The Power of Holiness to be Maintained Because of ITS OWN EXCELLENCY 4/4

 

 Sixth.  Holiness and righteousness—they are the pillars of kingdoms and nations.  Who are they that keep the house from falling on a people’s head, but the righteous in a nation?  ‘Ten righteous men,’ could they have been found in Sodom, had blown over the storm of fire and brimstone that, in a few hours, en­tombed them in their own ashes; yea, the destroying angel’s hands were tied up, as it were, while but one righteous Lot was among them.  ‘Haste thee, escape hither; for I cannot do anything till thou be come hither,’ Gen. 19:22.  Rehoboam and his kingdom were strengthened for three years, and might have been for three and twenty, if he head not, by his unrighteous­ness, pulled it down upon himself and people; for his unhappiness is dated from the very time of his depar­ture from God, II Chr. 11:16-12:2. Josiah, when he came to the crown, found the kingdom of Judah tumbling apace to ruin; yet, because his heart was set for God, and prepared to walk before him, God took his bail (as I may so say) for that wretched people, even when they were under arrest from him, and almost at the prison door, so that their safety was, in a manner, bound up in his life; for soon after his decease all went to wreck among them.  It was a heroic speech of Luther, who foresaw a black cloud of God’s judg­ments coming over the head of Germany, but told some of his friends, ‘That he would do his best to keep it from falling in his days’—yea, he believed it should not come—‘and,’ said he, ‘when I am gone, let them that come after me look to it.’

           This poor nation of England hath, for many gen­erations in a succession, had a number of precious, righteous ones, who have, through God’s grace, walked close with God, and been kept in a great de­gree unspotted from the defilements of the ungodly times they lived in.  These were the Atlases of their several ages; these have oft found favour of God, to beg the life of this nation, when its neck hath been on the very block.  But they are gone, or wearing away apace, and a new generation coming in their room; unhappy would the day be called when you were born, if you should be the men and women that, by degenerating from the power of holiness, should cut the banks which was their chief care to keep up, and so let in a desolating judgment to overflow the land. That heir we count unworthy of his birth and patri­mony, who, by his debauched courses, prodigally makes away that estate, which, by the care and provi­dence of his ancestors, was through many descents at last transmitted to him; but which now, together with the honour of the family, unhappily ends in him.  If ever any age was like to do thus by the place of their nativity, this present is it, wherein our sad lot to live is cast.  How low is the power of holiness sunk among us, to what it was but in the last generation!  Religion, alas! runs low and dreggy  among professors.  God, we know, will not long suffer it.  If Egypt knows a dearth is coming by the low ebbing of Nilus, surely we may see a judgment to be coming by the low fall of the power of godliness.

           There are great complaints of what men have lost in these hurling times.  Some bemoan their lost places and estates, others the lost lives of their friends in the wars; but professors may claim justly the first place of all the mourners of the times, to lament their lost loves to the truths of Christ, worship of Christ, servants of Christ—yea, that universal decay which appears in their holy walking before God and man.  This is sad indeed, but that which adds a fearful ag­gravation to it is, that we degenerate and grow loose at a time when we are under the highest engagements for holiness that ever any people were.  We are a people redeemed from many deaths and dangers.  And when better might God expect us to be a righ­teous nation?  It is an ill time for a person to fall a stealing and pilfering again as soon as the rope is off his neck, and he let safely come down that ladder from which he was even now like to be turned off.  Surely it added to righteous Noah’s sin, to be drunk as soon almost as he was set on shore, when a little before he had seen a whole world sinking before his eyes, and he, privileged person, left by God to plant the world again with a godly seed.  O sirs, the earth hath hardly yet drunk in the rivers of blood that have been shed in our land.  The cities and towns have hardly got out of their ruins, which the miseries of war laid them in. 

 The moans of the fatherless and husbandless, whom the sword bereaved of their dear­est relations, are not yet silenced by their own death. Yea, can our own frights and scares, which we were amazed with, when we saw the nation—like a candle lighted at both ends—on flame, and every day the fire coming nearer and nearer to ourselves—can these be so soon forgotten?  Now, that at such a time as this, a nation, and that the professing part of it, should grow looser, more proud, covetous, contentious, wan­ton in their principles, and careless in their lives; this must be for a lamentation.  We have little cause to boast of our peace and plenty, when the result of our deliverance is to deliver us up to commit such abomi­nations.  This is as if one whose quartan ague is gone, but leaving him in a deep dropsy, should brag his ague hath left him, little thinking that when it went, it left him a worse guest in its place.  An unhap­py change, God knows it is; to have war, pestilence, and famine removed, and to be left swollen up with pride, error, and libertinism.

           Again, we are a people who have made more pre­tensions to righteousness and holiness than our fore­fathers ever did.  What else meant the many prayers to God, and petitions to man, for reformation?  What interpretations could a charitable heart make, of our putting ourselves under the bond of a covenant, to endeavour for personal reformation, and then na­tional, but that we meant in earnest to be a more righteous nation that ever before?  This made such a loud report in foreign parts, that our neighbour-churches were set a wondering to think what these glorious beginnings might ripen to; so that now—hav­ing put forth these leaves, and told both God and man, by them, what fruit was to be looked for from us—our present state must needs be nigh unto curs­ing, for disappointing the just expectations of both. Nothing can save the life of this our nation, or lengthen out its tranquility in mercy to it, but the re­covery of the much decayed power of holiness.  This, as  a spring of new blood to a weak body, would, though almost a dying, revive it, and procure more happy days—yea, more happy days to come over its head, than it hath yet seen; but alas! as we are degenerating from bad to worse, we do but die lingeringly—every day we fetch our breath shorter and shorter; if the sword should but be drawn again among us, we have hardly strength to hold out another fit.