ing off to follow him in his ways, to trust on the arm of flesh, on policy and strength, and self-resolved undertak ings, rather than on him without these. Evil men think that those who advise them to trust on God, are silly fellows, who know not what belongs to policy and reasons of state. A fancied wisdom it is, that men are enamoured with, and look not to a higher wisdom, consider not God, that he also is wise. There is, I think, in that word a tart scorn of the folly of their seeming wisdom. Be it that you are wits, yet, you will not deny some wisdom to God; Yet he also is wise. So they think not on his power either; therefore he puts them in mind, that the Egyptians are men.

Well, if you be resolved on that course, says God, then know mine too, that I am resolved upon-therefore ye shall flee, shall have fleeing enough; and if you be swift, they that pursue you shall be swifter, and one shall serve to chase a thousand, the rebuke, the very terror of one. This is the condition of the mightiest people and the best appointed armies, when forsaken of God. There is no strength, nor courage, nor any thing of worth in any of the creatures, but as it is derived from God: it is depen dent on him in the continuance and use of it. Why are thy valiant men swept away? They stood not, because the Lord did drive them, Jer. xlvi, 15. We have seen this, and the turn of it on both sides, how men become a prey to any party, when the terror from God is upon them.

Therefore learn we to fear him; to beware of all ways wherein we may justly apprehend him to be against us; to cleave to him and to his truth, when it is lowest; and when no human means of help appear, then think you hear him saying to you, Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

Therefore will the Lord wait. There is no language of men nor of angels, fit to express the graciousness of God's punishments and the threatenings of them; as if they were violently drawn and forced from him, but mercy, and the sweet promises thereof, naturally flowing from him. Thus here; he is forced to give up his people to their own counsels, because they will not follow his advices. He entreats them but to be quiet and let him do for them; but

seeing they will not sit still and be safe at his direction, they must run their own course, and fall in it. But it cannot pass so; they must not be quite given over; the Lord hath an interest in them which he will not lose. They must indeed, for a time, eat the fruit of their own ways, and that is not a season to show them favor; but the Lord will wait a better hope. He is resolved to show them mercy, and will find his own time for it; Therefore will he wait that he may be gracious.

And this he is moved to, according to his gracious nature, by the greatness of their distress and desolation. Though procured by themselves, by their great, their inflexible stubbornness, yet he pities to see them so left as a beacon on the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on a hill; and therefore will the Lord wait. Thus we have the proper arguings of free mercy, which otherwise, to our narrow thoughts, may seem strange and somewhat inconsequent. Such a therefore as this, so unexpectedly changing the strain, doth genuinely and sweetly follow upon the premises, when free love is the medium: that intervening in the midst, makes the sweet turn. Your iniquities prevail to bring you low, and lengthen out your calamities; therefore I will let that have its course, and will stay till my fit time come to do you good. Meanwhile I will lie hid, and be as sitting still; but when that time comes, I will get up and show myself. He will be exalted, that he may have mercy on you; for the Lord is a God of judgment. He is wise, and just, and good, and knows his measures of afflicting his people, his times and ways of delivering them, and of bringing destruction on his enemies, and will not let slip this season; and it being so, this certainly follows, that they are blessed, that wait on him.

Observe, first, the strong inclination of God to show mercy. He would willingly have his people to find nothing but ease; he delights in the prosperity of his servants, would have them constantly have a sweet, peaceful, yea, cheerful life, by constant walking in his ways; but they are often the enemies of their own peace, grieve his Spirit, and turn him to be their enemy. But he cannot persist in that to his own; he longs to be at his way of

mercy and loving-kindness again. He retains not his anger for ever, because mercy pleases him. He inflicts judgment for sin, but what he delights in is mercy. Therefore says the prophet, Lam. iii, 32, Though he cause grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies; for he doth not willingly afflict, nor grieve the children of men. Though he doth grieve them, yet not willingly they themselves procure and draw on that, by grieving his Spirit. But he willingly shows mercy, for that abounds: there is such multitude and plenty of it, that, as to full breasts, it is a pleasure to him to let it forth. Of the two words, gracious and merciful, which stand first in the name of God, Exod. xxxiv, 6, the one signifies free grace, the other tender bowels of mercy. This is no emboldenment to continue in sin, yea, it is of all things the most fit encouragement and inducement to a sinner to return from his sin; and so it is used and urged throughout the scriptures; Isa. xxxi, 5, 6; lv, 7; Jer. iii, 12. In public calamities, where a people are charging the cause thereof upon themselves, searching their hearts and their ways, and turning unto God, humbly acknowledging their iniquity, and entreating pardon, O this is the thing he would not despise. Yea, it is what he looks and longs for, and upon that would readily forget all past disloyalties; Jer. iii, 1. Yea, at the sound of their repentings, his bowels would resound with compassion by a secret sympathy and harmony, as one string well tuned to another, stirs when it is touched; Jer. xxxi, 18, 20.

