Latest / Book of Common Prayer, 1662- selections / Rescue from Death, with a Return of Praise-Richard Sibbes

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Rescue from Death, with a Return of Praise-Richard Sibbes · Book of Common Prayer, 1662- selections

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  Speaker 1: Section one of A Rescue from Death with a Return
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  Speaker 1: of Praise. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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  Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. A Rescue from Death with
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  Speaker 1: a Return of Praise by Richard Sibs. Fools, because of
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  Speaker 1: their transgressions and because of their iniquities, are afflicted, et cetera.
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  Speaker 1: Psalm A hundred seven, verse seventeen, et cetera. This sum
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  Speaker 1: containeth some passages concerning God's particular sweet providence, not only
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  Speaker 1: to the Church, but to other men. For He that
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  Speaker 1: created all things, even the meanest creature, must have a
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  Speaker 1: providence over all things. His providence must extend itself as
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  Speaker 1: large as his creation. For what is providence but a
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  Speaker 1: continuance of creation, a preservation of those things in being
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  Speaker 1: that God hath given to have a being. The prophet
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  Speaker 1: here of purpose opposeth the profane conceits of them that
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  Speaker 1: think God sits in heaven and lets things go on earth,
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  Speaker 1: as if He cared not for them. It was the
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  Speaker 1: fault of the best philosophers to ascribe too much to
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  Speaker 1: second causes. The psalmest here shows that God hath a
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  Speaker 1: most particular providence in everything. First he sets it down
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  Speaker 1: in general, and then he brancheth it out into particulars,
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  Speaker 1: especially four wherein he specifieth God's providence. The first instance
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  Speaker 1: is of those that wander in the wilderness, hungry and thirsty,
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  Speaker 1: verse four. They cry, and God regards them. The second
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  Speaker 1: is in verse ten, they that sit in darkness and
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  Speaker 1: in the shadow of death, bound in iron, they cry,
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  Speaker 1: and the Lord heareth them. The third is in the
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  Speaker 1: words of the text fools, for their transgressions are afflicted.
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  Speaker 1: Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat. He instanceth in sickness,
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  Speaker 1: the most ordinary affliction, and shows that God hath a
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  Speaker 1: most particular providence even in that. The fourth is in
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  Speaker 1: verse twenty three those that go down into the sea.
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  Speaker 1: They see experiments of God's particular providence. Since the fall,
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  Speaker 1: the life of man is subject to a wondrous many
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  Speaker 1: inconveniences which we have brought on us by our sins.
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  Speaker 1: Now in this variety, it is a comfortable thing to
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  Speaker 1: know God's care of us in our wanderings and imprisonments,
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  Speaker 1: in our sickness, et cetera. But to omit the other three,
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  Speaker 1: and to come to that that is proper to the place,
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  Speaker 1: that is the instance of God's providence in sickness, fools,
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  Speaker 1: because of their transgressions and because of their iniquities, are afflicted,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera. In these words, you have first the cause
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  Speaker 1: of this visitation and of all the grievance He speaks
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  Speaker 1: of transgression and iniquity, and then the kind of this visitation,
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  Speaker 1: sickness and the extremity. In two branches, their soul abhorreth
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  Speaker 1: all manner of meat. And secondly they draw near to
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  Speaker 1: the gates of death. And then the carriage of the
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  Speaker 1: affected and sick parties. They cry unto the Lord in
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  Speaker 1: their distress, and the remedy of the universal and great physician.
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  Speaker 1: He saves them out of their distress. And the manner
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  Speaker 1: of this remedy he sent his word and healed them
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  Speaker 1: his operative and commanding word, so as it works with
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  Speaker 1: his command. Lastly, the fee that this high commander asks
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  Speaker 1: for all the tribute or reward that he expects is
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  Speaker 1: praise and thanksgiving. Oh, that men would therefore praise the
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  Speaker 1: Lord for his goodness and his wondrous works for the
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  Speaker 1: children of men, et cetera. So you see this scripture
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  Speaker 1: contains several passages between God and man in misery and
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  Speaker 1: in deliverance. In misery, God afflicts man for his sin.
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  Speaker 1: The passage of man to God is he cries to God.
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  Speaker 1: God's passage back again is his deliverance. And then his
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  Speaker 1: return back again must be thanksgiving. So here is a
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  Speaker 1: double visitation in justice, God correcting sin, and then a
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  Speaker 1: visitation in mercy. Upon their crying and praying, God restores them,
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  Speaker 1: and then man's duty thanksgiving. But to proceed in order fools,
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  Speaker 1: because of their transgressions, etc. Here you have first the
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  Speaker 1: quality of the person set down fools. We must understand
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  Speaker 1: by fools, wicked fools, not such fools as are to
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  Speaker 1: be begged, as we say, that are defective in their naturals,
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  Speaker 1: but the wise fools of the world. They are the
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  Speaker 1: chief of fools. However, in the courts of men they
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  Speaker 1: be not found fools. Yet they are fools in God's esteem,
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  Speaker 1: who is wisdom itself. Those that think themselves wise, that
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  Speaker 1: are conceitedly wise, they are these fools. Here in the
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  Speaker 1: phrase of scripture and the language of the Holy Ghost,
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  Speaker 1: every sinner is a fool. It were a disgraceful term
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  Speaker 1: if any man should give it, but let no man
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  Speaker 1: stumble at it. It comes from the wise God that
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  Speaker 1: knows what wisdom is and what is folly. If a
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  Speaker 1: fool shall call a man fool, he doth not regard it.
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  Speaker 1: But if a wise man, especially the God of wisdom,
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  Speaker 1: call a man fool, he hath reason to regard it.
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  Speaker 1: Who can judge better of wisdom than God, who is
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  Speaker 1: only wise? Why are wicked men fools and God's children,
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  Speaker 1: so far as they yield to their lusts in diverse respects?
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  Speaker 1: First for lack of discerning in all the carriage and
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  Speaker 1: passages of their lives. You know, a fool is such
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  Speaker 1: a one as cannot discern the difference of things, that
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  Speaker 1: is defective in his judgment. Discerning and judgment. That especially
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  Speaker 1: tries a fool when he cannot discern between pearls and pebbles,
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  Speaker 1: between jewels and ordinary base things. So wicked men are
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  Speaker 1: defective in their judgments. They cannot discern a aright between
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  Speaker 1: spiritual and heavenly things and other things. All your worldly fools,
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  Speaker 1: he hunts after and placeth his happiness in things meaner
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  Speaker 1: than himself. He takes shadows for substances. Two. A fool
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  Speaker 1: is led with his humor and his lust, even as
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  Speaker 1: the beast. So there is no wicked man that shakes
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  Speaker 1: off the fear of God, which is true wisdom Proverbs
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  Speaker 1: one seven. But he is led with his humor and
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  Speaker 1: passion and affection to some earthly thing. Now, a man
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  Speaker 1: can never be wise and passionate, unless in one case,
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  Speaker 1: when the good is so exceeding that no passion can
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  Speaker 1: be answerable, as in Zeal, in divine matters that will
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  Speaker 1: excuse all exorbitant carriage. Otherwise, when David danced before the Ark,
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  Speaker 1: a man would think it had been a foolish matter,
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  Speaker 1: except it had been a divine business. To Samuel six
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  Speaker 1: verse fourteen. When the matter is wondrous, great that it
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  Speaker 1: deserves any pitch of affection, then a man may be
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  Speaker 1: eager and wise, but for the things of this life.
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  Speaker 1: For a man to disquiet himself and others to hunt
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  Speaker 1: after a vain shadow, as the Psalmist saith after riches
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  Speaker 1: and honor, and to neglect the main end of a
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  Speaker 1: man's life, it is extreme folly. A man that is
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  Speaker 1: passionate in this respect cannot be wise. All fools are passionate,
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  Speaker 1: and wicked men have their affections set deeply on somewhat
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  Speaker 1: else besides God. Because passion presents things in a false glass,
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  Speaker 1: as when a man sees the sun through a cloud,
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  Speaker 1: he seems bigger. When men look on things in the
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  Speaker 1: judgment of the scripture and the spirit of God and
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  Speaker 1: write reason. But through affection, things appear to them otherwise
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  Speaker 1: than they are, and themselves afterwards see themselves fools. Take
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  Speaker 1: a worldling on his death bed or in hell, he
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  Speaker 1: sees himself a fool. Then when his drunkenness is past,
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  Speaker 1: when he has come to himself and is sober, he
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  Speaker 1: sees that he hath catched all his lifetime. After shadows
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  Speaker 1: wicked men that are carried with their lusts to earthly things,
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  Speaker 1: they cannot be wise. Therefore, the rich man in the
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  Speaker 1: Gospel is called a fool. Look twelve as twenty. And
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  Speaker 1: in Jeremiah seventeen US eleven he speaks of a man
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  Speaker 1: that labors all his lifetime and in the end is
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  Speaker 1: a fool. Is not he a fool that will carry
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  Speaker 1: a burden and load himself in his journey more than
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  Speaker 1: he needs? And is not he a spiritual fool that
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  Speaker 1: loads himself with thick clay, as the prophet calls it
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  Speaker 1: habacuc tuo verse six, and makes his pilgrimage more cumbersome
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  Speaker 1: than he needs. Is not he a fool that lays
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  Speaker 1: the heaviest weight on the weakest, that puts off the
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  Speaker 1: heaviest burden of repentance to the time of sickness and
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  Speaker 1: trouble and death, when all his troubles meet in a center,
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  Speaker 1: as it were, and he hath again to do to
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  Speaker 1: conflict with his sickness again. He is a fool that
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  Speaker 1: will play with edge tools, that makes a sport of sin.
