and in respect of our lives. We are all as leaves when God comes in judgment. This is one part of the complaint. ' We are all as leaves.' The like we have of Moses, the man of God, Ps. xc. G. When God blows upon us with the wind of his displeasure, we fall oft' as leaves.
Then another expression is,
' Our iniquities, as the wind, have taken us away.'
As chafi', or things that have no solidity in them, are blown away with a puft' of wind, so it is with a man if he be not a Christian, set into and gathered unto Christ. By the fall we all fell from God, and were scattered from him. Sin blew the angels out of heaven. It blew Adam ©ut of paradise ; and now Christ, the ' second Adam,' gathers us to him again by his word and Spirit, and so we have a solid and eternal being in him. But out of Christ, our iniquities, as a wind, and God's judgments, blow us all away first or last. Wicked men settle on their dregs a great while, but when God's judgment comes, it blows them in this world to this part and that part ofttimes, when it pleaseth him to exercise his out- ward judgments. But if he do not blow them away here, he will give them a blast that shall send them to hell, then' centre. Out of Christ there is no solidity, no consistence or being for any man. Therefore, when God's judgment comes, it blows them away in this world, and at the hour of death sends them to hell. This is the state of all. ' Our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.' He means here, they were blown out of Jewry to Babylon. It was a strong blast that blew them out of their own country.