ber those three names of Homer, Ulysses, and Achilles, yet God always knows and remembers his people by name, Gen. viii. 1. Chap. xix. 29. & xxx. 31. 1 Sam. i. 9. Jonah iv. 10, 11. &c. Therefore be silent, hold thy peace; thy God hath not forgotten thee, though for the present he hath delayed thee.

4. God's time is always the best time; God always takes the best and fittest seasons to do us good, Is. xlix. 8. "Thus saith the Lord, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee." I could have heard thee before, and have helped thee before, but I have taken the most acceptable time to do both. To set God his time, is to limit him, Psal. lxxviii. 41. It is to exalt ourselves above him, as if we were wiser than God; though we are not wise enough. to improve the times and seasons which God hath set us to serve and honour him in, yet we are apt to think that we are wise enough to set God his time, when to hear, and when to save, and when to deliver. To circumscribe God to our time, and to make ourselves lords of time, what is this, but to divest God of his royalty and sovereignty of appointing times? It is but just and equal that that God that hath made time, and that hath the sole power to appoint and dispose of time, that he should take his own time to do his people good. We are many times humorous, preposterous, and hasty, and now we must have mercy, or we die, deliverance, or we are undone; but our impatience will never help us to a mercy, one

hour, one moment, before the time that God hath set; the best God will always take the best time to hand out mercies to his people; there is no mercy so fair, so ripe, so lovely, so beautiful, as that which God gives out in his own time; therefore hold thy peace, though God delays thee, yet be silent, for there is no possibility of taking a mercy out of God's hand, till the mercy be ripe for us, and we ripe for the mercy, Eccl. iii. 11.

5. The Lord in this life will certainly recompense, and make his children amends for all the delays and put-offs that he exerciseth them with in this world; as he did Abraham in giving him such a son as Isaac was, and Hannah, in giving her a Samuel. He delayed Joseph long, but at length he changed his iron fetters into chains of gold, his rags into royal robes, his stocks into a chariot, his prison into a palace, his bed of thorns into a bed of down, his reproach into honour, and his thirty years of suffering into eighty years reigning in much grandeur and glory. So God delayed David long, 2 Sam. i. but when his suffering hours were out, he is anointed, and the crown of Israel is set upon his head, and he is made very victorious, very famous and glorious for forty years together. Well, Christians, God will certainly pay you interest upon interest, for all the delays that you meet with, and therefore hold your peace. But,

6. Lastly, The Lord never delays the giving in of this mercy, or that deliverance, or the

other favour, but upon great and weighty reasons, and therefore hold thy peace.

Quest. "But what are the reasons that God doth so delay and put off his people from time to time, as we see he doth?"

Ans. 1. For the trial of his people, and for distinguishing of them from others, Mat. xv. 21-29. As the furnace tries gold, so delays will try what a Christian is made off; delays will try both the truth and the strength of a Christian's graces; delays are a Christian's touch-stone, that will try what men are made of, whether they be gold or dross, silver or tin; whether they be sincere or unsound; whether they be real Christians. As a father, by crossing and delaying his children, tries their dispositions, and makes a full discovery of them, so that he can say, That child is of a muttering and grumbling disposition, and that is of an humorous and wayward disposition, but the rest are of a meek, sweet, humble, and gentle disposition: so the Lord, by delaying and crossing of his children, discovers their different dispositions. The manner of the Psylli (which are a kind of people of that temper and constitution, that no venom will hurt them) is, that if they suspect any child to be none of their own, they set an adder upon it to sting it, and if it cry, and the flesh swell, they cast it away as a spurious issue; but if it do not cry, if it do not so much as quake, nor do not grow the worse for it, then they account it for their own, and make very much of it. So the Lord by delays,

which are as the stinging of the adder, tries his children; if they patiently, quietly, and sweetly can bear them, then the Lord will own them, and make much of them, as those that are near and dear unto him; but if under delays they fall a crying, roaring, storming, vexing, and fretting, the Lord will not own them, but reckon them as bastards, and no sons, Heb. xii. 8.

2. That they may have the greater experience of his power, grace, love, and mercy in the close. Christ loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus; yet he defers his coming for several days, and Lazarus must die, be put in the grave, and lie there till he stinks and why so? but that they might have the greater experience of his power, grace, and love towards them.

3. To sharpen his childrens appetite, and to put a greater edge upon their desires, to make them cry out as a woman in travail, or as a man that is in danger of drowning. God delays, that his people may come to him with greater strength and importunity; he puts them off, that they may put on with more life and vigour. God seems to be cold, that he may make us the more hot; he seems to be slack, that he may make us the more earnest; he seems to be backward, that he may make us the more forward in pressing upon him. The father delays the child, that he may make him the more eager; and so doth God his, that he may make them the more divinely violent. When Balaam had once put

off Balak, he sent again (saith the text) certain princes more, and more honourable than they. BaTaam's put-off did but make Balak the more importunate, it did but increase and whet his desires. This is that that God aims at by all his put-offs, to make his children more earnest, to whet up their spirits, and that they may send up more, and yet more honourable prayers after him; that they may cry more earnestly, strive more mightily, and wrestle more importunately with God, and that they may take heaven with a more sacred violence. Anglers draw back the hook, that the fish may be more forward to bite; and God sometimes seems to draw back, but it is only that we may press the more on: and therefore as anglers when they have long waited, and perceive that the fish do not so much as nibble at the bait, yet do they not impatiently throw away the rod, or break the hook and line, but pull up, and look upon the bait, and mend it, and so throw it in again, and then the fish bites; so when a Christian prays and obtains nothing; God seems to be silent, and heaveu seems to be shut against him; yet let him not cast off prayer, but renew his prayer, pray more believingly, pray more affectionately, and pray more fervently, and then mercy will come, and comfort will come, and deliverance will come. But,

4. God delays and puts off his people many times, that he may make a fuller discovery of themselves to themselves. Few Christians see themselves, and understand themselves.