3. A people are then secure when God's warnings among them are despised. I am persuaded that, such is the goodness and tender ness of God to mankind, so little is he delighted in bringing sore judgments upon them, to their ruin and destruction, he scarce ever destroyed the most wicked and idolatrous nation, — those that knew nothing of him nor of Christ, — but he gave them some provi dential warnings of it, that might make them look about them and consider where they were. It is apparent in story. He dealt so with all the heathen of old. There came no great destruction upon any nation but there were providential warnings went before. When these warnings are despised, that people are secure ; as Isa. xxvi. 11, " LORD, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see." The lifting up of the hand is a giving notice that there is a stroke ready to come. And many lesser judgments are but God's lifting up of his hand. Though they are strokes in themselves, yet, comparatively
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with what follows, they are but the lifting up of his hand, — they are but warnings. " LORD/' saith he, " when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see : but they shall see/' " They will not see : but they shall see ; " — how is that ? ' They will not see while thy hand is only lifted up ; but they shall see when thy hand is come down/ While under warnings, they will not see ; but when warnings are executed, they shall see. May be we will not see in the plague, fire, sword; but when something else comes, many shall see then. When shall they see? ' They shall see when "the fire of thine enemies shall devour them/' J " Fire of thine ene mies; " that is, it may be, the fire wherewith God will destroy his enemies. May be it is, when the fiery rage of a people that are enemies to God, shall, by the just judgment of God, be let out upon them. Oftentimes, if God have a nation in the world that is more an enemy to him than any other nation of the world, he will make use of that nation for the execution of corrective or destructive judgments upon others. No nation under heaven were at such en mity unto God as the Babylonians were. How they first began an open apostasy from God, and maintained an idolatrous opposition to him all their days, is known. Yet God would use the Babylo nians. And sometimes a nation, by atheism, idolatry, and cursed per secution, may make themselves meet to be God's instrument for the punishing of others before themselves be utterly destroyed. God's hand hath been lifted up in these nations. I need not make appli cation. It is well if the best of us all have been shaken from our security by God's warnings. In truth, brethren, it doth not appear so to be, but that there is security enough yet left to let in a destroy ing dissolution upon us.
4 The highest thing wherein this security acts itself is by scoff ing at warnings given from the word of God : 2 Pet. iii. 3, " Know ing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts." The last days of churches, when they are drawing towards their period, are always filled with this sort of per sons. And it must be so. In the last days of any church-state that has had, it may be, some good reputation of life, and has been of use, there shall abound among them a sort of men that shall be scoffers. * Ye may know them,' saith the apostle, l by this, they walk after their hearts' lusts/ They have no rule but their lusts; they give up themselves wholly to their lusts. ' Well, but what do they scoff at?' He tells you in verse 4, " Where is the promise of his coming?" say they. ' What promise of his coming ?' Why, truly, the poor persecuted Christians had been letting them know that Christ would come and take vengeance on them for all their bloody cruelty and persecution; and the time is delayed, and they pros-
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per, walking after their lusts, and at length they fall a scoffing, " Where is the promise of his coming? " — for it was such a comino* as God came in when he destroyed the old world 'with a flood. ' But scoff you while you will/ say they, ' a fiery destruction will come upon you/ When leading persons shall be scoffers at the promised coming of Christ to visit his people, and take vengeance on his adversaries, that is the height of security.
Where some are intent upon the occasions of life, and some are given up to the temptations of life; where, in an apprehension of approaching judgments, our relief is not from God, and in God alone; where God's warnings in his providence are not improved, and where God's warnings from his word are despised ; — there a people are secure, if God hath instructed us aright out of his word.