[3.] Then is the season, when God moves, [as he does] at some sea- sons, more effectually upon your hearts and spirits in the dispensation of the word than at other times. This you alone can give an account of; — you only know how it is with you. You can tell whether you have not been moved by the word more than formerly, or convinced by it ; whether you have not had purposes of amendment and reformation wrought in you by it ; whether you have not been caused to love it more than you have done formerly; whether it hath not begotten at times resolutions in you to try for life and immortality. If it have not, it is much to be feared lest the Lord is leaving of you to salt, — to an estate of perishing and everlasting ruin. But if you have had
196 THE SIN AND JUDGMENT OF SPIRITUAL BARRENNESS.
such effects wrought in you, know of a certain that the kingdom of God hath come unto you; and if you withstand your opportunity, you are gone and undone for ever, unless you make thorough work before this dispensation be overpast.
[4.] When you see others about you earnest after the word, this is God's call and ordinance unto you to look to your own condition.
If now, by any of these means, you come to know that the day of the Lord and the season of your healing is upon you, oh, that you would be prevailed with to be wise for your own souls, and to close with the word of the gospel before the things of your peace be hidden from your eyes !
I thought, in the next place, to have given you the signs of a de- parting gospel-day, and evidences of men's having outlived their sea- son, and being given up to salt and barrenness ; but for some reasons forbear.
Use 2. To discover the miserable condition of poor creatures that, having not in their season been healed by the waters of the sanctuary, are given up of the Lord to salt and barrenness. No heart can con- ceive, nor tongue express, the misery of such poor creatures. Let me only mention some particulars: —
(1.) They know not that they are so miserable. They perceive not, they understand not, the sore judgment that they are under. Do but their heads ache, or are they sick of an ague, they feel it pre- sently, and seek out for remedies; but in this case the curse of God is upon them, and they do not at all perceive it, and so seek not out for relief. Hos. vii. 9, " Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not; yea, grey hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not." They are nigh to ruin, to destruction, and perceive it not : they take no notice of the misery that is at hand ready to devour them ; or if at any time they begin so to do, they shift off the thought of it, which is a great part of their misery.
(2.) They are pleased with the condition in which they are; " they cry, Peace and safety, when sudden destruction is at hand," 1 Thess. v. 3. They please themselves in their condition, when the vengeance of the Lord is ready to seize upon them. Is the gospel removed from them, and the streams of the sanctuary turned away? — They are so far from being troubled at it, that they rejoice in it, as hath been declared ; they think they may now follow their lusts freely, and do whatever seems good unto themselves; they despise others and bless themselves, as if all were well with them. Or is the word yet con- tinued, but they left to senselessness and salt under it? — They are pleased with then estate, wonder at those who are troubled under the word, and exceedingly despise them. All is well with themselves; and some of them are ready to deride all others that are under the
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work of the Lord. On this account it is that they do not, will not, look out for relief or healing.
(3.) No man can help or relieve them. Men may pity them, but they cannot help them. All the world cannot pull a poor creature out from under the curse of the great God.
(4.) Their eternal ruin is certain, as before proved.
(5.) This ruin is very sore on gospel despisers.
SERMON XYI.1
HUMAN POWER DEFEATED.
" The stout-hearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep ; and none of the men of might have found their hands. — Ps. lxxvi. 5.
The common circumstances of this psalm, concerning the penman, title, and the like, I shall not at all inquire after. The time of its being given to the church is alone to us considerable ; and yet all the knowledge thereof, also, is but conjectural. What particular time it was wherein it was given we know not ; but that it was given for the use of all times, that we know. Probable it is, from verse 3, that it
1 Dr Owen, according to Whitelocke in his " Memorials," p. 391, preached before the House of Commons on June 7, 1649. The following sermon was the one which he delivered on the occasion. It was a day of public thanksgiving for the defeat of the Levellers at Burford on May 18 of the same year. In times of political change and commotion, wild notions are frequently set afloat, incompa- tible with the restraints of-law and the rights of property. A species of communism had sprung up in the Parliamentary forces. In 1647 Cromwell was obliged to resort to vigorous measures in order to restore discipline and subordination. The ringleaders were seized at a review of the troops, — tried by a court-martial on the spot, and condemned to be shot. The sentence was executed against one of them immediately, and the danger seemed to be gone; but disaffection was still cherished in the minds of many of the soldiers, and in 1649 broke out afresh in a more formidable shape. Many causes tended to foster this spirit of discontent. Some officers had taken offence at the way in which military honours had been distri- buted, and hence " the murmuring for pre-eminence " to which Owen in his sermon alludes. Evil principles, moreover, had been spread among the common soldiers. A party of them disturbed the worship of a congregation in the parish church of Walton-upou-Thames, and harangued the people in the churchyard on the neces- sity of abolishing the Sabbath, tithes, the ministry of the gospel, magistracy, and the Bible itself! Sympathy with these levelling views was evinced out of the army. At Cobham, one Everard, a disbanded soldier, gave himself out to be a prophet, and professed to have had a vision, in which lie and his followers were commanded to arise and dig and plough the earth. Whitelocke (p. 384) supplies the interpretation of the vision. " They threaten," says he, " to pull down park pales, and to lay all open." Owen, too, in the course of his sermon, has a significant allusion to men, " heady, high-minded, throwing tip all bounds and fences." It was, accordingly, bothamutiny and an insurrection, and spread over several counties, —