to do with One who cannot fear us; who knows the impotence of our wild attempts, and so allays his resentment of our insolence with his pity of our follies. Were it not for this, we should not be left in a possibility so oft to iterate our provocations; every wicked imagination and black design would be at once defeated and punished by infatuation and frenzy; every blasphemous atheistical speech would wither the tongue, like that "arm" of Jeroboam which he stretched against the prophet (2 Kings xiii. 4); and every impious act would, like the prohibited retrospect of Lot's wife, fix us perpetual monuments of Divine vengeance.

8. And, then, how much do we owe to the mercy and commiseration of our God, that "he suffers not his whole displeasure to arise" (Ps. lxxviii. 39); that he abates any thing of that just severity he might use toward us! He that is condemned to the gallows would think it a mercy to escape with any inferior penalty: why have we, then, such mean thoughts of God's clemency when he descends to such low compositions with us, corrects us so lightly, as if it were only matter of ceremony and punctilio, the regard of his honour, rather than the execution of his wrath? For, alas, let him among us that is the most innocent, and undeservedly afflicted, muster up his sins and sufferings, and he will see a vast inequality; and (had he not other grounds of assurance) would be almost tempted to think those were not the provoking cause, they are

so unproportionably answered! He sins in innumerable instances, and is punished in few; he sins habitually and perpetually, and suffers rarely and seldom; nay, perhaps he has sometimes sinned with greediness, and yet God has punished with regret and reluctancy. "How shall I give thee up, O Ephraim?" (Hos. xi. 8.) And when all the disparities are considered, we must certainly join heartily in Ezra's confession, " Thou, O God, hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve” (Ezra ix. 13).

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9. Nay, besides all our antecedent, we have after-guilts no less provoking; I mean our ungracious repinings at the light chastisements of our former sins; our outcries upon every little uneasiness, which may justly cause God to turn our whips into scorpions, and, according as he threatened Israel, "to punish us yet seven times more" (Lev. xxvi. 18). And yet even this does not immediately exasperate him. The Jews were an instance how long he could bear with a murmuring generation; but certainly we of this nation are a greater: yet " let us not be high-minded, but fear" (Rom. xi. 20); for we see at last the doom fell heavy, though it was protracted; a succession of miraculous judgments pursued those murmurers, so that not one of them entered Canaan. And it is very observable, that whereas to other sins God's denunciations are in Scripture conditional and reversible, this was absolute, and bound with an oath; "He sware in his wrath, that they should not

enter into his rest" (Ps. xcv. 11). And yet if we compare the hardships of the Israelites in the wilderness with most of our sufferings, we shall be forced to confess our mutinies have less temptation, and consequently less excuse; from whence it is very reasonable to infer, as the greatness of our danger if we persist, so the greatness of God's longsuffering towards us, who yet allows us space to reform and sure new complaints sound very ill from us, who are liable to so severe an account for our old ones. I fear the most resigned persons of us will upon recollection find they have upon one occasion or other outvied the number of the Israelites' murmurs: therefore, unless we will emulate them in their plagues, let us fear to add one more, lest that make up the fatal sum, and render our destruction irrevocable.

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10. Upon all these considerations, it appears how little reason any of us have to repine at our heaviest pressures. But there is yet a farther circumstance to be adverted to, and is too applicable to many of us; that is, that our sins are not only the constant meritorious cause of our sufferings, but they are also very often the instrumental cause also, and produce them not only by way of retaliation from God, but by a natural efficacy. Solomon tells us, he that "loves pleasure shall be a poor man" (Prov. xxi. 17); and that "a whorish woman will bring a man to a piece of bread" (vi. 26); that "he that sits long at the wine shall have red

ness of eyes" (xxiii. 29, 30); that "the slothful soul shall suffer hunger" (xix. 15); and all these, not by immediate supernatural infliction from God, but as the proper genuine effects of those respective vices. Indeed, God in his original establishment of things has made so close a connexion between sin and punishment, that he is not often put to exert his power in any extraordinary way, but may trust us to be our own lictors: our own 66 backslidings reprove us" (Jer. ii. 19); "and our iniquities are" of themselves enough to "become our ruin” (Ezek. xviii. 30).

11. It may, therefore, be a seasonable question for every man to put to himself, whether the troubles he labours under be not of this sort; whether the poverty he complains of be not the effect of his riot and profusion, his sloth and negligence; whether when he cries out that "his comeliness is turned into corruption" (Dan. x. 8), he may not answer himself, that they are his visits to the harlot's house, which have thus made "rottenness enter into his bones" (Hab. iii. 16); whether when he is beset with contentions, and has wounds without cause, “he have not tarried long at the wine;" when he has lost his friend, whether he have not by some "treacherous wound" (Ecclus. xxii. 22) forced him to depart; or when he lies under infamy, whether it be not only the echo of his own scandalous

'Lictors were Roman officers employed (like our beadles or constables) to apprehend and punish criminals.

crimes. If he find it thus with him, certainly his mouth is stopped, and he cannot, without the most disingenuous impudence, complain of any but himself. He could not be ignorant that such effects do naturally attend such causes; and therefore if he would take the one, he must take the other also. No man sure can be so mad as to think God should work miracles (disunite those things which nature hath conjoined), only that he may sin at ease, have all the bestial pleasures he can project, and none of the consequent smart. We read, indeed, God divided the sea; but it was to make "the way for the ransomed of the Lord to pass over" (Is. li. 10), those who were his own people, and went in at his command; but when they were secured, we find the waters immediately returned to their channel, and overwhelmed the Egyptians, who ventured without the same warrant. And sure the case is alike here: when any man can produce God's mandate for him to run into all excess of riot, to desecrate the temple of the Holy Ghost," and make his body the member of an harlot" (1 Cor. vi. 15); in a word, when God bids him do any of those things which God and good men abhor, then, and not before, he may hope he may sever such acts from their native penal effects; for till then (how profuse soever some legendary stories represent him) he will certainly never so bestow his miracles.

12. But I fear, upon scrutiny, there will appear a yet farther circumstance upon which to arraign our