[2.] Be encouraged under all those perplexities and troubles which you are or may be wrapped in. Lift up the hands that hang down, and let the feeble knees be strengthened : " It is but yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry." The more you are for Christ, the more enemies you shall be sure to have ; but the Lamb shall overcome. He is come to revenge the blood of his slain upon this generation, and to free the residue from the jaws of the terrible. He is our rock, and his work is perfect. What he hath begun, faster or slower, he will surely accomplish. It is a thing of the utmost imaginable indifferency whether any of our particular per- sons behold these things here below or not. If otherwise, we shall for the present have " rest with him, and stand in our lot at the end of the days;" but for the work itself, " the decree is gone forth," and it shall not be recalled. Receive strength and refreshment in the Lord.
Use 8. Wonder not, when the heaven is shaken, if you see the stars fall to the ground. We had some who pretended to be church stars, that were merely fixed, to all men's view and by their own con- fession, in the political heavens. The first shaking of this nation shook them utterly to the ground. If others also tremble like an aspen leaf, and know not which wind to yield unto, or sail backwards and forwards by the same gale, wonder not at that neither. When men lay any other foundation than the immovable corner-stone, at one time or other, sooner or later, assuredly they will be shaken.
Use 4. Let the professing people that are amongst us look well to themselves : " The day is coming that will burn like an oven." Dross will not endure this day: we have many a hypocrite as yet to be un- cased. Take heed, you that act high, if a false heart, a defiled heart be amongst you, there shall be no place for it in the mountain of the Lord's house. " The inhabitants of Zion shall be all righteous," Isa. ' Vide Discourse concerning Toleration, &c.
OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. 279
Ix. 21. Many that make a great sliow now upon the stage, sliall be turned off with shame enough. Try and search your hearts ; force not the Lord to lay you open to all. The spirit of judgment and burning- will try you. Tremble, I pray; for you are entering the most purging, trying fuiTiace that ever the Lord set up on the earth.
Use 5. Be loose from all shaken things: — you see the clouds re- turn after the rain, — one storm in the neck of another. Thus it must be, until Christ hath finished his whole work. " Seeing that all these things must be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all manner of holy conversation?" Let yom- eyes be upwards, and your hearts be upwards, and your hands be upwards, that you be not moved at the passing away of shaken things. I could here encourage you by the glorious issue of all these shakings, whose foretaste might be as marrow to your bones, though they should be appointed to con- sumption before the accomplishment of it ; but I must close.
Use 6. See the vanity, folly, madness of such as labour to oppose the brinecinw in the kinofdom of the Lord Jesus. Canst thou hinder the rain from descending upon the earth when it is falling ? Canst thoii stop the sun from rising at its appointed hour ? Will the con- ceptio7i for thee dwell quietly in the womb beyond its month? Surely thou mayest with far more ease turn and stop the current and course of nature than obstruct the bringing in of the kingdom of Christ in righteousness and peace. Whence comes it to pass that so many nations are wasted, destroyed, spoiled, in the days wherein we live? — that God hath taken quietness and peace from the earth ? Doubtless from hence, that they will smite themselves against the " stone cut out of the mountain without hands." Shall not "the decree bring forth?" Is it not in vain to fiofht against the Lord? Some are angry, some troubled, some in the dark, some full of revenge; but tlie truth is, whether they will hear or forbear, Babylon shall fall, and all the glory of the earth be stained, and the kingdoms become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SERMON YL
BRANCH OF THE LORD THE BEAUTY OF ZION;
THE GLORY OF THE CHURCH IN ITS RELATION UNTO CHRIST.
OrENED IN TWO SERMOXS;
ONE PKEACUED AT BERWICK, TliE OTHER AT Em.NBURGH.
niEFATORY NOTE.
All the information wliicli can be given respecting tliese sermons on Isa. hi. 7, ■will be found in the " Life," vol. i. p. 45, and the dedication to Cromwell which is prefixed to them. The first sermon was preached at Berwick, July 21, IGuO. Tiie date of the dedication is November 26, 1650. There is no record of Owen's proceedings in Scotland. The decisive battle of Dunbar, September 3, 16.10, placed Edinburgh in the hands of Cromwell. The castle for a time held out again.st him; and as the Presbyterian ministers who had retired to it refused to issue from it on the Sabbath to fill the puljiits in the town, there is every likelihood that Owen found constant employment in preaching the gospel. A celebrated correspon- dence took place between those ministers, as represented by Dutidas, the com- mandant of the fortress, and Oliver Cromwell. The latter oflt'eix'd them liberty to preach in their respective churches. Not much to their credit, they declined to avail themselves of this permission, on the ground of " the personal persecution" of which they were afraid if they ventured to quit the castle. Cromwell replies with insinuations that they wished "worldly power," and made "worldly mixtures to accomplish the same," and advises them to "trust to the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God;" alleging, at the same time, that though they had not listened to his public ajjpeals, " the Lord hath heard us," in the victory of Dunbar. The ministers, in their reply, and in allusion to the practices of Cromwell's officers, "regret that men of mere civil place and employment should usurp the calling and employment of the ministry, jjarticularly in Scotland, contrary to the govern- ment and discipline therein established, — to the maintenance whereof you are bound by the Solemn League and Covenant;" and state that they "have not so learned Christ as to hang the eipiity of their cause upon events." Cromwell, in a long answer, with a postscript of four queries, betraying some temper at tiie smart rejoinder of the clergy, complains that they make themselves '• infallible expositors of the Covenant;" and winds uj) a rejiroof to ihon\ for calling sucli Successes as that achieved at Dunbar " bare events," with the characteristic words, " The Lord pity you." In one of the postscript queries he has very manifestly the advantage, when he twits the ministers with tlieir inconsistency in "crying down Malignants, and yet 'setting up the head of them,' Charles Stuart.' " It has been thought that the hand of Owen can be traced in the letters of Cromwell; and liume speaks of them '" as the best of Cromwell's wretched compositions." The imj)rove- inent in the con!i)()sition may be ascribed to tiie greater leisure which Cromwell possessed at this time, while waiting the reduction of the castle. The letters are dee[)ly impregnated with all the strongly-markeil peculiarities of Cromwell's style of thought, — the perpetual einpha'^is of a resolute will, e.\i>rcssed in sentences " luinhering," indeed, but, like his own sword, sharp as well as heavy. Owen, we cannot but think, would have been more successful in rejjly to some of the state- ments of the ministers, and especially to the charge which they preferred against Cromwell, of suspending the equity of liis cause upon his outward success. See Owen's answer to such an accusation in the prefatory note to the third sermon in this volume. ^Ed.