II. The next great performance of Providence for the people of God, respects the place and time in which it ordered their nativity to fall. And truly this is no small concern to every one of us, but of vast consequence, either to our good or evil, though it be little minded by most men. I am persuaded the thoughts of few Christians penetrate deep enough into this providence, but slide too slightly and superficially over an abyss of much mercy, rich and manifold mercy, wrapped up in this gracious performance of Providence for them.
Ah friends! can you think it an indifferent thing into what part of the world you are cast? ls there no odds upon what spot of the creation, or what age of the world your lot had fallen? It may be you have not seriously bethought yourselves about this matter. And because this point is so seldom touched, I will therefore dive a hittle more particularly and distinctly into it, and endeavour to warm your affections with a representation of the many and rich benefits yon owe to this one performance of Providence for you.
And we will consider it under a double respect or relation; as it respects your present comfort in this world, and as it relates to your eternal happiness in the world to come. =
1. ‘T’his performance of Providence for you, doth very much concern your present comfort in this world. All the rooms in this great house are not alike pleasant and commodious for the inhabitants of it. You read of The dark places of the earth, which are full of the habitations of cruelty,” Psal. xxiv. 20, and many such dismal places are found in the habitable earth. What a vast tract of the world lies as a waste wilderness!
Suppose your mothers had brought you forth in America among the savage Indians, who herd together as brute beasts; are scorched with heat and starved with cold, being naked, destitute, and defenceless. How poor, miserable, and unprovided of earthly comforts and accommodations are many millions of the inhabitants of this world! What mercies do you enjoy in respect of the amenity, fertility, temperature, and civility of the place of your habitation? What is it bat a garden enclosed out of a wilderness? 1 may, without partiality or vanity, say, God hath, even upon temporal accounts, provided you with one of the most healthful, pleasant, and, in all respects, the best furnished room in all the great house of this world.
You are here provided with necessary and comfortable accommodations for your bodies, that a great part of the world are unacquainted with. It 1s not with the poorest among us, as it is said to be with the poor in a foreign land, whose poverty pinches and bites with such sharp teeth, that their poor cry at their doors, give me, and cut me! give me, and kill me! ~~ =. KE
Say not, the barbarous nations in this excel you; that they possess the mines of silver and gold, which, it may be, you think enough to compensate for all other inconveniences of life. Alas, poor creatures! better had it been for them if their country had brought forth briers and thorns, instead of gold, silver, and precious stones; for this hath been the occasion of ruining all their other comforts in this world; this hath invited their cruel, avaricious eneinies among them, under whose servitude they groan and die without mercy; and thousands of them have chosen death rather than life, on the terms they enjoyed it. And why might not your lot have fallen there, as well as where it is? Are not they made of the same clay, and endowed with as good a nature as yourselves? Oh what a distinction hath Divine Mercy made, where nature made none! Consider, ungrateful man, thou mightest have fallen into some of those regions where a tainted air frequently cloys the jaws of death, where the inhabitants differ very livle from the beasts in the manner of their living; but God hath provided for thee, and given the poorest among us far better accommodations of life than the greatest among them are ordinarily provided with. Oh, what hath Providence done for youl - i
But all that I have said is very inconsiderable in comparison with the spiritual mercies and advantages you here enjoy for your souls. Oh! this is such an advantageous cast of Providence for you, as obliges you to a thankful acknowledgment of it to all eternity! For, let us here make but a few suppositions, in the case before us, and the glory of Providence will shine like a sunbeam full in your faces.
(1.) Suppose it had been your lot to have fallen into any of those vast continents, possessed by pagans and heathens at this day, who bow down to the stock of a tree, and worship the host of heaven. This is the case of many millions; for pagan idolaters (as that searching scholar Mr. Berewood informs us, in his Inquiries) do not only fill the circumference of nine hundred miles in Europe, but almost the one half of Africa, more than the half of Asia, and almost the whole of America.
Oh! how deplorable had thy case been, if a pagan idolatress had brought thee forth, and idolatry had been sucked in with thy mother’s milk! Then, in all probability, thou hadst been at this day worshipping devils, and posting with full speed in the direct road to damnation. For these are the people of God’s wrath: Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not upon thy name,” Jer. x. 25. How America is much improved since Mr. FlavePstime.—Editor., dreadful is that imprecation against them, which takes hold of them, and all that is theirs! Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols,” Psalm xcvii. 7.
(2.) Or suppose your lot had fallen among Mahometans who, next to pagans, spread over the greatest tract of the earth; for theugh Arabia bred that unclean bird, yet it was not that cage that could long contain him; for not only the Arabians, but the Persians, T’urks, and Tartars; do all bow down their backs under that grand impostor. “This poison hath dispersed itself through the veins of Asia, over a great part of Africa, even the circumference of seven thousand miles, and stops not there, but hath tainted a considerable part of Europe also.
Had your lot fallen here, oh what unhappy men and women had you been, notwithstanding the natural amenity and pleasantness of your native soil! You had then adored a grand impostor, and died in a fool’s paradise. Instead of God’s lively oracles, you had been, as they now are, deceived to your eternal ruin with such fond, mad, and wild dreams; as whosoever considers, would think the authors had more need of manacles and fetters, than arguments or sober answers.
(3.) Or if neither of these had been your lot, but you had been placed in a country which is christianized by profession, but nevertheless for the most part overrun by popish idolatry and antichristian delusions; what unhappy men and women had you been, had you sucked a popish breast! For this people are to be the subjects of the vials of God’s wrath, to be poured out successively upon them, as you may read Rev. xvi. and the Scriptures, in round and plain language, tell us what their fate must be: And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they shall believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness,” 2 Thess. 11. 11, 12.