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  Speaker 1: He is a fool that provokes his betters, that shoots
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  Speaker 1: up arrows and casts up stones that shall fall on
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  Speaker 1: his own head. He that darts out oaths and blasphemies
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  Speaker 1: against God, that shall return back upon his own pate
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  Speaker 1: Psalm seven, verse sixteen. Many such fools there are, God
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  Speaker 1: will not hold them guiltless. Exodus twenty, verse seven. He
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  Speaker 1: is a fool that knows not or forgets his end.
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  Speaker 1: Every wicked man and forgets the end, wherefore he lives
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  Speaker 1: in the world. He comes here into the world and lives,
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  Speaker 1: and is turned out of the world again, and never
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  Speaker 1: considers the work that he hath here to do, but
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  Speaker 1: is carried like a fool, with affections and passions to
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  Speaker 1: earthly things, as if he had been born only for them.
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  Speaker 1: A wise man hath an end prefixed in all that
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  Speaker 1: he doth, and he works to that end. Now there
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  Speaker 1: is no man but a sound, sanctified Christian that hath
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  Speaker 1: a right end, and that works to that end. Other
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  Speaker 1: men pretend they have an end, and they would serve God,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera. They pretend heaven, but they work to the
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  Speaker 1: earthward like moles they dig in the earth. They work
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  Speaker 1: not to the end they pretend to fix to themselves.
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  Speaker 1: All men, how witty, soever they are otherwise in worldly respects,
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  Speaker 1: they are but fools. As we say, of owls they
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  Speaker 1: can see. But it is by night, so wicked men
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  Speaker 1: are witty. But it is in works of darkness. They
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  Speaker 1: are wise in their own generation among men like themselves.
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  Speaker 1: But this is not the life wherein folly and wisdom
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  Speaker 1: can be discerned. So well it will appear at the
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  Speaker 1: hour of death and the day of judgment. Then those
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  Speaker 1: will be found wise who are wise for eternity, that
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  Speaker 1: have provided how it shall go with them when all
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  Speaker 1: earthly things shall fail them. And those will be fools
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  Speaker 1: that have only a particular wit for the particular passages
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  Speaker 1: of this life, to contrive particular ends and neglect the main.
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  Speaker 1: They are penny wise and pound foolish. A hitter fell
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  Speaker 1: a witty wise man. His counsel was an oracle. Yet
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  Speaker 1: he was not wise to prevent his own destruction. To
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  Speaker 1: Samuel sixteen vers. Twenty three, he is a madman, a
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  Speaker 1: fool that hurts and wounds himself. None else will do so.
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  Speaker 1: Wicked carnal men, they wound and hurt and stab their
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  Speaker 1: own consciences. Oh, if any man should do them but
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  Speaker 1: the thousandth part of the harm that they do themselves
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  Speaker 1: every day, they would not endure it. They gall and
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  Speaker 1: load their consciences with many sins, and they do it
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  Speaker 1: to themselves. Therefore it is a deserved title that is
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  Speaker 1: given them. God meets with the pride of men in
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  Speaker 1: this term of folly. For a wicked man above all
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  Speaker 1: things is careful to avoid this imputation of fool. Account
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  Speaker 1: him what you will. So you account him a shrewd
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  Speaker 1: man withal that can overreach others. That he is crafty
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  Speaker 1: and wise. He glories in the reputation of wisdom, though
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  Speaker 1: God account him a fool, and he shall be found
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  Speaker 1: so afterward. And to abate the pride of men, he
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  Speaker 1: brings a disgraceful term over their wit and learning and
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  Speaker 1: calls them fools. Use one, this should abase any man
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  Speaker 1: that is not a right and sound Christian, That the
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  Speaker 1: God of wisdom and the scripture that is God's word
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  Speaker 1: esteems of all wicked men. Be they what they will
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  Speaker 1: to be fools, And that in their own judgments, if
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  Speaker 1: they be not atheists, if they will grant the principles
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  Speaker 1: they pretend to believe. Let this therefore be an aggravation
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  Speaker 1: in your thoughts when you are tempted to commit any sin. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: besides that, it is a transgression and rebellion against God's commandment.
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  Speaker 1: It is folly in Israel, and this will be bitterness
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  Speaker 1: in the end. Use two. Is he not a fool
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  Speaker 1: that will do that in an instant that he may
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  Speaker 1: repent many years after? Is he not a foolish man
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  Speaker 1: in matter of diet that will take that that he
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  Speaker 1: shall complain of a long time after? None will be
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  Speaker 1: so foolish and outward things so when we attempted to sin, Think,
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  Speaker 1: is it not folly to do this? When the time
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  Speaker 1: will come that I shall wish it undone again with
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  Speaker 1: the loss of a world. If I had it to give,
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  Speaker 1: use three and beg of God the wisdom of the
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  Speaker 1: Holy Ghost, to judge a right of things, the eye
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  Speaker 1: salve of the Spirit of God, to discern of things
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  Speaker 1: that differ Revelation three, verse eighteen. To judge spiritual riches
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  Speaker 1: to be best, and spiritual nobility and excellency to be best,
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  Speaker 1: And to judge of sinful courses to be base. However
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  Speaker 1: otherwise painful, Let us labor for grace. The fear of
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  Speaker 1: the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Proverbs one seven.
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  Speaker 1: Those that do not fear the Lord, they have no wisdom.
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  Speaker 1: Use four and pass not for the vain censures of
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  Speaker 1: wicked men. Thou art hindered from the practice of religious
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  Speaker 1: duties and from a conscionable course of life. Why perhaps
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  Speaker 1: thou shalt be accounted a fool by whom by those
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  Speaker 1: that are fools, indeed, in the judgment of Him who
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  Speaker 1: is wisdom, indeed God himself, who would care to be
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  Speaker 1: accounted a fool of a fool? We see the scripture
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  Speaker 1: judgeth wicked men here to be fools. We must not
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  Speaker 1: extend it only to wicked men. But even likewise God's children,
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  Speaker 1: when they yield to their corruptions and passions, they are
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  Speaker 1: foolish for that time some thirty eight verse five, My
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  Speaker 1: wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. And
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  Speaker 1: in Psalm seventy three vers. Twenty two, so foolish was
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  Speaker 1: I and ignorant, et cetera. Therefore, when any base thought
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  Speaker 1: of God's providence comes in our mind, or any temptation
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  Speaker 1: to sin, let us think it folly. And when we
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  Speaker 1: are overtaken with any sin, let us befool ourselves and
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  Speaker 1: judge it as God doth to be foolishness. This is
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  Speaker 1: the ground and foundation of repentance. So much for the
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  Speaker 1: quality of the persons here described fools. I come to
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  Speaker 1: the cause because of their transgressions and because of their iniquities.
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  Speaker 1: Transgression especially hath reference to rebellion against God and his
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  Speaker 1: ordinances in the first table iniquity, hath reference to the
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  Speaker 1: breach of the second table against men. And both these
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  Speaker 1: have their rise from folly, but want of wisdom causeth
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  Speaker 1: rebellion against God and iniquity against men. All breaches of
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  Speaker 1: God's will come from spiritual folly. Why doth he begin
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  Speaker 1: with transgressions against the first table, and then iniquities the
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  Speaker 1: breach of the second, Because all breaches of the second
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  Speaker 1: table issue from the breach of the first. A man
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  Speaker 1: is never unjust to his neighbors, that doth not rebel
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  Speaker 1: against God's will in the first Table, and the foundation
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  Speaker 1: of obedience and duty to man, it riseth from man's
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  Speaker 1: obedience to God. Therefore, the second table is like the first.
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  Speaker 1: That is, our love to our neighbor is like to
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  Speaker 1: our love of God. Not only like it, but it
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  Speaker 1: springs from it. For all comes from the love of God. Therefore,
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  Speaker 1: the first command of the first table runs through all
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  Speaker 1: the commandments, Thou shalt honor God and honor man, because
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  Speaker 1: we honor God. A man never denies obedience to his superior,
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  Speaker 1: to the magistrate, et cetera, but he denies it to
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  Speaker 1: God first. A man never wrongs man, but he disobeys
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  Speaker 1: God first. Therefore the apostles lay the duties of the
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  Speaker 1: second table in the scripture upon the first. Saint Paul
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  Speaker 1: always begins his epistles with the duties to God and religion.
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  Speaker 1: And when he hath discharged that, he comes to parents
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  Speaker 1: and masters, and children and servants, and such particular duties.
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  Speaker 1: Because the spring of our duty to man is our
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  Speaker 1: duty to God, and the first justice is the justice
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  Speaker 1: of religion to God. When we are not just to
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  Speaker 1: give God his due, thereupon come all breaches in our
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  Speaker 1: civil conversation and commerce with men, for want of the
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  Speaker 1: fear of God. Men do this, as Joseph said, how
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  Speaker 1: shall I do that and offend God? Genesis thirty nine,
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  Speaker 1: verse nine. And Abraham he had a conceit they would
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  Speaker 1: abuse his wife. Surely the fear of God is not
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  Speaker 1: here Genesis twenty, verse thirteen. Therefore he thought they would
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  Speaker 1: not be afraid to do anything. He that fears not God,
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  Speaker 1: if opportunities serve, he will not be afraid to violate
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  Speaker 1: the second table. He that fears God. He will reason,
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  Speaker 1: how shall I do this to wrong another in his
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  Speaker 1: name and reputation or in his estate, and sin against God?
