(3.) Thirdly, To quicken our appetite. God puts us off the longer ; we are unwise and think he doth it to put us off for ever ; in which manner of working the Lord in a manner fisheth for us. The fisher, we know, doth draw back the hook when he finds the fish is like to bite, that the fish may follow. So God gives back from our suits sometimes, not to make us give over, but that we may press him so much the more. The experience hereof once found is very sweet, though smarting in the beginning, as we may see in the spouse : Cant. v. 2, ' She slept, and lost Christ by her sluggishness.' She made some idle excuses not to open unto him. Well, what came of it? When she would have opened to her best beloved her hands dropped myrrh ; all her affection was not gone, for he had left so much with her as made her in love with him, but her beloved had withdrawn himself. Well, yet more. In search of him the watchmen ' beat her, wounded her, took away her veil.' Here she pays worthily for her sloth ; she had all sweet words given her to open unto Christ : ' Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled ; ' but putting him oft', as I have shewed, he departs and leaves her in the pursuit of him. And why goes he away ? Partly to chastise her neglect of him, to whom she should have gone out, and opened with all cheerfulness and diligence ; and partly it was to quicken on her desires, as we see it fell out, ver. 8, wherein she chargeth the daughters of Jerusalem, that if they find her beloved, to tell him that she was sick of love.
(4.) Fourthly, He delays and puts off our suits, to enhance the price of those thinr/s he gives; for what lightly comes, for the most part, as the pro- verb is, lightly goes ; but what we come hardly by, that we highly prize, and have in estimation, as we see in the chief captain, Acts xxii. 28, when Paul had pleaded he was a Koman, he replied, * With a great sum obtained I this freedom ; ' he bought it at a dear rate, and therefore he valued it highly. So if the things of God did not cost us sighs, tears, weepings, lamentations, watchings, strivings, earnest longings, and many prayers, we would think them easy, to be got at our pleasure, and so despise, con- temn, or let them lightly pass as they came. God therefore, to enhance the price, doth keep them off till the bell ring, that we may know the rich value of these his commodities. All this is for the time.
III. The third circumstance is, the means and «•«?/. Here is all the strife. God would have it his way, and we would have it our way. Oh, saith Naaman, 2 Kings v. 11, ' Behold, I thought he would surely come out to me, and stand, and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.' But the Lord will not be tied to the means. When we see God, and fit means for effecting
238 THE KNOT OF PRAYER LOOSED.
of such and such a thing, if then we grow secure therein, and think this is good, this is surely the way, and this will do it, herein we fail, because we see that alone, and do not principally and first of all see and seek unto God ; and therefore in this case, because of our idolatrous conceit in lifting up the means beyond their places, God is forced many times to dash the means in pieces, and help us by some other way, of nil others least expected, as we may see how God ordered the matter in Paul's shipwreck. Acts xxvii. 22. God did give unto him his own life, and the lives of all that were in the ship with him, but withal the ship must perish. A strange manner of deliverance ! How should they then be saved, this being in all appearance the only means of safety '? By the wreck of the ship God did perform his promise, some by swimming, the rest on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, all get on land ; and even so, I say, we many times escape on boards, and broken pieces of a ship ; I mean those means we least thought of, or least trusted unto, because we should not set up unto ourselves so many gods before us. Again, we may remember, Gen. xxxix., when Joseph was advanced into Potiphar's house, a great man and a prince of the state, then he might have thought he was likely now to rise, and that the accomplishments of his dreams were in fair way to speed ; but this proved not the means. He becometh his enemy, and causeth him to be cast in a dungeon. Well, next a butler is made his friend by expounding of his dream ; and now Joseph had good hope the butler would be a means of his enlargement, and no question he prayed also for good success, but God would not bless the same, because he will not have our means, and that we rest upon to speed. But at last God's means brings him out : Pharaoh dreams, is vexed, the butler then remem- bers ; thus came his honour.