Thirdly. The manner of their introduction, svgr^ffovrai, — " shall come." We have no word in our language that will express the force of iviorri/xi. The Latins express it by " immineo, incido," — the coming down of a fowl unto his prey. Now, our translators have given it the greatest force they could. They do not say, " Perilous times will come/' as though they prognosticated future events ; but, " Perilous times shall come." Here is a hand of God in this business; they shall so come, be so instant in their coming, that nothing shall keep them out ; they shall instantly press themselves in, and prevail. Our great wisdom, then, will be, to eye the displeasure of God in perilous seasons; since there is a judicial hand of God in them, and we see in ourselves reason enough why they should come. But when shall they come?
Fourthly. They " shall come in the last days," — b leyaratc, rnxspatg. The words " latter" or " last days" are taken three ways in Scrip- ture;— sometimes for the times of the gospel, in opposition to the Judaical church -state ; as in Heb. i. 2, " Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son;" — and elsewhere it may be taken (though I remember not the place) for days towards the consummation of all things and the end of the world ; — and it is taken often for the latter clays of churches; 1 Tim. iv. 1, " The Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith." And so the apostle John, 1 Epist. ii. 18, " Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time." And that is the season here intended. But yet you may take it in what sense you will : the last days, the days of the gospel ; the last days, towards the consummation of all things and the end of the world ; the last days, following the days of the profession of churches, those called Reformed Churches, or our own churches, in the ways wherein we walk ; and the last days with many of us, with respect to our lives. In whatever sense the words are taken, it is time for us to look what shall come in these last days.
But the observation which at present I shall insist on from the text is this: —
PERILOUS TIMES. 323
Observation. When churches have been continued for a while in their profession, and begin to fall under decays therein, perilous sea- sons shall overtake them, which it will be hard for them to escape : " This know also, that perilous times shall come."
My design is only to dispose your minds a little to the work of the day: and all I shall do is, to show, in several instances, what are the things that make a season perilous; and what is our duty with reference unto such perilous seasons, both as to particular perils and perilous times in general. And it must not be said, as once it was of the prophet Ezekiel, " He prophesied of things a great way off." We do not prophesy of things a great way off; no, we shall speak of things that are even upon us, — what we see and know, and is as evi- dent as if written with the beams of the sun.
I. The first thing that makes a season perilous is, when the profes- sion of true religion is outwardly maintained under a visible predo- minancy of horrible lusts and wickedness. And the reason why I name it in the first place is, because it is what the apostle gives his instance in, in this place, " Perilous times shall come." Why? " ' For many shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blas- phemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce -breakers, false-accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of plea- sures more than lovers of God ; having a form of godliness ; '—main- taining their profession of the truth of religion under a predominancy, a visible, open predominancy, of vile lusts, and the practice of hor- rible sins." This rendered the season perilous. Whether this be such a season or not, do you judge. And I must say, by the way, we may and ought to witness against it, and mourn for the public sins of the days wherein we live. It is as glorious a thing to be a martyr for bearing testimony against the public sins of an age, as in bearing tes- timony unto any truth of the gospel whatsoever.
Now, where these things are, a season is perilous, —
1. Because of the infection. Churches and professors are apt to be infected with it. The historian1 tells us of a plague at Athens, in the second and third years of the Peloponnesian war, whereof multitudes died ; and of those that lived, few escaped but they lost a limb, or part of a limb,— some an eye, others an arm, and others a finger, — the infection was so great and terrible. And truly, brethren, where this plague comes, — of the visible practice of unclean lusts under an outward profession, — though men do not die, yet one loses an arm, another an eye, another a leg by it: the infection diffuses itself to the best of professors, more or less. This makes it a dangerous and perilous time.