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  Speaker 1: For I cannot sin against man, but I must first
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  Speaker 1: sin against God. That is the reason he sets it down. Thus,
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  Speaker 1: transgressions and iniquities see an unhappy succession of sin, that
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  Speaker 1: where there is transgression, there will be iniquity. When a
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  Speaker 1: man yields to lust once presently he breaks upon God's due,
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  Speaker 1: and then upon man's one sin draws on another. As
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  Speaker 1: we see David giving way to one sin, it brought another.
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  Speaker 1: So the giving way to transgression neglecting the word of
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  Speaker 1: God and duties of religion, presently another follows neglect of
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  Speaker 1: duty to men. Use take heed of the beginnings of sin.
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  Speaker 1: There are degrees in Satan's school, from ill to worse,
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  Speaker 1: till we come to worst of all, and there is
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  Speaker 1: no staying. It is like the to send down a
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  Speaker 1: steep hill. Let us stop in the beginning by any means,
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  Speaker 1: as we would avoid iniquity. Let us take heed of transgression.
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  Speaker 1: Are afflicted, He means especially that affliction of sickness, as
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  Speaker 1: appears by the words following doctrine. Sin is the cause
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  Speaker 1: of all sickness. Fools, for their transgressions and iniquities are afflicted.
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  Speaker 1: For God's quarrel is especially against the soul and to
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  Speaker 1: the body. Because of the soul. I will not dwell
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  Speaker 1: on this point, having spoken of it at large on
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  Speaker 1: another text, one Corinth Then's eleven, verse thirty one, Use one.
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  Speaker 1: The use that I will make of it now shall
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  Speaker 1: be first of all, if sin be the cause of
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  Speaker 1: all sickness, let us justify God and condemn ourselves. Complain
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  Speaker 1: of ourselves and not of God. Wherefore doth the living
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  Speaker 1: man complain Lamentations three, verse thirty nine, and murmur and
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  Speaker 1: fret man suffereth for his sin. Justify God and judge ourselves.
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  Speaker 1: I will bear the wrath of the Lord because I
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  Speaker 1: have sinned against him Mica seven, verse nine. Judge ourselves,
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  Speaker 1: and we shall not be judged one Corinthins eleven, verse
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  Speaker 1: thirty one, Use two. Then again, is sin the cause
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of sickness? It should teach us patience. I held my
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: tongue because Thou Lord didst it Palm thirty nine, verse two.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Shall not a man be patient in that he hath
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: procured by his own evil and sin? Use three and
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: search ourselves for Usually it is for some particular sin
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: which conscience will tell a man of, And sometimes the
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: kind of the punishment will tell a man for sins
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: of the body. God punisheth in the body. He pays
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: men home in their own coin. What measure a man
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: measureth to our others shall be measured to him again
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Matthew seven, verse two. If a man have been cruel
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: to others, God will stir up those that shall be
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: so to him. Therefore we should labor to part with
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: our particular transgressions and iniquities. It is a general truth
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: for all ills whatsoever, as well as this of sickness.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Therefore we should first of all go to God by
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: confession of sin. It is a preposterous course that the atheistical,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: careless world takes. When the physician ends there the divine begins.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: When they know not what to do. If diseases come
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: from sin, then make use of the divine, first to
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: certify the conscience and to acquaint a man with his
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: own mercy. First to search them and let them see
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the guilt of their sins, and then to speak comfort
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: to them, and to set accounts straight between God and them.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: As in Psalm thirty two, verse four, an excellent place
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: David roared, his moisture was turned into the drought of summer.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: What course doth he take? He doth not run to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to the physician presently, but goes to God. Then said I.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: It was an inward resolution and speech of the mind.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Then I concluded with myself, I will confess my sin
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: to God, and Thou forgavest my iniquities and sins Pal
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: thirty two, verse five. So body and soul were healed
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: at once. Divinity herein transcends all other arts, not only
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: corrupt nature and corrupt courses, but all other For the physician,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: he looks to the cause of the sickness out of man,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: or in a man, out of a man. And then,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: especially in contagious sickness, he looks to the influence of
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the heavens. In such a year, such conjunctions and such
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: eclipses have been He looks to the infection of the air,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: to subordinate causes, to contagious company and to diet, et cetera.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And then in a man, to the distemper of the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: humors and of the spirits. When the instrument of nature
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: is out of tune, it is the cause of sickness.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: But the divine, and every Christian that should be a
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: divine in this respect, goes higher and sees all the
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: discord between God and us. There is not that sweet
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: harmony there, And so all the jars in second causes
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: come from God. As the cause inflicting from sin as
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: the cause demeriting. The divine considers those two always. The
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: physician looks to the inward distemper and the outward contagion.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: And this is well and may be done without sin.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: But men must join this too, to look into conscience
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: and look up to God, together with looking for help
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: to the physician, because we have especially to deal with God.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I would this were considered, that we might carry ourselves
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: more christian like under any affliction whatsoever? What is the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: reason that people murmur and struggle and strive as a
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: bull in a net, as the prophet speaks, as I
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: have fifty one, verse twenty, when God hampers them in
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: some judgment, they look to the second causes, and never
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: look to clear the conscience of sin, nor never look
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: to God. When indeed the ground of all is God.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Offended by sin, fools for their transgressions are afflicted. Ye
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: by our sins, put a rod into God's hand, a
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: rod for the fool's back, as Solomon saith, Proverbs twenty six,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: verse three. And when we will be fools, we must
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: needs endure the scourge and rod in one kind or another.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Those that will sin must look for a rod. It
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: is the best reward of wicked and vain fools that
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: make a jest of sin Proverbs fourteen, verse nine. As
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the wise man saith, they cast firebrands, and say, am
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: I not in jest? Proverbs twenty six, verse eighteen, That
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: rail and scorn at good things, that swear and carry
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: themselves in a loose, ridiculous, scandalous fashion, as if God
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: did not eye their carriage. And yet am I not
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: in jest? Well, it is no jesting matter. Sin is
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: like a secret poison. Perhaps it doth not work presently,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: as there are some kinds of subtle poisons made in
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: these days, wherein the devil hath wetted men's wits, that
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: will work perhaps a year after. So sin, if it
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: be once committed, perhaps it doth not kill presently. But
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: there is a death in them Two Kings four, verse forty.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Thou art a child of death, as soon as ever
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: thou hast committed sin, as Salvion saith, well, thou perishest
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: before thou perish. The sentence is upon thee thou art
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: a dead man. God to wait for thy repentance prolongs
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: thy days, But as soon as thou hast sinned without repentance,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Thou art a child of death, and as poison that
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: works secretly awhile, yet in time it appears, so at
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: last the fruit of sin will be death. Sin and
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: death came in together. So take heed of all sin.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: It is no dallying matter. Their soul abhors all manner
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: of meat. This is one branch of the extremity of
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the sickness, the loathing of meat. For God hath put
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a correspondency between food that is necessary for man and
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: man's relish, for man being in this world to be
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: supported the natural moisture being to be supplied and repaired
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: by nourishment, as it is spent by the natural heat
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: which feeds upon it. Therefore, God hath put a sweetness
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: into meat that man may delight to do that which
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: is necessary. For who would care for meat if it
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: were not necessary? Therefore being necessary, God hath put delightful
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: tastes in meats to draw men to the use of them,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: to preserve their being for the serving of Him. Now,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: when these things save an when the relish of a
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: man is distempered, that he cannot judge a right of meats,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: When the pallate is vitiated. There must needs follow sickness,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: For a man cannot do that that should maintain his strength.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: He cannot feed on the creature. Therefore, the Psalmist, setting
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: down the extremity of sickness, he saith their soul abhoreth
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: all manner of meat. This, the great physician of Heaven
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and Earth, sets down as a symptom of a sick state,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: when one cannot relish and digest meat. Experience seals this
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: truth and proves it to be true. You see, then,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the happiness of epicures, how unstable and vain it is,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: whose chief good is in the creature. God, by sickness,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: can make them disrelish all manner of meat. And where
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: is the summum bonum, then, of all your belly gods,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: your sential persons. Again, in that he saith their soul
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: abhorreth all manner of meat. It should teach us to
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: bless God not only for meat, but for stomachs to eat.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It is a blessing common and therefore forgotten. It is
