2. We may hope yet that the decree is not gone forth, and we may beg that God would not use these workmen. Now, if we should beg of God that he would yet cause the furnace to pass away, if we find it coming, and if we find our hearts enlarged to pray, and God bowing down his ear to hear, let us continue to ask further, not only that such and such may not be employed to fire the poor nation, but that God would even cause the furuace to pass away. Abraham began to pray to God: '0 Lord/ saitb he, 'if there be fifty righteous in Sodom, wilt thou spare?' ' 1 will/ saith God, * if there be fifty/ ' Lord/ saith he, ' if there be forty-five, wilt thou spare ? ' 'I will for forty-five/ saith God. * Yet let me add, suppose there be forty?' *I will spare for forty's sake/ Abraham found the infinite condescension of God to hi* prayer, and he asks no more by fives, but by tens : * Wilt thou if there be thirty, twenty, ten, there?' Faith grew upon the Lonl If we find God answers our supplications for the removal of the workmen that are employed, that God would employ them elsewhere, and we have asked salvation in that, and a disappointment of others ih their counsels, and find the Lord coming down, let faith come to ask by tens and tens, to bring it to the lowest degree. The utmost con descension of grace and mercy that will bear a consistency with the essential holiness and righteousness of God may be drawn out by faith and prayer. Then cry mightily unto the Lord, that, if it be his will, the furnace may depart from the nation.
3. If it be so determined that the furnace must beset up, and
THE FURNACE Otf DIVINE WRATH. 499
that we must all into the furnace, beg of God that we may have the lamp that belongs unto the covenant as well as the furnace. The furnace was all horror and smoke ; but the lamp had a light in it. I take it from that of Abraham. When the furnace was a dark and smoking furnace, yet there was a lamp, a burning, shining light, that passed between the pieces of the sacrifice. That the dark, smoking furnace may not deprive us of the light of God's countenance in Christ, to support us in it and under it, beg of God that though we go into the furnace, yet we may have the lamp to direct us, to give us light in that horror of darkness, and in the smoking furnace.
Lastly, Who knows but that God may yet, by prayer, by the preaching of the word, by continual warnings, before the day comes, before the decree brings forth, before it be too late, make such a separation (for this is as far as ever I can go), that his people shall be put into the fining-pot, and not into the same furnace? Cry for that ! It is your mercy to be in Zion's fining-pot rather than in the consuming furnace.
And, then, tremble to think that there seems to me no dispensa tion remaining but the oven, but that which shall consume, and leave neither root nor branch.
The substance of all is, brethren, that there is a woful and a wicked corruption and profaneness of life grown upon the generality of the nation, — that there is such an adherence to the world and the ways of the world among professors, that former means have not separated them from the world (for this separation from the world in outward worship, if it be all, signifies nothing), — that we seem all to be ready, unless God relieve in infinite mercy, to be brought into the same furnace; which is under a testimony of God's displeasure: ' Ye shall know that I have done it in anger, when I have brought you into the same furnace/ It is a great pledge of God's displeasure with us. Yet there is left room for faith and prayer to plead with God in all the particulars mentioned ; — to deliver us from the hands of blood-thirsty men; to divert the judg ment (' I repented me of the evil,' saith God) ; yea, to remove the furnace; yea, to make us meet for the fining-pot, or, however, to enjoy the lamp when we are in the furnace, — to enjoy light, direc tion, guidance, when we are in all confusion of darkness and in the smoking of the furnace.
500 THE WISDOM OF MAKING THE LORD OUR REFUGE.
SERMON II.
THE WISDOM OF MAKING THE LORD OUR REFUGE.
PREACHED FEBRUARY 27, 1669.
" Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the LORD is his refuge." —
Ps. xiv. 6.
THERE is a peculiar mark put upon this psalm, in that it is twice in the Book of Psalms. The 14th psalm and the 53d psalm are the same, with the alteration of one or two expressions at most. And there is another mark put upon it, in that the apostle transcribes a great part of it, Rom. iii. 10-12.
It contains a description of a most deplorable state of things in the world, — ay, in Israel; a most deplorable state, by reason of the general corruption that was befallen all sorts of men, in their princi ples, and in their practices, and in their opinions.