away? Such a return to fenfual and carnal lufts may well be provoking to that God that has once raised you out of that ftate. Such a contempt of the goodness of grace, of which you are made a partaker, muft needs be difpleafing to the almighty giver. Again,

III. It must needs be a provoking fin to God, because covetoufnefs is an abuse of the creature, and a perverfion of it from that end for which God gave it. He gave the good things of this world to be used and not to be hoarded up merely to be looked upon. Whatever comforts of life, whatever advantages, privileges, or talents God has been pleased by his kind providence to confer upon us whilst we are here, remember they are not our own, they are but lent us, and we muft one day give an account what we have done with them : this is a fin that lies very fecret in the heart, and perhaps it cannot be fo well charged upon us by others as by ourselves. Let us then be the more ftrict in making an inward fearch in our confciences. The

Second doctrine is this: God's displeasure against his own people for fin, is often manifefted by his ftrokes of temporal judgment. I was wroth and fmote him. You have this very fin of covetousness represented as the occafion of fevere judgments from God upon Jerufalem, upon his chosen people. Jerem. viii. 10. In the foregoing verfes God had

been

been charging his people of holding fast deceit, and refusing to return; and then he faith, therefore I will give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that Shall inherit them, for every one even from the leaft to the greateft is given to covetousness. Those whom the father has once loved and given into the hands of his fon, the father will always love, and the fon will bear an eternal affection to them; but the father and the fon may be difpleafed with them, and may fmite thofe very children fometimes, that when enemies ftrike them, they touch him nearly. In the eighty-ninth Pfalm, where the covenant of grace is gloriously displayed, as made with our Lord Jefus Chrift for all believers, there are these afflictions brought into this covenant: If bis children forfake my law, and walk not in my judgments, if they break my fiatutes, and keep not my commandments, then will I vifit their tranfgreffion with the rod, and their iniquity with ftripes; nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor Suffer my faithfulness to fail; my covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. And the prophet Amos, chap. iii. ver. 2. tells the Jews in the name of the Lord, faying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will not punish you for all your iniquities. As if he had faid, I will not always take care to punish other nations when they are guilty of enormous crimes; I will not take fo much pains to recover them, let them

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them fink into deftruction: this is the language of God to every one here, You only have I known, you have I favoured above the rest of the world, and you have rebelled against me, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities. And this God doth to fhew his own hatred of fin both before his own people and before the world. If those that are reconciled to God, by the blood of his fon, fhould commit iniquities from time time, that are vifible to the eyes of the world, and there fhould be no fenfible animadverfions upon them for them, the wicked would fay that God ceafes to love holiness, he punishes not his people when they fin. No, faith God, my gofpel fhall appear to be a holy gofpel; if those very faints that I have taken into my bofom should offend me, I will make it appear to the world that I hate fin in them as well as I do in others, and I will punish it. There is a fort of governing inftance, which Chrift the king of the church exercifes for the honour of his own law, and his own gofpel, for the fake of his own and his Father's holiness; and though it be not revenging justice, yet it is fometimes very terrible and fevere. I Cor. xi. 30. There were feveral diforders practifed by the Corinthians in their participation of the holy ordinance of the Lord's fupper: They come together, not for the better, but for the worse, one being hungry, and another drunken, &c. Well, faith the Lord, by the apoftle, Examine your felves,

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left ye come together unto condemnation; for whosoever fhall eat of this bread, and drink of this cup unworthily, fhall be guilty of the blood and body of the Lord; yea, be eateth and drinketh damnation to himself: which appears by the context to mean temporal judgments, viz. weakness, sickness, and death. Another defign of God is to awaken his children out of their fecurity, and to reclaim them from fin; for the defign of afflictive providences upon the children of God, is to lead them back again to ordinances and obedience. Ifa. xxvii. 9. By this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and his fin taken away; that is, this I will ufe as means to restore him from the power of fin which has now gotten the upper hand. And in Heb. xii. God gives us a large account how he chafteneth his people on purpofe to make them return to him. Well then, when God fmites us let us mourn to think that we by our tranfgreffions fhould provoke him to take this method for the vindication of his holinefs; and let each of us fay, Lord, fhew me wherein I have offended and I will do fo no more. The

Third doctrine is this; that spiritual chaftifements will very probably follow when temporal ones do not attain the end and reduce the backflider. I was wroth and fmote him, but that had no effect, that was not fufficient to reclaim obdurate finners; therefore, faith God, I will hide me, I will with

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draw my prefence from you. If ye will walk con trary unto me I will walk contrary unto you, faith the Lord; you fhall not feel the fmiles of my countenance: the elect of God have a sense of this fort of corrections, which the world have not; and therefore fuch fort of threatenings, though they affect not the unconverted finners much, yet they affect the saints of the most High: they that know what it is to have the face of God difcovered to them, and to see his love, they are afraid of the hiding of it, and covering it with a thick cloud that they cannot fee it. How doth Job complain; Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; backward, but I cannot perceive him; on the left-hand where he doth work, but cannot find him; and on the right-hand, but I cannot fee him. If one might paraphrafe this in a gospel sense, it might be thus: I go forward in the paths I now go, but cannot perceive him; I look back to the paths I have already been, I recollect my former experiences, but cannot find him there. On his left-hand, where he works, I can fee nothing of him, in any of his providences or dealings with me; or on his right-hand, in his gospel and grace, I can fee nothing no where either in his works, his providences, his nature or his grace; he can hold no converfe with him either in private or public duties, in reading, in prayer, in hearing when the word of God is spoken, the