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: a double blessing when God provides daily for our outward man,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: and then gives a stomach to relish his goodness in
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the creature. Sometimes a poor man wants meat and hath
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: a stomach. Sometimes a rich man wants a stomach when
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: he hath meat. They that have both have cause to
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: bless God, because it is a judgment when God takes
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: away the appetite that men abhor and loathe all manner
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: of meat. Therefore, if we would maintain thankfulness to God,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: labour to thank God for common blessings, what if God
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: should take away a man's stomach. We see his state here.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: He is at the gates of death. Therefore, thank God
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: that he maintains us with comforts in our pilgrimage, and
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: withal that he gives us strength to take the comfort
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: of the creature. We see here again one rule how
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: to converse with them that are sick. Blessed is he
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: that understands the estate of the afflicted and sick, not
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: to take it ill to see them wayward. It comes
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: not from the mind, but from the distemper of the body.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: As we bear with children, so we must bear with
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: men in those distempers. If they have food and yet
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: loathe it. You see how it is with men in
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: that case. Their soul abhoureth all manner of meat. It
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: should teach us to sympathize with those that are sick,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: if we see them in these distempers. The next branch
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: of the extremity is they draw near the gates of death.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Death is a great commander, a great tyrant, and hath
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: gates to sit in, as judges and magistrates used to
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: sit in the gates. There are things implied in this phrase. First,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: they draw near to the gates of death. That is,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: they were near to death, as he that draws near
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the gates of a city is near the city, because
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the gates enter into the city. Secondly, gates are applied
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: to death for authority. They were almost in Death's juris diction.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Death is a great tyrant. He rules over all the
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: men in the world, over kings and potentates, and over
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: mean men. And the greatest men fear death most. He
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: is the king of fears, as Job calls him Job eighteen,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: verse fourteen I, and the fear of kings. Yet death
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that is thus feared in this life by wicked men.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: At the day of judgment, of all things in the world,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: they shall desire death most. According to that in the apocalypse,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: they shall desire death and it shall not come to
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: them Revelation nine, verse six. They shall subsist in eternal misery,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: that that men are most afraid of in this life,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: that they shall wish most to come to them in
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the world to come all that I might die. What
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a pitiful state are wicked men in. Therefore it is
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: called the Gate of death. It rules and over rules
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: all mankind. Therefore it is said to reign Romans five,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: verse twenty one. Death and sin came in together. Sin
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: was the gate that let in death, And ever since
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: death reigned and will till Christ perfectly triumph over it.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Who is the king of that lord and commander? And
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: hath the key of Hell and death? Revelation one, eighteen.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: To wicked men, I say he is a tyrant, and
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: hath a gait. And when they go through the Gate
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: of Death, they go to a worse to a lower place,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: to Hell. It is the trap door to Hell. Thirdly,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: by the gate of death is meant not only the
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: authority but the power of death. As in the Gospel,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Matthew sixteen,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: verse eighteen. That is the power and strength of Hell.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So here it implies the strength of death, which is
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: very great, for it subdues all. It is the executioner
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: of God's justice. Use if death hath such a jurisdiction
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and power and strength, let us labor to disarm it beforehand.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: It is in our power to make death stingless and
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: toothless and harmless. Nay, we may make it advantageous, for
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the gate of death may become the gate of happiness.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Let us labor to have our part and portion in Christ,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: who hath the king of hell and death, who hath
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: overcome and conquered this tyrant o death? Where is thy
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: sting o grave? Where is thy victory? Thanks be unto
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: God who hath given us victory through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: One Corinthians fifteen, Verses fifty five and fifty seven. That
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: now we need not fear death. That though death have
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: a gait, yet it is a gate to lead us
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: into heaven, as it is a door to lead the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: wicked into hell. So much for that in the next
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: place we come to their carriage in their extremity. They
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: cried to God in their trouble. This is the carriage
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: of men in extreme ills. If he have any fear
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: of God in him to pray, and then prayers our cries.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: They are darted out at the heart, as it were,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: to heaven. It is said Christ made strong cries Hebrews
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: five over seven. In extremity, prayers are cries. Hence I
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: observe briefly these things. Doctrine that God suffers men to
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: fall into extreme ills, even to the gates of death,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: that there is but a step between them and death.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Why reason one to wean them perfectly from the world,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: to make them more thankful when they recover. For what
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: is the reason that men are so slight in thanksgiving?
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Usually the reason is they did not conceive that they
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: were in such extreme danger as they were. Reason too, Likewise,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: He suffers men to fall into extreme sickness, that He
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: may have all the glory, for it was his doing.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: There is no second cause to help here, for their
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: soul abhorred all manner of meat, and they were even
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: at the gates of death. Now, when all second causes fail,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: then God is exalted. Therefore he suffers men to fall
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: into extremity. The greater the malady, the more is the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: glory of the physician. The second thing is this, as
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: God brings his children into extremity. So God's children in
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: extremity they cry to Him. Extremity of afflictions doth force
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: prayers in their affliction. They will seek Me early. When
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: all second causes fail, then we go to God. God
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: nature therefore is against atheism, as one observes that naturally
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: men run to God in extremity, Lord succor me. So
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: especially in the Church. In extremity, God's people cry to God.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: And as afflictions, so particularly this sickness of body drives
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: men to God. God should not hear of us many
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: times unless He should come near us by afflictions and
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: deep afflictions. Out of the deep, have I cried some
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: hundred and three Verse one, God brings us to the deep,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: and then we cry. Our nature is so nought that
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: God should not hear of us, as I said, unless
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: he sends some messenger after us, some affliction to bring
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: us home, as Absalom dealt by Joab when he fired
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: his corn. In the Gospel, Christ had never heard of
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: many people, had it not been for some infirmity. But
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: blessed are those sicknesses and infirmities that occasion us to
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: go to God, that makes us cry to God. It
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: was the speech of a heathen. We are best when
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: we are weakest. Why, as he said, seth very well,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: who is ambitious, voluptuous, or covetous for the world, when
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: he is sick, when he sees the vanity of these things,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: this should make us submit more meekly unto God when
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: we are under his hand, when we are his prisoners
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: by sickness, when he casts us on our sick beds.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Because God is working our good, he is drawing us
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: nearer to him. Then we cried to him. So we
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: see then that prayer it is a remedy in a
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: remedy less estate when there is no other remedy. And
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: this is one difference between a child of God and
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: another in extremity. A carnal man that hath not grace,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: he hath not a spirit of prayer to go to God,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: but a child of God. He cries to God. He
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: had acquaintance with God in the time of health. Therefore
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: he goes boldly to God as a father. In the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: time of extremity. God's children can answer God's dealing, for
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: as He brings his children to extremity when there is
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: no second cause to help, so they answer him by
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: faith in extremity when there is nothing to trust unto.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: They trust him when there is no physic in the
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: world that can charm the disease. They have a spirit
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: of faith to answer God's dealing in the greatest misery.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: As Job saith, though he kill me, Yet will I
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: trust in him? Job thirteen, verse fifteen. For God is
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: not tied to second causes. And therefore, if He have
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: delight in us, and if he have any service for
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: us to do, he can recover us from the gates
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: of death, nay, from death itself. As we see Christ
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: in the Gospel raised from the dead, and at the resurrection,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: he will raise us from death. Much more can he
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: raise us from the gates of death when we are
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: near death. Therefore, considering that prayer is a remedy in
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: all maladies in a remediless estate, let us labor to
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: have a spirit of prayer and to be in such
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: a state as we may pray. What state is that
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: first take heed of being in league with any sin?
