Remedy (3). The third remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, That there is mo greater misery in this life, than mot to be in misery; mo greater affliction, than mot to be afflicted. Woe, woe to that soul that God will not spend a rod upon! ” This is the saddest stroke of all, when God refuses to strike at all: Hos. iv. 17, Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone Why should you be smitten any more? you will revolt more and more, Isai. 3. When the physician gives over the patient, you say, Ring out his knell, the man is dead” So when God gives over a soul to sin without control, you may truly say, This soul is lost,” you may ring out his knell, for he is twice dead, and plucked up by the roots. Freedom from punishment is the mother of security, the step-mother of virtue, the poison of religion, the moth of holiness, and the introducer of wickedness. Nothing,’ said one, seems more unhappy to me, than he to whom no adversity hath happened.” Outward mercies ofttimes prove a snare to our souls. ‘I will lay a stumbling-block,” Ezek. ii. 20. Vatablus his note there is, ‘I will prosper him in all things, and not by affliction restrain him from sin.’? Prosperity hath been a stumbling-block, at which millions have stumbled and fallen, and broke the neck of their souls for ever.?

Remedy (4). The fourth remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider, That the wants of wicked men, under all their outward mercy and freedom from adversity, is far greater than all their outward enjoyments. They have many mercies, yet they want more than they enjoy; the mercies which they enjoy are nothing to the

mercies they want. It is true, they have honours and riches, and pleasures and friends, and are mighty in power; their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes: Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ;’ ‘ They spend their days m wealth, their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart can wish: and they have no bands in their death, but their strength is firm; they are not mn trouble as other men” as David and Job speak! Yet all this is nothing to what they want.? They want interest in God, Christ, the Spirit, the promises, the covenant of grace, and everlasting glory; they want acceptation and reconciliation with God; they want righteousness, justification, sanctification, adoption, and redemption; they want the pardon of sin, and power against sin, and freedom from the dominion of sin; they want that favour that is better than life, and that joy that 1s unspeakable and full of glory, and that peace that passes understanding, and that grace, the least spark of which is more worth than heaven and earth; they want a house that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God; they want those riches that perish not, the glory that fades not, that kingdom that shakes not. Wicked men p are the most needy men in the world, yea, they want those two things that should render their mercies sweet, viz, the blessing of God, and content with their condition, and without which their heaven is but hell on this side hell When their hearts are lifted up and grown big upon the thoughts of their abundance, if conscience does but put in a word and say, It is true, here is this and that outward mercy. Oh, but where is an interest in Christ? Where is the favour of God? Where are the comforts of the Holy Ghost? Where are the evidences for heaven? &e. This word from conscience makes the man’s countenance to change, his thoughts to be troubled, his heart to be amazed, and all his mercies on the right hand and left to be as dead and withered. Al, were but the eyes of wicked men open to see their wants under their abundance, they would ery out and say, as Absalom did, What are all these to me so long as I cannot see the king’s face # 2 Sam. xiv. 24, 33. What is honour, and riches, and the favour of creatures, so long as I want the favour of God, the pardon of my sins, an interest in Christ, and the hopes of glory! O Lord, give me these, or I die; give me these. or else 1 shall eternally die.

Rnedy (5). The fifth remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, That outward things are not as they seem, and are esteemed. They have, indeed, a glorious outside, but if you view

their insides, you will easily find that they fill the head full of cares, and the heart full of fears. What if the fire should consume one part of my estate, and the sea should be a grave to swallow up another part of my estate! what if my servants should be unfaithful abroad, and my children should be deceitful at home! Ah, the secret fretting, vexing, and gnawing that doth daily, yea hourly, attend those men’s souls whose hands are full of worldly goods!

It was a good speech of an emperor, You,’ said he, ‘ gaze on my purple robe and golden crown, but did you know what cares are under it, you would not take it up from the ground to have it.” It was a true saying of Augustine on the 26th Psalm, Many are miser- ~ able by loving hurtful things, but they are mere miserable by having them. It is not what men enjoy, but the principle from whence it comes, that makes men happy. Much of these outward things do usually cause great distraction, great vexation, and great condemnation at last, to the possessors of them. If God gives them in his wrath, and do not sanctify them in his love, they will at last be witnesses against a man, and millstones for ever to sink a man in that day when God shall call men to an account, not for the use, but for the abuse of mercy.

