And in all these and the like lessons, labour for an inward, convincing, experimental, powerful, sweet, abiding teaching.

Content not yourselves, Christians, with a general, slight, superficial, unsavoury, powerless, flitting knowledge: rest not in notions; be not satisfied with expressions without impressions; nor with impressions, that are not abiding impressions; that are like figures written in the sand; this is the ruin of professors. Those professors shall have their names written in the dust, who write divine instructions in the dust: at least, if God have a mind to do you good, expect that he should send you into the house of correction, and there teach you with scourges, and write his instruc tions as it were in blood.

And therefore if you would prevent so severe a discipline, improve your time well in the school of the word. While you have the light, walk in the light, lest darkness come upon you; while you sit under the teachings of the gospel, labour to get knowledge answerable to the means, and grace answerable to your knowledge.

2. If you would prevent affliction, labour to be instructed by the chastisements which you see upon other men. God deals with his children as tutors do with the children of princes, correct them upon strangers' backs. Thus God scourged Israel upon the back of the nations round, about; I have cut off the nations, their towers are desolate, I made their streets waste that

none passeth by, their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant; SHORT WORK! but their punishment was Israel's caution; I said, surely thou wilt fear me, thou wilt receive instruction: the world's judgements are the church's instructions, and God looked that his people fhould have made that use of his practical doctrine. God had gracious ends in this dispensation: his severity to strangers, was his tender mercy towards Israel; behold (as the apostle saith in another case,) The goodness and severity of God; severity to the nations, but goodness towards Israel, had they continued in his goodness, had they received instruction by their neighbour's destruction. And as God punished Israel upon the nations' backs, so God punished Judah upon Israel's back: Go ye now to my place in Shiloh, and see what I did to it, for the wickedness of my people Israel: Israel's chastisements should have been Jerusalem's teachings, and by their stripes she should have been healed; for the neglect whereof God is highly displeased, and speaks concerning this in a very angry dialect; And I saw when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also. God took it ill, that Jerusalem should slight the kindness of such a caution, and despise the counsel which was written to her in her sister's blood; as if he had said, I would have made Jerusalem wise by Samaria's harms, and taught her

by a rod which she only saw: but she feared not; she hardened her heart through unbelief, and either would not understand the caution, or dared me to my face to do my worst, while by her shameless whoredoms she went on to provoke me to jealousy. This hasteneth that judgment upon herself which she despised on others; Judah must feel Israel's rod, because she would not hear it; as Israel must suffer those judgments on the nations which she would not improve; by those very nations by whom she would not be instructed, she must be destroyed. So Judah must feel what she feared not at a distance; she that would not tremble at her sister's divorce must suffer divorce herself, and be judged as women that break wedlock-and bear her own shame for her sins that she had committed more abominable than they. Ezek. xvi. 38, 52.

Beloved christians, if we would prevent the like severity, let us take heed of the like security. God hath been a long time scourging England upon Germany's back, * and upon Ireland's back, and upon Scotland's back; God hath for these many years scourged London on the back of all the cities and countries round about; and God doth daily scourge every one of us in particular upon the back of our suffering brethren, in divers kinds; his design is, that we should fear him, that we should receive instruction. If we altogether fail, we may fear the same rods are preparing for our backs, wherewith they have bled, * The reader should remember this book was printed in the year 1671.

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yea that their rods shall be turned into scorpions to us. We sin worse than others when we sin those very sins for which others have been punished before our faces, and add contempt to their transgressions; and how just will it be with God, if as we aggravate their sins, to aggravate upon us their plagues; that we that would not see and learn, should feel and perish; even particular judgments should be our warnings-Remember Lot's wife; her pillar of salt should season our hearts, that when the judgments of God are abroad in the earth, we that are the inhabitants (not of the earth only, but of Sion also) may learn righteousness. Even those judgments which the magistrate doth execute by God's appointment, are chiefly for caution to standers by, that others may hear and fear, and do no more any such wickedness; how much more those judgments which the Lord himself doth execute?

II. I come to the second branch of exhortation, which is To SUCH AS YET LIE UNDER AFFLICTION, AND THE CHASTISEMENTS OF THE AL

MIGHTY.

Take notice, O thou afflicted soul, what God's design is in afflicting of thee, and make it thy design, namely, that thou mayst be taught; hear the rod and who hath appointed it. It is the great mistake and folly of men, that they make more haste to get their afflictions removed than sanctified; the captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed, that he should not die in the pit; men would fain break prison, or leap out at the window,

before God open the door; but this their way is their folly. Men indeed would fain be delivered, but they take not the right course; deliverance belongs unto God: I am the Lord thy God that divided the sea, and made it a way for my ransomed to pass over, and that when it was most tempestuous, when the waves thereof roared; when I will deliver, no obstruction can stand in the way; and yet Israel now in captivity will not look to me: I am the Lord of Hosts, that have all the armies in heaven and earth at my command; and yet when they are besieged with troubles and dangers, I hear not from them; they run to the creature and neglect God; or if they cry to me in their distresses, it is for deliverance only, but not for teaching, though I have put my words in thy mouth; that is, I have given them my laws and statutes, wherein I have made known my design in affliction, that I might humble them, and prove them, and make them know what is in their heart. This is the shortest way to deliverance, and in this path if they had trod, I would have planted the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; even the NEW HEAVENS and the NEW EARTH of Jerusalem's restoration, and have said to Sion, Thou art my people."

This is God's method wherein he will own his people, and wherein if they meet him, they shall not stay long for their deliverance. And therefore be wise, O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted; be instructed, lest God's soul depart from thee; make