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: hear my prayer Psalm sixty six, verse eighteen. Nay, he
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: will not hear others prayers for us? Or what a
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: pitiful state is it? When God will not hear us
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: nor others for us? Pray not for this? People sayth
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: God to Jeremiah. And if Noah, Daniel and Job stood
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: before me, they should but deliver their own souls. Ezekiel fourteen,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: verse fourteen. If a man be in a peremptory course
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: of sin and will not be reclaimed, it is like
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the death adder that will not be charmed Psalm forty three,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: verse four. God will not hear prayers for him. Will
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: God hear a rebel when he comes to him for
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: mercy and is in a course opposite to God's will,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: as if a traitor should come to sue for pardon
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: with a dagger in his hand, which were to increase
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: the treason. So when a man comes to God and
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: cries to him, and yet purposes to live in sin,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and his conscience tells him that he offers violence to
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: God by his sins and lives in rebellious courses, God
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: will not hear his prayers again. If we would be
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: in such a state as God may accept us when
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: we come to him, Let us hear God when he
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: cries to us. He cries to us in the ministry
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: of the word wisdom, hath lift up her voice Proverbs
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: one twenty. And this is God's course. He will hear
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: us when we hear him. He that turns his ear
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: from hearing of the law, his prayer shall be abominable
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Proverbs twenty eight, verse nine. Those that do not attend
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: upon God's ordinances, that will have a kind of devotion
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: private to themselves and avoid the public ordinance that fear,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: perhaps they shall hear somewhat that would awaken their conscience,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: and they would not be tormented before their time Matthew
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: eight twenty nine. Let them consider it is a terrible
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: speech of Solomon. He that turns his ear from hearing
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the law, his prayer shall be abominable. Let us take heed.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: It is a fearful thing to be in such an estate,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: that neither our own prayers nor others shall be regarded
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: for us. And let any man judge, if we will
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: not hear God speak to us, is it fit that
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: He should hear us speaking to him? And before I
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: leave the point, let me press it a little further.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: At this time we have caused to bless God for
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the deliverance of the city footnote the plague of sixteen
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: twenty five to twenty six end footnote. Oh, but let
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: all that have the spirit of prayer, that have any
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: familiarity with God, improve all their interest in heaven. At
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: this time? Do we not conceive what danger we are in,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: what enemies we have provoked? What if we be free
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: from the sickness? Are we not in danger of worse
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: matters than the sickness? Is it not worse to fall
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: into the hands of our enemies? To Samuel twenty four,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: verse fourteen, have we not great provoked, cruel, idolatrous enemies. Therefore,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: let us jointly now all cry to God and importune
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: him that he would be good to the state, that
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: as he hath given us a pledge of his favour
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: in delivering us from the plague, so he would not
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: be weary of doing good unto us, but that he
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: would still make it a token of further favors and
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: deliverances hereafter, that as he delivered us in former times
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: in eighty eight footnote that is fifteen eighty eight from
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: the Armada end footnote, and magnified his mercy to us,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: so now he would not expose us to the cruelty
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: of idolatrous enemies whose mercies are cruel Proverbs twelve, verse ten.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Let us stir up ourselves security and carelessness always full
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: runs one destruction or another. Prayer will do a great
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: deal more good now than when trouble hath overtaken us.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: For now it is a sign. It comes from a
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: religious seeking of God. Then it comes from self love.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: There is a great deal of difference when a malefactor
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: seeks to the judge before the time of the assizes,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: and when he seeks to him at the present time.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: For then it is merely out of self respect and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: not respect to him. If we seek to God now,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: he will single and mark out those that mourn for
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the sins of the time, and pour out their spirits
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: to him in prayer, that he would still dwell and
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: continue the means of salvation amongst us. When God, I say,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: comes to gather his jewels Malachi three, verse seventeen, he
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: will single and call out them as peculiar to himself. Therefore,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: let us, in all our prayers put in the church things,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: do more than speak. They cry to us to cry
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: to God earnestly. But case we be not in trouble ourselves,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: our prayers will be the more acceptable before trouble come.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: It is the only way to prevent it, as it
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: is the only way to rescue us when we are
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: in trouble. I come now to the remedy end of
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: section one, Section two of A Rescue from Death with
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: a return of Praise by Richard Sibbs. This LibriVox recording
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. He saved them out of
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: their distress. God is a physician good at all manner
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: of sicknesses. It is no matter what the disease be,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: if God be the physician, though they be, as these
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: are the gates of death, he can fetch them back
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: herein God differs from all other physicians. First of all,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: he is a general physician. He can heal a land,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: a whole kingdom of sickness, of pestilence, And as it
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: is in two Chronicles seven, verse fourteen. Then he is
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: a physician of body and soul, of both parts. And
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: then he is not tied to means. Other physicians can cure,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: but they must have means. Other physicians cannot cure all
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: manner of diseases, nor in all places. But God can
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: cure all, He saved them out of their distress. Other
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: physicians cannot be always present, but God is so to
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: every one of his patients. He is a compassionate, tender,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: present physician. Use what should encourage us, in any extremity,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: especially in sickness of body, to have recourse to God,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: and never to despair. Though we be brought, never so low.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: He that can raise the dead bodies can raise us
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: out of any sickness. Therefore, let us use the means,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: and when there is no means, trust God, for He
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: can work beyond means and without means. They cried to
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: the Lord, and He saved them out of their distress.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: It was the fruit of their prayers. Doctrine, there was
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: never any prayer from the beginning of the world made
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to God successlessly. What should I speak of prayer? Our
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: very breathings are known to God. When we cannot speak
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: our sighs as it is Pal thirty eight, verse nine.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: My groans and sighs are not hid from thee. God
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: hath a bottle for our tears Psalm fifty six, verse eight,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: and preserves our sighs and groans. There is nothing that
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: is spiritual in us but God regards, as in Romans eight,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: verse twenty six. We know not what to ask, but
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the spirit of God stirreth up in us sighs and
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: groans that cannot be expressed, and God hears the voice
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of the size of his own spirit. Let us also
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: be exhorted from this issue to cry unto the Lord.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: For there was never any man did so prayers in
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the breast and bosom of God, but he received the
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: fruit of it. He is a God hearing prayer. He
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: will not lose his attribute, Nay. Further mark, the instances
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: in this psalm are not made only of men in
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: the Church, but likewise of men out of the Church,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: of men that have not the true religion. They pray
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: to God as creatures to the Creator. And though God
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: have not their souls, yet He will not be beholding
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: to any man for duties. If a hamp do but
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: hypocritically fast, ahamp shall have outward deliverance for his outward humiliation.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: And these men mentioned in the text, if they call
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: to God but as creatures and not to idols, God
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: will regard them in outward things and deliver them. God
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: will not be in any man's debt for any service
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: to him, though it be outward. And do we think
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: that he that regards dogs out of the church will
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: neglect his children in the church. He that regards heathen
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: men when they pray to him in their extremity, and
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: delivers them to show his overflowing bounty and goodness, Will
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: he not regard his own children that have the spirit
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: of adoption, of supplication and prayer, that put up their
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: suits and supplications in the mediation and sweet name of Christ.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Will he not regard the name and intercession of his
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: son and of his spirit, the Holy Ghost, stirring up
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: prayers in them, and the state of his children being
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: his by adoption. Since he regards the very heathen nay
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: more than and so God hear is the very young
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: ravens Job thirty eight, verse forty one, and spreads a
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: table for every living thing, and will not suffer them
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: to die for hunger, but provides for them because they
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: are His creatures. And will he not for his children,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: those that He has taken to be so near him,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: to be heirs of heaven and happiness. Let us, I say,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: be encouraged to cry unto the Lord upon all occasions.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: If God be so good as to deliver sinful men
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: that have nothing in them but the principles of nature.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: When they fly to God in prayer, as the author
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and preserver of nature, much more will he hear his
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: own children. He will give his spirit to them that
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: ask him. Look eleven, Verse thirteen. Objection. But here may
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: an objection be made. I have cried long. I am
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: hoarse with crying. I have waited a long time. I
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: have been a long time sick or annoyed with some
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: particular trouble. And God seems as it were to stop
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: his ears, to harden his heart against me, to shut
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: up his bowels of compassion and pity. Therefore I were
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: as good give over as continues still crying, and not
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: be heard. Answer. I answer. There is no one duty
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: almost more pressed in scripture than waiting and watching to prayer.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Wait Still, has not God waited thy leisure long enough?
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And wilt not thou wait on him? A patient when
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: he feels his body distempered by physic oh, he cries
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: out partly for the physic and partly for the sickness
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: that trouble him both together and make civil war in
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: his body. Yet, notwithstanding the physician wisely lets it work.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: He shall have no cordial nor nothing to hinder it.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: He lets it go on till the physic have wrought
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: well and carried away the malignant matter, that he may
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: be the better for it. And in that he is
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: a loving and tender physician. Yet so God, when we
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: are in trouble, it is as physic we cry. But
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: God he turns the glass as the physicians do. Nay,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: this time shall be expired, it shall work. So long
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: will thy pride be taken away. Thou shalt be humbled thoroughly,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: till thou be weaned from thy former wicked pleasures, till
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: thou be prepared to receive further blessings. Therefore they cry
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and cry, and God defers to hear the voice of
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: his children. In the meantime, He loves to hear the
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: cry of his children, and their prayer is as sweet incense.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Yet he differs still, but all is for the patient's good.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Be not weary of waiting. It is a great mercy
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: that He makes thee able to continue crying. That thou
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: hast the spirit of prayer, that thou canst pour out
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: thy soul to God. It is a great mercy and
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: so account of it. Perhaps thou hast not cast out
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: thy jonah thy achan, that there is some particular sin
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: unrepented of, and thou criest and criest. But thy sin
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: cries louder, thy pride, or thy oppression, cries thy wicked
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: coarse cries thou criest unto God. And there is another
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: thing cries in THEE that cries vengeance, as thou dost
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: for mercy. Therefore, so out thy aChn, cast out thy
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: beloved sin. See if thou regard iniquity in thy heart,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: if thou regard any pleasing or profitable or gainful sin,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and never think that God will hear thee till that
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: be out, for it will outcry thy prayers. The next
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: thing is the manner of God's cure. He sent his
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: word and healed them. What word his secret command, his will,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Let such a thing be as in the creation, let
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: there be light, et cetera. Besides his word written, there
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: is his word creating and preserving things created, And so