Remedy (6). The sixth remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider the end and the design of God im heaping up mercy upon the heads of the wicked, and in giving them a quietus est, rest and quiet from those sorrows and sufferings that others sigh under. David, in Psalm Ixxiii. 17-20, shews the end and design of God in this. Saith he, When I went into the sanctuary of God, then I understood their end: surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment: they are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream, when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.” So in Ps. xcii. 7, When the wicked spring as grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it 1s that they shall be destroyed for ever God’s setting them up, is but in order to his casting them down; his raising them high, 1s but in order to his bringing them low: Exod. ix. 16, And in very deed, for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.” I have constituted and set thee up as a butt-mark, that I may let fly at thee, and follow thee close with plague upon plague, till I have beaten the very breath out of thy body, and got myself a name, by setting my feet upon the neck of all thy pride, power, pomp, and glory. Ah, souls, what man in his wits would be lifted up that he might be cast down; would be set higher than others, when it is but 1 a amando res noxias sunt miseri, habendo miseriores. —dwgustine on Psalm 3 Valens, the Roman emperor, fell from being an emperor to be a footstool to Sapor,

in order to his being brought down lower than others? There is not a wicked man in the world that is set up with Lucifer, as high as heaven, but shall with Lucifer be brought down as low as hell Canst thou think seriously of this, O soul, and not say, O Lord, I humbly crave that thou wilt let me be little in this world, that I may be great in another world; and low here, that I may be high for ever hereafter.! Let me be low, and feed low, and live low, so I may live with thee for ever; let me now be clothed with rags, so thou wilt clothe me at last with thy robes; let me now be set upon a dunghill, so I may at last be advanced to sit with thee upon thy throne. Lord, make me rather gracious than great, inwardly holy than outwardly happy, and rather turn me into my first nothing, yea, make me worse than nothing, rather than set me up for a time, that thou mayest bring me low for ever.

Remedy (7). The seventh remedy against this device of Satan is solemnly to consider, That God doth often most plague and punish those whom others think he doth most spare and love; that is, God doth plague and punish them most with spiritual judgments—which are the greatest, the sorest, and the heaviest—whom he least punishes with temporal punishments. There are no men on earth so internally plagued as those that meet with least external plagues. Oh the blindness of mind, the hardness of heart, the searedness of conscience, that those souls are given up to, who, in the eye of the world, are reputed the most happy men, because they are not outwardly afflicted and plagued as other men. Ah, souls, it were better that all the temporal plagues that ever befell the children of men since the fall of Adam should at once meet upon your souls, than that you should be given up to the least spiritual plague, to the least measure of spiritual blindness or spiritual hardness of heart, &e. Nothing will better that man, nor move that man, that is given up to spiritual judgments. Let God smile or frown, stroke or strike, cut or kill, he minds it not, he regards it not; let life or death, heaven or hell, be set before him, it stirs him not; he is mad upon his sin, and God is fully set to do justice upon his soul. This man’s preservation is but a reservation unto a greater condemnation; this man can set no bounds to himself; he is become a brat of fathomless perdition; he hath guilt in his bosom and vengeance at his back wherever he goes. Neither ministry nor misery, neither miracle nor mercy, can mollify his heart, and if this soulsbe not in hell, on this side hell, who is?

Remedy (8). The eighth remedy against this device of Satan is, To dwell more upon that strict account that vain men must make for all that good that they do enjoy Ah! did men dwell more

upon that account that they must ere long give for all the mercies that they have enjoyed, and for all the favours that they have abused, and for all the sins they have committed, it would make their hearts to tremble and their lips to quiver, and rottenness to enter into their bones; it would cause their souls to cry out, and say, Oh that our mercies had been fewer and lesser, that our account might have been easier, and our torment and misery, for our abuse of so great mercy, not greater than we are able to bear. Oh cursed be the day wherein the crown of honour was set upon our heads, and the treasures of this world were cast into our laps; oh cursed be the day wherein the sun of prosperity shined so strong upon us, and this flattering world smiled so much upon us, as to occasion us to forget God, to slight Jesus Christ, to neglect our souls, and to put far from us the day of our account!

Philip the Third of Spain, whose life was free from gross evils, professed, That he would rather lose his kingdom than offend God willingly; yet being in the agony of death, and considering more thoroughly of his account he was to give to God, fear struck into him, and these words brake from him: Oh! would to God I had never reigned. Oh that those years that I have spent in my kingdom, I had lived a solitary life in the wilderness! Oh that I had lived a solitary life with God! How much more securely should I now have died! How much more confidently should I have gone to the throne of God! What doth all my glory profit me, but that I have so much the more torment in my death? God keeps an exact account of every penny that is laid out upon him and his, and that is laid out against him and his; and this in the day of account men shall know and feel, though now they wink and will not understand. The sleeping of vengeance causeth the overflowing of sin, and the overflowing of sin causeth the awakening of vengeance. Abused mercy will certainly turn into fury. God’s forbearance is no quittance. The day is at hand when he will pay wicked men for the abuse of old and new mercies. If he seem to be slow, yet he is sure. He hath leaden heels, but iron hands. The farther he stretcheth his bow, or draweth his arrow, the deeper he will wound in the day of vengeance. Men’s actions are all in print in heaven, and God will, in the day of account, read them aloud in the ears of all the world, that they may all say Amen to that righteous sentence that he shall pass upon all despisers and abusers of mercy.