in this, and make it my daily business importunately to supplicate the Father of spirits, "Take pity of thine own offspring, let me not lie languishing still in death; and I at last obtain a merciful audience, (as it is plainly said, that the heart shall live, that seeks God;) then I have such an exemplification in my own soul of the matter we have been discoursing of, as that I can easily represent to myself; "When such a work is done in others, as is done in my own soul, and comes to be made common amongst others; then will religion be a very lively, prosperous, flourishing thing in the world." And that certainly is the best way of all others to make this thing apprehensible to ourselves, to get the thoughts of it familiarized to us, in how easy a way religion should grow and spread among

men.

SERMON VII*.

IT

was thought requisite to lay before you some considerations, that might facilitate the apprehension and belief of the revival and prosperous state of religion in the world. Three were mentioned to that purpose.

First. The consideration of what hath been done in this kind heretofore, when the Spirit was so eminently poured forth at first.

Secondly. The consideration, by how easy steps and in how apt a method it is supposable, that such a work may be done. These have been spoken of.

If once it please God to say, he will do such and such things, we need not to be told how. "Is any thing too hard for me? saith the Lord." That should be enough for us: but we find, that commonly it is not enough; experience doth too commonly shew that. And therefore the supposition of such a gradual progress, as hath been mentioned, doth much facilitate the apprehension of such a thing: though we do not imply or suppose in all this, that any thing the less power is exerted; but only that it is put forth in a way more familiar to our thoughts. As in the creation of the world there was an exertion even of absolute power, the almightiness (as I may

Preached June 19th, 1678

speak) of power: but that absolute power soon became ordinate; and that order and chain of causes, and the method of their operations and peculiar virtues, which we are wont to call by the name of nature, universal and particular nature, soon came to be fixed and settled; according whereto God hath since continued the world, and propagated the individuals of every sort and kind of creatures, or propagated the kind in those individuals. This is not to suppose more and less power, but is only a various exertion of the same power. But when power is exerted in this latter way, it is more apprehensible by us, how it goes forth to do such and such things. It is said in Heb. 11. 3. Through faith we understand, that the worlds were framed by the word of God. By faith: how is that? Why, faith is said, in the clause a little before, to be the "evidence of things not seen." We were none of us at the making of the world, we saw not how things were done then; but we have the matter imparted to us by God himself, we have a divine testimony in the case; the history committed into sacred records; by which we are informed, not only that the world was made, but how it was made, by what steps and by how gradual a progression the great God went on in the doing of that stupendous work. And hereupon it is said, "by faith we understand," ; that is, as that word signifies, by faith we come to have the formed, explicit notion in our minds, to have distinct thoughts and apprehensions how such a work was done. Thus we learn, how much was done such a day, and how much such a day; light created the first day; the second, the firmament; the third, the earth, dry land, and the seas or the gathering together of the waters into one place; and then herbs and trees and beasts, &c. according to their several kinds; and so on. Now this begets a clearer and more distinct apprehension in our minds of the way of making the world, than if it had been only said, that the world was at first made by God. We understand it by faith, have a notion begot in our minds clear and distinct by faith; inasmuch as, or so far as the testimony is distinct and clear, which we have concerning this matter. Though it is true, reason would go far to demonstrate, that this world had a beginning; yet rea'soning could never have helped us to you, distinctly to understand, in what steps or in how easy and fit a method that great work was carried on. So now in making the world anew, erecting the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwellethrighteousness, wherein it shall dwell; we certainly can more distinctly appréhend how that work is done, if it be represented as done by such a kind of gradation as you have heard of, than if we were put to it to conceive it done all at once.