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: here restored them that were sick. He sent his word
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: and healed them, And so at the resurrection his word
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: his voice shall raise our bodies again. It is a
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: strange manner of cure. For God to cure by his word,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: by his command, it shows that God hath an universal
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: command of all things in the world, in heaven and earth,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: over devils and sicknesses. As it is said in the Gospel,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: he rebuked the sicknesses Matthew seventeen, verse eighteen. He can
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: rebuke the argus, the plague, and the pestilence, and they
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: shall be gone by his word. As the centurion said,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I am a man that have servants under me, And
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: I say to one, come and he cometh, and to
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: another go, and he goeth Matthew eight, verse eight And following,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: So thou hast to all things under thee thou art God.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: And if thou say to a disease, come it cometh.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: And if thou say, go, it goeth. God sent his
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: word of command and healed them. It is but a
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: word of God to heal, but a word of God
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: to strike. He is the lord of hosts. If he
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: do but hiss, as the prophet saith for the fly
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: of Egypt Isaiah seven, verse eighteen, if he do but
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: call for an enemy, they come at his word. As
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: we see in Pharaoh's plagues. The flies and frogs. All
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: things obey his word. There is a secret obedience in
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: all things to God, when his will is that they
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: should do this or that. Why doth the sea keep
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: his bounds? When as the nature and position of the
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: sea is to be above the earth. It is the
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: common of God that hath said, let it be there,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: and hither shall thy proud waves go? And no further
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Job thirty eight, verse eleven. I might give many instances
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: how God doth all by his word. The devils are
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: at his word, the whales, the sea, and Christ rebukes
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: it obey use. It should teach us not to displease
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: this God that can strike us in the midst of
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: our sins, even with a word. Let us fear this God.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Put case, we had no enemy in the world, God
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: can arm a man's humors against him. He can raise
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: the spirit and soul against itself and make it fight
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: against itself by desperate thoughts. He needed not foreign forces
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: for a hitofel and soul. He could arm their own
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: souls against themselves. And when he will take down the
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: greatest giant in the world, he needs not foreign forces.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: It is but working of a disease, but giving way
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: to a humor. But in flaming the spirits and the
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: soul shall abhor all manner of meat. Again, he gives
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: a command a rebuke, and they are gone presently. Therefore,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: let us not offend this great God that is commander
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: of heaven and earth. Let us labor to please him.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: And it is no matter who else we displease, for
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: He hath all things at his command, even the hearts
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: of kings as the rivers of water. Proverbs twenty one,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: verse one. When Esau sought for Jacob to hurt him,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: there was a secret command God set upon him to
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: love him. Therefore we should fear him, and all other
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: things shall fear us. We need fear nothing. So we
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: have a care to fear God further than in God
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: and for God, but not so to fear them as
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: to do evil for them and offend the great God
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: that can with a word command sickness to come, or
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: bid it be gone again. In that God, when all
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: second causes fail, can heal by his word. Therefore, let
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: us never be discouraged from praying. Though we see a
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: holy burly and tumult in the church, though we see
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: all Europe in combustion, and the Church driven into a
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: narrow corner. Let us not give over prayer. For Christ,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: that with a word commanded the waves to be still
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: and the devils to be gone, and they presently obeyed him.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: He can still the waves of the Church. He can
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: put a hook into the nostrils of his enemies and
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: draw them which way he please. He can still all
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: with his word. Therefore, howsoever things seem to run contrary
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: and opposite to our desires, Yet let us not give
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: over he that sees no ground of hope in carnal
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: fleshly reason. Let him despair of nothing. Despair shuts the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: gate and door of mercy and hope, as it were.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: You see here, when all means fail, when they were
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: at the very gates and entry of death, God fetcheth
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: them back again. How with physic, No, he is not
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: tied to physic. There is difference between God and nature
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: and art. Nature and art can do nothing without means,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: But the God of nature and art can do it
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: with his word. How made he this heaven and earth,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: this glorious fabric? With his word? Let there be light,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: and there was light et cetera. Genesis one three. And
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: how shall he restore all again? With his mighty commanding word.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: How doth he preserve things by his word? How are
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: things multiplied by his word? Increase and multiply a word
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: of blessing? He doth all things with his word. So
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: he can confound his enemies with a word. Nay, Christ,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: in his greatest abasement, when they came with staves and
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: arms to take him, whom seek ye saith he that
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: word struck down all the officers of the scribes and pharisees.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: They fell flat on the ground John eighteen US four.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: And following, could he, in his humiliation, before his great
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: abasement on the cross, strike down his enemies with his word?
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: What shall he do at the day of judgment, when
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: all flesh shall appear before him? And what can he
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: do now at the right end of God in heaven.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: Let us never despair, what states, however we be in
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: in our own persons, or in respect of the Church
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: or commonwealth. Let us yet pray and yet solicit God
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and wrestle with Him. For we see here when they
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: were at the gates of death, he fetcheth them again
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: with his word. He can fetch things again when they
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: are at destruction, as it were when man's wit is
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: at a loss, that he knoweth not what course to take.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: God with a word can turn all things again. Oh
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: that men would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: and for his wonderful works to the children of men.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Let them sacrifice the sacrifice of thanksgiving and declare his
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: works with rejoicing. You see that God, the great physician,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: he is good at all diseases. He has never set
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: at anything, For he can create helps and remedies of nothing,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: if there be none in nature. He can create peace
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: to the soul in the midst of trouble of conscience.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: God can make things out of nothing, nay, out of contraries.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: You see here what this great physician hath done. He
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: fetched them from the gates of death when their soul
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: abhorred all manner of meat. And what doth he require
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: for all this great cure? Surely the text tells us
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: he looks for nothing but praise. Oh that men would
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, et cetera. In
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: which words you have these circumstances considerable, together with the
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: substance of the duty first the persons, we must praise God.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Oh that men would praise the Lord. And then the
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: duty they are to perform, to praise God, to sacrifice
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: to God, to declare his works. One main duty expressed
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: by three terms. The third is for what they should
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: praise him for his goodness. It is the spring of all,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: for all particular actions do come from his nature. His
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: nature is goodness itself, and indeed all other attributes are
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: founded on goodness. Why is he gracious and merciful and
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: long suffering? Because he is good? This is the primitive attribute.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: And then another thing for which we must praise him,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: for his wondrous works for the children of men. Fourthly,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: the manner, how this should be done with rejoicing and singing,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: as the word signifies, declare his works with rejoicing. For
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: as all holy actions must be done joyfully and cheerfully,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: so especially praise God loveth a cheerful giver to Corinthians nine,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: verse seven, much more a cheerful thanksgiver. For cheerfulness is
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: the very nature of thanksgiving. It is a dead sacrifice
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: of thanksgiving. It is a dead sacrifice. Else, these are
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: many things considerable in these words. First of all, of
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the persons, all that men would praise the Lord, the
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: blessed Psalmist. Whosoever he were directed by the spirit of God,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: he would have all men to praise God, not only
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: those that participate and have interest in the favor, but
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: the beholders also of the goodness of God to others.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: For here he that was not interested in these favors
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: for his own particular, Yet he praiseth God for the
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: blessings to others, and he wisheth that God might have
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: praise from them. For we are all of one societ,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: of one family. We are all brethren. Therefore we must
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: praise God for his blessings and benefits on others, and
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: not only for ourselves. But we must wish that all
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: would do so. And specially we must praise God for
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: ourselves when we have part of the benefit. For shall
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: others praise God for us, and shall not we for ourselves?
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Shall the churches of God abroad praise God for His
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: great deliverance of this city, as there is no church
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: in the world that hears of it but is thankful
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: for it, And shall not we for ourselves. Shall the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: angels in heaven praise God and sing for the redemption
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: of the Church by the blood of Christ. Glory to
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: God on High, peace on earth, good will to men.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Look to vers Is thirteen and fourteen. And shall not
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: we that have interest in the work of redemption, For
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Christ is not a mediator of redemption to angels. He
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: hath relation to them in another respect. Yet they, out
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: of love to God and the Church and a desire
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: to glorifying God, they praise God for this, And shall
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: not we much more for ourselves. We must praise God ourselves,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: and desire that all would do so as He saith here,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: or that men would praise the Lord, et cetera. And
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: in some other sums He stirs up all the creatures,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: hail and snow and wind and all to praise God.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: How can these praise God? They do it by our mouths,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: by giving us occasion to praise Him. And they praise
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: Him in themselves, For as the creature grown us Romans eight,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: verse twenty three, that none knows but God and itself.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: They groan for the corruption and abuse that they are
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: subject unto, And God knows those groans. So the creature
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: hath a kind of voice. Likewise, in praising God, they
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: declare in their nature the goodness of God, and minister
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: occasion to us to praise God. Therefore, the Psalmist, being
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: desirous that God might be praised for his goodness and mercy,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: he stirs up every creature Psalm one hundred and three,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: verse twenty, in following even the very angels, insinuating that
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: it is a work fit for angels. The children of
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: God have such a love and zeal to the glory
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: of God that they are not content only to praise
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: God themselves, but they stir up all they need, not
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: to wish angels to do it, but only to show
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: their desire or the blessed disposition of those that love
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: God in Christ. What shall we think, then, of those
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: wretched persons that grieve that the word of God should
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: run and have free passage and be glorious to Thessalonia's
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: three to one, and that there should be a free
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: use of the sacraments and the blessed means of salvation.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: They envy the glory of God and the salvation of
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: people's souls. What shall we say to those that desire
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: to hear God dishonoured, that perhaps swear and blaspheme themselves,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: or if they do not, yet they are not touched
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: in their hearts for the dishonour of God by others.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: This is far from the disposition of a Christian. He
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: desires that all creatures may trumpet out the praise of God,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: from the highest angel to the lowest creature, from the
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: sun and stars to the meanest shrub. Only devilish, spirited
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: carnal men take delight to blaspheme God that can strike
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: them with his word and send them to their own place,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: to hell without repentance, and can hear him dishonored without
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: any touch of spirit. A child of God desires God
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: to be glorified from his very heart root, and is
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: grieved when God is dishonored any kind of way. So
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: much briefly for the first, now, what is the duty?