This a sinner shall find in his returning unto God, more than we can express or promise in his name. Ohe waits to be gracious, meets thee graciously. Yea, he hath first touched thy heart secretly, hath first drawn it towards himself, before it stirred or had a thought that way. Now no more upbraidings or remembrance of all thy wanderings: an act of perfect oblivion is past. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more, Jer. xxxi, 34. Is thy heart any little softened, and relents it towards him? Then the controversy is ended, and his thoughts are now, how to comfort thee. Art thou busy indicting accusations against thyself? Then makes he it his part to wipe away and blot out. Comest

thou home with a heart full of holy shame and grief, and thy mouth full of humble confessions of thy disobedience? Then know, it is thy tender-hearted Father meets thee, most ready to forgive thee, yea, to interrupt thy confessions in the middle with embraces and kisses of love.

But, alas! we preclude ourselves from the sweet expe. riences of these tender mercies, by the hardness of our hearts, and by the lightness and vanity of them. O that indignity!—our God still waiting to be gracious, to heap up more of his love to us, but we are busied in other things, and not at leisure to wait on him! O what are they, these things that take us up? Great matters? Alas! sorry trifles, all the day long. And when we are at leisure, yet we are not at leisure; for then we must take our ease, must go to sleep, and so still he is put off and forced to retire, after he has stayed till his head be filled with dew, and his locks with the drops of the night.

Observe, secondly, the Lord doth most exactly and wisely measure both the degree and the time of his people's afflictions. Though they have brought them upon themselves, and justly he might leave them so, this he will not do: he is a God of judgment. This is largely and sweetly expressed, in a resemblance of husbandry, Isai. xxviii, 24, 9. He knows how much and how long outward or inward trouble is fit for every one, and where the less will serve, will not use the more. He knows what need some spirits have to be bruised and broken beyond others, either under disgrace or poverty, or the proper pressures of the spirit within, apprehensions of wrath, or withdrawments at least of comforts; and hath set his days for deliverance of his church, and of every believer under affliction. So the style of the prophet, In that day, speaking as of a certain prefixed day, and that no power or wit of man can disappoint. And it is so chosen, as it shall be evident to be the fittest, that it could not so well either have been sooner or later: all things concurring to make it most seasonable to his people and honorable to his own name. The vision is for an appointed time: though it tarry, wait for it; it shall come, and shall not tarry, Hab. ii, 3. That is strange, Though it tarry, it shall not tarry. But in the original, there are two words, the one importing an undue slowness or constrained retard

ment; that cannot be so; it shall not tarry, though it tarry; that is, though it stay itself, and come not till the appointed time; so the other word signifies. Thus, Psal. cii, 13, Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion; for the set time is come. Now for this the Lord waits. It is not through want of love, but from abundance of wisdom, that he delivers not sooner. He hath chosen the fittest time, in his all-discerning wisdom: yet there is in his love an earnest kind of longing that the time were come. Thus here; he waits to be gracious, and he will be exalted, will cheerfully amd gladly raise up himself, and appear to show mercy to his people, and bring his enemies low; coming forth, as it were, to judgment, and sitting down on his throne. In which posture he was not seen while they prevailed and triumphed, and his church was under their oppression; but when the time of their restoring and consolation comes, he then is to sit on his throne, and so is exalted to show them mercy. Hence the psalmist so often desires that the Lord would arise, and utters predictions assuring that he will arise, and exciting his people to rejoice in that; Psal. ix, 7, 8; Psal. xcvi; xcvii; xcviii.

Thus the church, in her saddest condition, ought hopefully to remember and rest on it, that the day is determined, and cannot fail. Our salvation is in God. He laughs at his enemies; when they are at the top of prosperity and pride, he sees that their day is coming. Now certainly the firm persuasion of this would much stay our minds; but either we do not believe, or we do not improve and use these truths, and draw that comfort from them which abounds in them. Our God loses

no time; he is waiting till his appointed time; and if he waits, it becomes us so to do. That is our duty here, to wait on him. This faith does, and so makes not haste; neither goes out to any undue means, nor frets impatiently within at the deferring of deliverance, but quietly rests on God, and waits for him.

This, as it is our duty, is also our happiness, and thus it is here expressed. Upon consideration that the Lord waits to be gracious, and will be exalted to show mercy, the prophet is carried to this exclamation, in respect to