2. For our encouragement. The ways of God are often- times attended with so many difficulties, so much opposition, that they must be embraced merely because his ; no other motive in the world can suit them to us. I mean, for such as keep them immixed from their own carnal and corrupt interests. Now because the Lord will not take off the hard- ship and difficulty of them, lest he should not have the ho- nour of carrying on his work against tumultuating opposition, he secures poor weaklings of comfortable assistance, and an- swerable success, lest his work should be wholly neglected. It is true, the Lord, as our sovereign master, may justly re- quire a close labouring in all his ways, without the least sweetening endearments put upon them, only as they are his, whose we are, who hath a dominion over us. But yet, as a tender father, in which relation he delights to exercise his will towards his own in Christ, *he pitieth our infirmities, knowing that we are but dust ;' and therefore to invite us into the dark, into ways laboursome and toilsome to flesh and blood, he gives us in this security, that we shall be as a fenced brazen wall to the opposing sons of men.
Use 1. To discover the vanity and folly of all opposition to men called forth of God to his work, and walking in his ways, would you not think him mad, that should strike with his fist, and run with his head against a fenced brazen wall to cast it down? Is he like to have any success, but the bat- tering of his flesh, and the beating out of his brains? What do the waves obtain by dashing themselves with noise and dread against a rock, but their own beating to pieces ? What prevails a man by shooting his arrows against the sky, but a return upon his own head ? Nor is the most powerful op- position to the ways of God like to meet with better success. God looks no otherwise upon opposers, than you would do upon a man attempting to thrust down a fenced brazen wall with his fingers. Therefore it is said, that in their proudest attempts, strongest assaults, deepest counsels, combinations, and associations, ' he laughs them to scorn,' derides their folly, contemns their fury, lets them sweat in vain, until their
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day be come ; Psal. ii. How birthless in our own, as well as other generations, have been their swelling conceptions? What then is it that prevails upon men to break through so many disappointments against the Lord, as they do ? doubt- less that of Isa. xxiii. 9. ' Surely the Lord of hosts hath a pur- pose to stain the pride of all glory, to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth.' God gives up men unto it, that he may leave no earthly glory or honour without pol- lution or contempt. And therefore hath opposition in our days been turned upon so many hands, that God might leave no glory without contempt : yet with this difference, that if the Lord will own them, he will recover them from their opposition, as have happened of late to the ministry of one, and will happen ere long to the ministry of another na- tion. When the Lord hath a little stained the pride of their glory, they shall be brought home again by the spirit of judg- ment and burning ; but if he own them not, they shall perish under the opposition. And when it hath been wheeled about on all sorts of men, the end will be.
Use 2. *Be wise now therefore, O ye rulers; be instructed, ye that are judges of the earth; serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling;' Psal. ii. 10, 11. See whence your assistance cometh ; see where lie the hills of your sal- vation, and say, * Ashur shall not save us ; we will not ride upon horses : neither will we say any more to the works of our hands, Ye are our Gods; for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy;' Hos. xiv. 3. It is God alone who is * a sun and a shield : his ways do good to the upright in heart.' Behold, here is a way to encompass England with a brazen wall : let the rulers of it walk in right ways, with upright hearts. Others have been careful to preserve the people to them, and the city to them ; oh, be you careful to preserve your God unto you, he alone can make you a fenced wall ; if he departs, your wall departs, your shade departs. Give me leave to insist a little on one particular, which I choose out among many others. When God leads out his people to any great things, the angel of his presence is still among them: see at large, Exod. xxiii. 20 — 22. The angel of the covenant, in whom is the name of God, that hath power of pardoning or retaining transgressions, Jesus Christ, the 'angel that redeemeth his out of all their troubles;' Gen.
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xlviii. 16. he is in the midst of them, and amongst them. And God gives this special caution, if we would have his assistance, that we should beware of him, and obey him, and provoke him not. Would you then have God's assist- ance continued? Take heed of provoking the angel of his presence : provoke him not by slighting of his ways, provoke him not by contemning his ordinances; if you leave him to deal for himself, he will leave you to shift for yourselves. What though his followers are at some difference" (the best knowing but in part), about the administration of some things in his kingdom ; the envious one having also sown some bitter seeds of persecution, strife, envy, and conten- tion among them? What though some poor creatures are captivated by Satan, the prince of pride, to a contempt of all his ordinances, whose souls I hope the Lord will one day free from the snare of the devil ? Yet I pray give me leave (it is no time to contest or dispute it) to bear witness in the behalf of my master to this one truth, that if by your own personal practice and observance, your protection, countenance, authority, laws, you do not assert, maintain, uphold the order of the gospel, and administration of the ordinances of Christ, notwithstanding the noise and clamours of novel fancies, which like Jonah's gourd have sprung up in a night, and will wither in a day ; you will be forsaken by the angel of God's presence, and you will become an as- tonishment to all the inhabitants of the earth. And herein I do not speak as one hesitating, or dubious, but positively assert it, as the known mind of God, and whereof he will not suffer any long to doubt; Psal. ii. 12. ,