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: This holy man wishes that men would praise God and
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: sacrifice the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and declare His works out
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: of the largeness of his heart. He expresseth the same
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: thing in many words. Therefore, I shall not need to
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: make any scruple in particularizing of them, because there is
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: not much heed to be given in the expressions of
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: a large heart as to be punctual in everything. First,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: he begins with praise, Oh that men would therefore praise
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the Lord, et cetera. It is a duty, as I
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: said before, fit for angels fit Nay, it is performed
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: by them, for it is all the work they do.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: It is the only work that was religious that Adam
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: did in Paradise, and that we shall do in heaven
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: with God. Therefore, we are never more in heaven than
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: when we take all occasions of blessing and praising God.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: We are never in a more happier state. It is
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: a duty, therefore we should aim at, and the rather,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: because it is the fruit and end of all other duties. Whatsoever,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: what is the end of all the good we do
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: but to show our thankfulness to God? The end of
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: our fruitfulness in our place that others may take occasion
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: to glorify God. What is the end of our hearing
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: to get knowledge and grace that we may be the
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: better able to praise God in our mouths and in
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: our lives. What is the end of receiving the sacrament? Nay?
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: What is the duty itself a thanksgiving? What is the
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: end of prayer to beg graces and strength that so
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: we may carry ourselves in our places as is fit,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: so that we may not want those things without which
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: we cannot so well glorify God. So the end of
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: all is to glorify God. It is the end that
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: God in tendered in all. He framed all things to
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: his own praise in the creation. Why hath God given
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: man reason here upon the stage of the world to
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: behold the creatures Romans one, verses nineteen and twenty. That
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: seeing in the creature, the wisdom of God in ordering things,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: the goodness of God and the use of things, and
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: the power of God in the greatness of things, the
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: huge vast heaven and Earth, he might take occasion to
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: glorify and magnify this God, to think highly of him,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: to exalt him in our thoughts, that this creature, heaven
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: and earth be so beautiful and excellent. What excellency is
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: in God himself, and as the end of creation, So
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: in redemption all is for His glory and praise. In
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Ephesians one, verse six, how sweetly doth Saint Paul set
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: forth the end of it to the glory of His
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: rich mercy and grace, to be merciful to sinners, to
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: give his own son for God to become man, not
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: for man. In that a state as Adam was in innocency,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: but for sinners, for God to triumph over sin by
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: his infinite mercy. Here is the glory of His grace
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: shining in the Gospel. All is for the glory and
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: praise of God there and for particular deliverances. In Psalm fifty,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: verse fifteen, call upon me in the day of trouble,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me. His
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: deliverances of us in the passages of our life is
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: that we may glorify Him by taking notice in imminent
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: dangers of some of his attributes, when there is no
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: means of deliverance of His power and goodness, et cetera.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: In Revelation four, verse ten, the elders are brought in
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: praising God for the work of creation, and then in
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: the fifth verse twelve, for redemption. Thou art worthy, for
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: thou hast redeemed us. So indeed, the work of creation, redemption,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: and the particular passages of God's providence and protection and preservation,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: they are matter of praise in heaven and Earth among
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: God's people. Now to name a few helps and means
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: to perform this duty. The better if we would stir
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: up ourselves to praise God. Let us consider our own unworthiness.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: As in prayer, there must be a humble heart, for
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: a man will not seek abroad if he have somewhat
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: at home. Poverty of spirit and humility of heart makes
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: a man pray. So it is the humble soul that
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: praise of God, that sees no desert in itself. This
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: is one way to help us to praise God, to
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: see nothing in ourselves. Why God should so regard us
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: as to give us our lives for a prey Jeremiah
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: twenty one, verse nine, to set his love on us
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: and to follow us with good Nay, we have deserved
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: the contrary that God should leave us and expose us
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: to misery, rather than to watch over us by his providence.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: What is in us? It is He that hath made us,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: and not we ourselves some hundred verse three. And he
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: made us again when we were sinners, when we were
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: worse than nought. Therefore, to humble us we must consider
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: our own unworthiness. He that knows himself unworthy of any favor,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: he will be thankful even for the least, As we
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: see in Jacob, I am less than the least of
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: all thy favors Genesis thirty two US ten. Therefore he
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: was thankful for the least. So we see here in
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: the text these men are stirred up to praise God.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: They saw no other help nor worthiness in themselves. They
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: were at the gates of death in a desperate estate.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Or that such men would praise God. Indeed, such men
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: are fittest to praise God, that can ascribe help to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: nothing but God to no second causes. Therefore, in the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: next place, as a brunch of the former, if we
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: would praise God, dwell not on the second causes. If
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: God use second causes in any favor he bestows on us,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: either in keeping us from any ill or bestowing any good,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: consider it as a means that God might dispense with
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: that he might use if he would or not use.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: See God in the second causes, rise from them to him.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Art thou healed by physic, use physic as a means,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: but see God in it. But if God hath cured
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: thee without physic, without ordinary means, then see him more
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: immediately doing good to thee without the help of second causes.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: That is one way to help us to praise God.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: To see him in every favor and deliverance. For what
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: could second causes do if he should not give a blessing,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: especially praise him when he hath immediately done it as
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: he can. Did not he make light before there was
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: a sun? He is not tied to give light by
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: the sun. And he made waters before he made the clouds.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: He is not tied to the clouds. Therefore, especially praise
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: God when we have deliverance. We know not how without
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: means immediately from the goodness and strength of God. Again,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: if we would praise God for any favor, consider the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: necessity and use of the favor we pray for. As
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: these men here they were at death's door and loathes
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: all manner of meat, alas they had died if God
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: had not helped them. If thou wouldst bless God, consider
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: what a miserable state thou shouldst be in if thou
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: hadst not that favor to praise God for. If thou
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: be to bless God for thy senses, put case, thou
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: shouldst want thy sight, what a miserable case thou shouldst
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: be in? So for any of the senses that a
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: man once whereby he should glorify God and take comfort
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: of the creature. Put a case, a man should want
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: his taste as these men here their soul abhorred all
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: manner of meat. Alas, what a miserable case is it
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: to want a relish and taste of the comfort that
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: God hath put into the creatures. Put case, we should
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: want the meanest benefit we enjoy. How uncomfortable would our
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: lives be? This spark of reason that God hath given us,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: that we have understanding to conceive things, which is the
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: engine whereby we do all things as men and are
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: capable of the grace of God. What a miserable thing
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: were it if God should take away our wits or
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: suspend the use of them, But especially in matters of grace,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: If God had not sent Christ to redeem the world,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: what a cursed condition had we lain in next to devils? Again,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: if we would praise God, let us every day keep
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: a diary of His favors and blessings. What good he
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: doth us privately, What positive blessings he bestows upon us,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: and what dangers he frees us from and continues and
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: renews his mercy every day? And publicly? What benefit we
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: have by the state we live in? Oh what a
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: happy state is it? That we live in peace, that
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: we enjoy such laws, that every man may sit under
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: his own vine and under his own fig tree Mike
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: A four, verse four, and enjoy the comforts of life
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: when all the world about us are and have been,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: in combustion. We should keep a register of God's blessings,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: or that we could learn to have such exact lives.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: It would breed a world of comfort, and we should
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: have a less account to make when we die. Every
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: day labor to be humbled for our sins, specially such
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: as break the peace of our conscience, and never give
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: our bodies rest till our hearts have rest in the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: favor of God. And together with matter of humiliation, daily
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: observe how God bestows new favors or else continues the
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: old that notwithstanding our provocation and forgetfulness of Him, he
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: strives with us by his goodness. This is a blessed
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: duty that we should labor to perform. And then when
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: we have done this, let us rouse up all that
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: we are and all that we have within us, to
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: praise God. Psalm one hundred and three, Verse one, My
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: soul praise the Lord and all that is within me
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: praise His holy name. What have we within us to
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: praise God? Let us praise God with our understanding, to
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: conceive and have a right judgment of God's favors, of
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the worthiness of them and our own unworthiness. And then
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: a sanctified memory. Forget not all his benefits Psalm one
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: hundred three, verse two. Forgetfulness is the grave of God's blessings.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: It buries all. And then there is in us the
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: affection of joy and love to God. To taste him largely.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: And then all within us will be large in the
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: praising of God. And our tongue. Likewise, though that be
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: not within us, it is called our glory Psalm sixteen,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: verse nine and p. Fifty seven, verse eight. Let us
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: make it our glory in this to trumpet out God's
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: praise upon all occasions. All that is within us, and
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: all that we are, or have or can do, let
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: it all be to the glory and praise of God.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: To draw to a conclusion with some general application of
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: all that hath been spoken. And then in particular to
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: the present occasion, you know how God hath dealt of
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: late with this city and with ourselves. Indeed, for we
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: are all of one body politic and however God visited them.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: Yet it was our sins also that provoked him. We
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: brought sticks to the common fire. A physician lets the
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: arm blood, but the whole body is distempered. God let
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the city blood, but the whole kingdom was in a distemper,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: So that it was for our sins as well as theirs.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: We all brought. I say something to the common flame,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: and God afflicted us even in them. God hath now
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: stayed the sickness almost as miraculously as he scented. It
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: was a wonder that so many should be swept away
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: in so short a tome. It is almost as great
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: a wonder that God should stay it so soon. And
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: what may we impute it unto? Surely, as it is
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: in the text, they cried unto the Lord. God put
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: it into the hearts of the governors of the state
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: to appoint humiliation and crying to God. And therefore, since
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: God God hath been so merciful upon our humiliation, it
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: is religiously and worthily done of the state that there
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: should be a time to bless God again. God did
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: it with a word, with a command. It was both
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: in the inflicting and delivery, as it were, without means,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: For what could the physician do in staying the plague?