There is no less power required to the continuing of this world as it is, than was to the making of it what it is: for it is the continual exertion of the same power that doth it. But our thoughts are not so liable to be amused, (they are not at all amused,) to see a continual succession of things in the natural way of production. It gives us no difficulty or trouble, to see how children are born, how the kinds of other creatures are propagated: whereas it would greatly amuse us, to think of men and beasts and trees and herbs, all starting up of a sudden out of nothing. Though we cannot, upon a reasonable consideration of the case, but acknowledge, that it were as easy a thing for God to have created man, as he did Adam, by an immediate hand, as it is to continue the race of mankind in that way wherein he doth it; the operation would not be harder to him yet it was, it seems, in the judgment of his infinite wisdom, less apt; and it would be harder and more unapprehensible unto us. So, we must acknowledge too, that it were no harder a thing for God, "of stones to raise up children unto Abraham," to make christians, proselytes to religion that way, than to convert men by the gospel: but this, which he hath chosen to be his ordinary way, we have reason and obligation to account the fittest way; and it is a way more familiar and easily conceivable to our thoughts. And therefore it doth much towards the facilitating the apprehension and belief of this great change, to consider, by how easy steps and in how apt a method such a work as this may be done. And this will be very considerable unto such persons that take notice, (which any observing man would,) how little apt the wise and holy God is to step out of his usual course, farther than the plain necessity of the case, in reference to such or such great ends of his, doth require. But then add we hereto,

Thirdly. The consideration, how highly suitable it is to the blessed God to do this work. Doth it not look like a godlike work? doth it not carry the aspect of a godlike undertaking and performance, a thing worthy of God, to restore religion and improve it much farther in the world? We shall shew, in what particular respects it is suitable to him.

It is, first, very suitable to his most mysterious wisdom: the glory whereof it is to do things, that none could contrive to do besides; and especially to rescue and recover what seemed lost and hopeless, when the sentence of death was as it were actually thereupon, that is, religion. This is the attribute of divine wisdom, to recover things out of so dreadful a degeneracy; to retrieve matters, when the case was so desperate unto all men's apprehensions. It is the choice of divine wisdom to do so, to find an expedient even in the last necessity: accord

ing to that monumental name, which Abraham put upon the mount, where he was to have sacrificed his son, Jehovah-jireh; the Lord will see, or, the Lord will provide and take care; an instance thought fit to be upon record unto all succeeding time, as a discovery what the choice of the divine wisdom is, that is, to take things even when they are desperate, and to find out an expedient to salve all. An instance like to that I remember Plutarch * takes notice of, that one Metella in a certain great exigence was to have been sacrificed, but was prevented by the miraculous substitution of a heifer in the room of the intended victim: so possibly pagans might have fabulously imitated, what some way or other they came to have heard from the sacred records. But so the case seems to be with religion, when God shall so wonderfully retrieve it; as it was with the heir of the promise, the knife just at the very throat. There was a contrivance suitable to the wisdom of God, to hit upon this critical juncture of time, to rescue him from so near a death, when he seemed even upon expiring. And as he was fetched from death even in a figure; (his father received him from thence in a figure, Heb. 11. 19.) so it must be with religion too. The son of the free-woman, Isaac, was the emblem of it: it is as it were in a like figure to be fetched from death, by a kind of resurrection from the dead; life from the dead, as the apostle speaks; when the time shall be of bringing in the fulness of the Gentiles, and the saving of all Israel. How glorious the display of divine wisdom, to let so gross darkness cover the world, so black and gloomy a day be upon it, that shall issue at last in so much brightness and so glorious light! even in the evening, as it is in Zech. 14.7. wherein the Lord shall be king over all the earth; and there shall be one Lord, and his name one, ver. 9. Then comes that bright and glorious evening after a black and gloomy day: not perfect darkness; there is not such in the spiritual world, when things are at the worst; as they use to say there is not in the natural world, non dantur puræ tenebræ : so it is there said, that the light shall not be clear nor dark, ver. 6. It shall be, as if it were neither day nor night, ver. 7. In that day, (and it shall be one day known to the Lord, neither day nor night,) at evening-time it shall be light. You know how great a change the diurnal return of the sun makes; and were it not that the thing is usual and we are accustomed to it, that would be thought a strange matter. How vast is the change, that, when darkness is upon the spacious hemisphere, all of a sudden the return of the sun should clothe all with so much light

* Plutarchi Parallel. inter Op. Moral. Edit. H. Steph. (Græc.)

Vol. 1.

P. 559.