Nay, you might have fallen into the same land in which your habitation now is, and yet have had no advantage by it as to salvation, if he who chose the bounds of your habitations had not also graciously determined the times for you, Acts xvii. (4.) Suppose your lot had fallen where it is, during the pagan state of England, whose inhabitants for many hundred years were gross and vile idolaters., Thick darkness overspread the people - of this island, and, as in other countries, the devil was worshipped, and his lying oracles zealously attended upon.
The shaking of the top of Jupiter’s oak in Dodona; the caldron smitten with the rod in the hand of Jupiter’s image; the laurel and fountain in Daphne; these were the ordinances on which the poor deluded wretches waited. So in this nation they worshipped idols also; the sun and moon were adored for gods, with many other abominable idols, which our ancestors worshipped, and whose memorials are not to this day quite obliterated among us.
(5.) Or suppose our lot had fallen in those latter miserable days, in which Queen Mary sent so many hundreds to heaven in a fiery chariot, and the poor Protestants skulked up and down in holes and woods to preserve them from popish inquisitors, who, like blood-hounds, hunted vp and down through all the cities, towns, and villages of the nation to seek out the poor sheep of Christ for a prey. But such hath been the special care of Providence towards us, that our turn to be brought upon the stage of this world was graciously reserved for better days; so that if we had had our own option we could not have chosen for ourselves as Providence hath. We are not only furnished with the best room in this great house, but, before we were put into it, it was swept with the besom of national reformation from idolatry; yea, and washed by the blood of martyrs from popish filthiness, and adorned with gospel lights, shining in as great lustre in our days, as ever they did since the apostles’ days. You might have been born in England for many ages, and not have found a Christian in it: yea and since Christianity was here owned, and not have met a Protestant in it. Oh what an obligation hath Providence laid you under by such a merciful performance as this for you!
If you say, All this indeed is true, but what is this to eternal salvation? do not multitudes that enjoy these privileges eternally perish notwithstanding them? yea, and perish with an aggravation of sin and misery beyond other sinners?
True, they do so; and it is of very sad consideration that it should be so; but yet we cannot deny this to be a very choice and singular mercy, to be born in such a land, and at such a time; for, let us consider what helps for salvation men here enjoy beyond what they could enjoy had their lot [allen according to the fore-mentioned supposthonsdm. Tae Cop. cw
[1.] Here we enjoy the ordinary means of salvation, which elsewhere men are denied and cut off from; so that if any among the heathens be saved and brought to Christ, it must be in some miraculous or extraordinary way; for, « How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” Rom. x. 14. Alas! were there a desire awdkened in any of their hearts, after a gospeldiscovery of salvation, (which ordinarily is not, nor can be rationally supposed,) yet, poor creatures! they might travel from sea to sea to hear the word, and not find ii: whereas you can hardly miss the opportunities of hearing the gospel; sermons meet you frequently, so that you can secarcely shun or avoid the ordinances and instruments of vour salvation. And is this nothing? Christ even forces himself upon us.
[2.] Here, in this age of the world, the common prejudices against Christianity are removed by the advantage it hath of a public profession among the people, and protection by the laws of the country; whereas were your habitation among Jews, Mahometans, or heathen idolaters, you would find Christ and Christianity the common odium of the country, every one defying and deriding both name and thing; and such yourselves likely had been, if your birth and education had been among them; for you may observe, that whatever is traditionally delivered down from father to son, every one is fond of, and zealous in its defence. The Jews, Heathens, and Mahometans, are at this day so tenacious of their errors, that with spitting, hissing, and clapping of hands, and all other signs of indignation and abhorrence, they chase away all others from among them. i i,
Is it not then a special mercy to you, to be cast into such a country and age, where, as a learned divine observes, the true religion hath the same advantages over every false one, as in other counTHE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. Hl tries they have over it? Here you have the presence of precious means, and the absence of souldestroying prejudices—two singular mercies.
[3.] Here, in this age of the world, Christianity bespeaks you as soon as you are capable of any sense, or impressions, of religion upon you, and so by a happy anticipation blocks up the passages by which a false religion would certainly enter. Here you suck in the first notions and principles of Christianity, even with the mother’s milk. And certainly such a prepossession is a choice advantage. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” Prov. xxii. 6.: La
[4.] Here you have, or may have, the help and assistance of Christians to direct your way, resolve your doubts, support your burdens, and help you through those difficulties that attend the new birth. Alas! if a poor soul had any beginnings, or faint workings and stirrings after Christ and true religion, in many other countries, the hand of every man would presently be against him, and none would be found to relieve, assist, or encourage, as you may see in that example of Galeacius; the nearest relations would, in that case, prove the greatest enemies, the country would quickly hoot at him as a monster, and ery, Away with the heretic to the prison or stake.
Whether these eventually prove blessings to your souls or not, certain I am, that, in themselves, they are singular mercies, and helps to salvation, though denied to millions around you. So that, if Plato, when he was near his death, could bless God for three things, namely, That he was a man, and not a beast; that he was born in Greece; and that he was brought up in the time of Socrates: much more cause have you to admire Providence that you are men, and not beasts; that you were born here; and brought up in gospel days here. This is a land the Lord hath espied for you, as the expression is, Ezek. xx. 6, and concerning it, you have abundant cause to say, as in another case the psalmist doth, the lines are fallen to me in pleasant places, and I have a goodly heritage, Psal. xvi. 6.