turn may be thine; God will send his angel, as he did to Peter, and smite thee on thy side, and awake thee from thy dead sleep of sin and sottishness. But beyond this some are despisers still, and hope to drown the noises of mount Sinai, the sound of cannons, of thunders and lightnings, with a counter noise of revelling and clamorous roarings, with merry meetings; like the sacrifices to Moloch, they sound drums and trumpets, that they might not hear the sad shriekings of their children as they were dying in the cavity of the brazen idol: and when their conscience shrieks out or murmurs, in a sad melancholy, or something that is dear to them is smitten, they attempt to drown it in a sea of drink, in the heathenish noises of idle and drunken company; and that which God sends to lead them to repentance, leads them to a tavern, not to refresh their needs of nature, or for ends of a tolerable civility, or innocent purposes, but, like the condemned persons among the Levantines, they tasted wine freely, that they might die and be insensible. I could easily reprove such persons with an old Greek proverb mentioned by Plutarch, Περί της Ευθυμίας, Ουτε ποδάγρας απαλλατίει καλκιος : shall ill be cured of the knotted gout if you have nothing else but a wide shoe. But this reproof is too gentle for so great a madness: it is not only an incompetent cure, to apply the plaster of a sin or vanity to cure the smart of a divine judgment; but it is a great increaser of the misery, by swelling the cause to bigger and monstrous proportions. It is just as if an impatient fool, feeling the smart of his medicine, shall tear his wounds and throw away the instruments of his cure, because they bring him health at the charge of a little pain. Έργος Κυρίου πλήρης μαστίγων. He that is full of stripes and troubles, and decked round about with thorns, he is near to God: But he that, because he sits uneasily when he sits near the

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king that was crowned with thorns, shall remove thence, or strew flowers, roses and jessamine, the down of thistles and the softest gossamer, that he may die without pain, die quietly and like a lamb, sink to the bottom of hell without noise; this man is a fool, because he accepts death, if it arrests him in civil language, is content to die by the sentence of an cloquent judge, and prefers a quiet passage to hell before going to heaven in a storm.

That Italian gentleman was certainly a great lover of his sleep, who was angry with the lizard that waked him when a viper was creeping into his mouth: When the devil is entering into us to poison our spirits, and steal our souls away while we are sleeping in the lethargy of sin, God sends his sharp messages to awaken us; and we call that the enemy, and use arts to cure the remedy, not to cure the disease. There are some persons that will never be cured, not because the sickness is incurable, but because they have ill stomachs, and cannot keep the medicine. Just so is his case that so despises God's method of curing him by these instances of long sufferance, that he uses all the arts he can to be quit of his physician, and to spill his physick, and to take cordials as soon as his vomit begins to work. There is no more to be said in this affair, but to read the poor wretch's sentence, and to declare his condition. As at first, when he despised the first great mercies, God sent him sharpness and sad accidents to ensober his spirits so now that he despises his mercy also, the inercy of the rod, God will take it away from him, and then I hope all is well. Miserable man that thou art! this is thy undoing; if God ceases to strike thee because thou wilt not mend, thou art sealed up to ruin and reprobation for ever; the physician hath given thee over, he hath no kindness for thee. This was the desperate estate of

Judah, Ah sinful nation! a people laden with iniquity: They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the holy one of Israel. Why should you be stricken any more?* This is the aru apava; the most bitter curse, the greatest excommunication, when the delinquent is become a heathen and a publican without the covenant, out of the pale of the church; the church had nothing to do with them: for what have I to do with them that are without? said St. Paul: It was not lawful for the church any more to punish them. And this court Christian is an imitation and parallel of the justice of the court of heaven: When a sinner is not mended by judgments at long running, God cuts him off from his inheritance, and the lot of sons; he will chastise him no more, but let him take his course, and spend his portion of prosperity, such as shall be allowed him in the great economy of the world. Thus God did to his vineyard which he took such pains to fence, to plant, to manure, to dig, to cut, and to prune and when after all it brought forth wild grapes, the last and worst of God's anger was this, Auferam sepem ejus ;† God had fenced it with a hedge of thorns, and God would take away all that hedge, he would not leave a thorn standing, not one judgment to reprove or admonish them, but all the wild beasts, and wilder and more beastly lusts, may come and devour it, and trample it down in

scorn.

And now what shall I say, but those words quoted by St. Paul in his sermon, behold ye despisers, and wonder, and perish? ‡ perish in your own folly by stubbornness and ingratitude. For it is a huge contradiction to the nature and designs of God: God calls us, we refuse to hear; he invites us with fair promises, we hear and consider not; he gives us blessings, we

* Isa. 1. 4, 5.

Isa. v.

5.

Acts xiii. 41.

take them and understand not his meaning; we take out the token, but read not the letter: then he threatens us, and we regard not; he strikes our neighbours, and we are not concerned: then he strikes us gently, but we feel it not: then he does like the physician in the Greek epigram, who being to cure a man of a lethargy, locked him into the same room with a madman, that he by dry-beating him might make him at least sensible of blows: but this makes us instead of running to God, to trust in unskilful physicians, or, like Saul, to run to a Pythonisse, we run for cure to a crime, we take sanctuary in a pleasant sin; just as if a man, to cure his melancholy, should desire to be stung with a tarantula, that at least he may die merrily. What is there more to be done that God hath not yet done? He is forced at last to break off with a Curavimus Babylonem, et non est sanata. We dressed and tended Babylon, but she was incurable: there is no help, but such persons must die in their sins, and lie down in eternal sorrow.

SERMON XIV.

OF GROWTH IN GRACE.

2 PETER, iii. 18.

But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory both now and for ever. Amen.

WHEN Christianity, like the day spring from the east, with a new light did not only enlighten the world, but amazed the minds of men, and entertained their curiosities, and seized upon their warmer and more pregnant affections; it was no wonder that whole nations were converted at a sermon, and multitudes were instantly professed, and their understandings followed their affections, and their wills followed their understandings, and they were convinced by miracle, and overcome by grace, and passionate with zeal, and wisely governed by their guides, and ravished with the sanctity of the doctrine, and the holiness of their examples. And this was not only their duty, but a great instance of providence, that by the great religion and piety of the first professors, Christianity might be firmly planted, and unshaken by scandal, and hardened by persecution; and that these first lights might be actual precedents for ever, and copies for us to transcribe in all descending ages of Christianity, that thither we might run to fetch oil to enkindle our extinguished lamps. But then piety was