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Alas all the skill in the world is at a
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: loss in these kinds of sicknesses. It comes with God's command.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: It is God's arrow, more especially than other sicknesses. God
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: sent it by his command first to humble us for
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: our sin. And now he hath stayed it with a
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: word of command, that from above five thousand a week
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: it is come to three persons. God hath sent his
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: word and healed us. It was a pitiful state we
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: were in before. For indeed, it was not only a
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: sickness upon the city, but a civil sickness. The whole
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: state was distempered. For as there is sickness in the
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: body when there is obstruction, when there is not a
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: passage for the spirits and the blood from the liver
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: and from the heart and from the head, these obstructions
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: cause weakness and faintings and consumption. So was there not
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: an obstruction in the state of late. Were not the
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: veins of the kingdom stopped? Was not civil commerce stayed
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: the affliction of this great city. It was as the
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: affliction of the head or of the heart or of
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: the liver. If the main vital part be sick, the
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: whole be sick. So the whole kingdom, not only by
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: way of sympathy, but it was civilly sick in regard
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: that all trading and intercourse was stopped. It was a
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: heavy visitation. And we have much cause to bless God
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: that now the ways of this scion of ours. More
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: not that there is free commerce and intercourse as before,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: that we can meet thus peaceably and quietly at God's
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: ordinances and about our ordinary callings. Those that have an
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: apprehension of the thing cannot choose but break out in
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: thanksgivings to God in diverse respects. First of all, have
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: we not matter to praise God that he would correct
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: us at all? He might have suffered us to have
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: gone on and been damned with the wicked world as
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: it is one Corinthians eleven us thirty two. We are
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: therefore chastened of the Lord, that we should not be
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: damned with the world. It is his mercy that he
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: would take us into his hands as children, that he
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: would visit us at all. Another ground of thanksgiving is
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: this that since he would correct us, he would use
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: this kind of correction, that he would take us into
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: his own hands. Might he not have suffered a furious, bloody,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: dark spirited, devilish, spirited enemy, to have invaded us, to
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: have fallen into the hard hands of men acted with
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: devilish malice. David thought this a favor, even that God
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: would single him out to punish him with the plague
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: of pestilence, that he might not fall before his enemies.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: To Samuel twenty four, verse fourteen, the mercies of God
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: are wondrous, great when we fall into his hands. He
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: is a merciful God. He hath tender bowels, full of
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: pity and compassion. But the very mercies of wicked idolators
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: are cruel. There was a mercy therefore, in that that
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: God would take us into his own hands. In the
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: third we see when He had taken us into his
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: own hands, how he hath stopped the raging of the pestilence,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: and hath inhibited thee destroying angel, even in a wondrous manner.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: That the plague, when it was so raging, that it
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: should come to decrease upon a sudden God was wondrous
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: in this work. Is not here matter of praise. Then
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: again it is a mercy to us all here, that
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: He should give us our lives for a prey, as
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: God saith in Jeremiah to Baruk. Whereesoever thou goest, thou
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: shalt have thy life for a prey Jeremiah twenty one,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: verse nine. Might not God's arrow have followed us whensoever
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: we went? Whither can a man go from this arrow?
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: But that God being everywhere, might smite him with the pestilence.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: Now in that He hath watched over us and kept
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: us from this noisome contagious sickness, and hath brought us
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: all together here quietly and freely, that so there may
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: be intercourse between man and man in trading and other calling.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: This is the fourth ground of praising of God. And
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: that it did not rage in other parts in former
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: time God scattered the pestilence more over the kingdom. It
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: is a great matter to bless God. For I beseech you.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Let us say with the same spirit as this Holy
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: Man here all that men therefore would praise the Lord
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: for his goodness and for the wonders that he doth
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: for the children of men, for his goodness, that he
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: would rather correct us here than dam us, for his goodness,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: that he would not give us up to our enemies,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: for his goodness, that he stayed the infections so suddenly,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: and that he stayed the spreading of it further, for
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: his goodness unto us, in particular, that he hath kept
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: us all safe. What shall we do now but consecrate
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: and dedicate these lives of ours, For He gives us
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: our lives more than once at the beginning. There is
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: never a one here but can say by experience, God
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: hath given me my life at such a time and
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: such a time. Let us give these lives again to God.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Labor to reform our former courses and enter into a
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: new covenant with God. This is one part of thanksgiving,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: to renew our covenant with God, to please him better.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: And indeed, in every thanksgiving, that should be one ingredient. Now, Lord,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: I intend and resolve to please THEE better. Whatsoever my
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: faults have formerly been, a resolve by Thy grace and
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: assistance to break them off. Without this, all the other
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: is but a dead performance. Now briefly, by way of
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: analogy and proportion, to raise some meditations from that that
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: hath been delivered concerning the body to the soul. For
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: God is the physician both to soul and body. If
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: God with his word can heal our bodies, as the
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: Psalmist saith, here, much more can He with his word
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: heal our soul. There are many that their bodies are well,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: thanks be to God. But how is it with their souls?
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: Here you have some symptoms to know their spiritual state,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: and ow that people were apprehensive of it? Have you
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: not many that their soul loadeth all manner of meat,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: and they draw near the gates of death. Their souls
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: are in a desperate state, They are deeply sick. How
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: shall we know it? Their soul abhorreth all manner of
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: wholesome meat. How many are there that relish poets and history,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: any trifle that doth but feed their vain fancy, and
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: yet cannot relish the blessed truth and ordinances of God?
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: Where is spiritual life when this spiritual sense is gone?
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: When men cannot relish holy things? If they relish the
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: ordinance of God, it is not the spiritual part of it,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: so far as the spirit toucheth for conscience, but something
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: that it may be, is suitable to their conceit expressions
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: or phrases or the like. But it is a symptom
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: and sign of a fearful declining state when men do
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: not relish the spiritual ordinances of God, which should be,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: as it were, their appointed food. When they do not
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: delight to acquaint themselves with God in hearing of the Word,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: and reading and the like. Let such therefore as delight
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: not in spiritual things, know that their souls like gasping.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: They are at the gates of spiritual death. All is
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: not well. There is some fearful obstruction upon the soul
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: that takes away the appetite. The soul runs into the world.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Over much they cloy themselves with the world. When men
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: cannot relish heavenly things, they are ate up with the
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: delight and joy of other things, pleasures and prophets. Let
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: them search the cause and labor for purging sharp things
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: that may procure an appetite. Let them judge themselves and
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: see what is the matter that they do not delight
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: more in heavenly things. Let them purge themselves by confession
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: to God and consideration of their sins, and labor to
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: recover their appetite. For it is almost a desperate estate
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: they are at the gates of death, especially now when
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: we come to the communion. What do we hear if
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: we cannot relish the food of our souls? Let us
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: examine if we desire to taste the love of God
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: and to be acquainted with God here? If not, what
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: shall we do in these spiritual distempers desire of God?
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: Cry to God that he would forgive our sins and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: heal our souls by his Holy Spirit, that he would
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: make us more spiritual to relish heavenly things better than
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: we have done before. That as the things that are
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: heavenly are better in their kind than other things are,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: so they may be better to our taste. A man
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: may know the judgment of his state when he answereth
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: not the difference of things. What the difference is between
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: the food of life and ordinary food? What the difference
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: is between the comforts of the Holy Ghost and other comforts.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Between the riches and pelf of the world and the
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: riches of the spirit, the graces of God that will
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: cause a man to live and die with comfort, the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: true riches which make the soul rich to eternity. There
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: is no comparison beg of God. This spiritual relish to
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: discern of things that differ Hebrews five, verse fourteen, that
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: we may recover our appetite. God, by his word and spirit,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: can do it not only the word written, but the
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: inward spiritual word written in our hearts. Desire God to
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: join his spirit with his word and sacraments, and that
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: will recover our taste and make us spiritual. That we
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: shall relish Him, that is both the feast maker and
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: the feast itself. He is both the meat and the
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: provider of the banquet. For whence is it that all
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: other things are sweet to us? Deliverance from trouble and sickness,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: because it is a pledge of our spiritual delayverance in Christ,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: the deliverance from hell and damnation. What comfort can a
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: man have that knows not his state in grace, in
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: the enjoying of his health, When he shall think he
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: is but as a sheep kept for the slaughter, He
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: knows not whether he be in the favor of God
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: or no. Therefore, let us come and renew our faith
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: in the forgiveness of our sins through the blood of Christ,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: of whom we are made partakers in the sacrament. For
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: if we believe our deliverance from hell and damnation by
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: the body of Christ broken and his blood shed. Then
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: everything will be sweet. When we know God loves us
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: to life everlasting. Then everything in the way to life everlasting,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: even daily bread, will be sweet, because the same love
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: that gives heaven gives daily food, and the same love
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: that redeems us from hell redeems us from sickness. Therefore,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: let us labor to strengthen our faith in the main
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: that we may be thankful for the less And as
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: we enter into new covenant with God, so labor to
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: keep it in the Bitegus twenty six, verse fourteen. In
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: following everything avengeth the breaking of God's covenant. When we
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: make covenant to serve him better for the time to come,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: and yet break it, God is forced to send his messenger.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: He sends sickness to avenge his covenant, considering that He
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: hath lately so avenged it that it make us so
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: much the more circumspect in our carriage. So much for
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: this time and text end of section two, end of
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: a Rescue from Death with a return of praise by
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Richard Sibbs