Ten directions how to frame our thanksgivings 1/5

           Second. You have heard what is the subject of our praises and thanksgivings; we shall now lay down some directions how we are to frame our thanks­givings.

1. Direction.  Be sure the thing thou prayest God for be found among the good things of the prom­ise.  That is the compass by which we are to steer our course, as in the petitionary, so also in the gratula­tory, part of prayer.  If it be not in the promise it is not a mercy, and so not the subject of thanksgiving. When some prosper in their wickedness, they are so bold as to thank God they sped so well.  Now, if it be grievous sin for a man to bless himself in any wicked way, Deut. 29:19, much more horrid is it to bless God for prospering therein.  By the former, he only vouch­eth his own sin—which indeed is bad enough—but by the other he makes God a party with him, and tempts the Lord to own it also.  It is a good speech of Ber­nard to this purpose, who, comparing those that on the one hand thank God for their success in wicked­ness, with hypocrites, who praise him for the good things they receive, saith, isti impiè mala suo Deo, isti dei bona fraudulenter in­torquent sibi (Serm. 45 super Cant.)—the one impute their sin to God, the other ascribe the glory of his mercies to themselves.  God cannot accept thy praise, unless he first approve thy fact.  He that receives a bribe is guilty of the fault. And dare you thus tempt the holy One?  If the God you serve were like the heathens’ idols, the matter were not much.  When the Philistines had practiced their cruelty on Samson, they present his head to their god.  The devil desires no better sacrifices than the fruit of men’s sins.  But the holy One of Israel abhors all wicked praises.  ‘The hire of a whore, was not to be offered,’ Deut. 23:18.
2. Direction.  Let all your praises be offered up in Christ.  ‘By him...let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God,’ Heb. 13:15.  ‘Ye...are...an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,’ I Peter 2:5.  Couldst thou pen never so rare a panegyric, couldst thou flourish it with never so much art or rhetoric, and deliver it with the great­est passion and zeal possible, all this would be harsh and grate the Almighty’s ear except sounded through Christ.  It is not the breath poured into the open air but passing through the trumpet or some other instru­ment—where it is formed into a tunable sound—that makes it pleasing music.  Possibly when thou prayest for a mercy thou shelterest thyself under Christ’s wing, and usest his name to procure thy admission —because conscious of thine own unworthiness to re­ceive what thou askest—but, when thou praisest God, thy errand being not to beg and receive but to give, thou expectest welcome.  He that brings a present shall surely find the door open.  Yes, if thy gift were suitable to the great God.  But who art thou that the great God should take a present at thy hand?  If thou beest not worthy of the least mercy thou beggest, then surely thou art unworthy of this honour to have thy thank-offering accepted.  Thou needest Christ’s me­diation for the one as much as for the other.
3. Direction.  Stay not in generals, but descend to the particular instances of God’s mercy towards thee in thy thanksgivings.  Est dolus in generalibus —there is guile in generals.  It bewrays a slighty spirit, if not a false, when in confession of sin we content ourselves with a general indictment, ‘I am a sinner—a great sinner,’ and there to stop, without a particular sense of the several breaches made in the law of God. Neither is here a better symptom when a man puts God off with a compliment at distance for his good­ness and mercy in general, but takes no notice of the particular items which swell and make up the total sum.  Now, to be able to do this, it will be necessary that thou takest special notice of God’s daily provi­dence to thee and thine, yea, and to the church of Christ also.  Lay up these in thy heart, as Mary did our Saviour’s words, for the matter of thanksgiving against the time of prayer; this true good husbandry for thy soul.  You do not expect to find that money in your chest which you never laid up there; neither will you readily find in your heart to praise God for those mercies which you never committed to your memory. It is to be feared the man means not to pay that debt honestly which he doth not set down in his book.  Ps. 107, when the psalmist there had stirred them up to thankfulness for the mer­cies of God in creation and providence, his conclusion is worthy of remark, ‘Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord,’ ver. 43.  As if he had said, The reason why so little praise is given for such great works of mercy, is because men see not the lovingkindness of God in them; and they see not this because they observe not those; and they observe not those because they have not wisdom.  It is not a library that makes a scholar, but wisdom to observe and gather the choice notions out of his books.  None want mercies to bless God for.  Divine providence is a large volume, written thick and close with mercies from one end of our life to the other; but few, alas! have a heart to read in it, and fewer have wisdom to collect the choice passages of it for such a holy purpose as this is.
4. Direction.  Excite thy praising graces.  David stirs up all that is within him to praise God, Ps. 103; that is, all the powers and graces of his soul.  To instance but in two or three.

Thanksgiving, or the gratulatory part of prayer 3/3

In a word, thus the Jews in Babylon at the very first peep of day, when their deliverance began to break out, are at their praises: ‘Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them,’ Ps. 126:2.  It was now but com­ing tide, as I may say, with them; the water was newly turned, and their affairs began to look with a more smiling face, yet now they salute their infant mercy with joy and thankfulness.  May be, Christian, thou art upon a sick‑bed, and some little reviving thou hast, though far from thy former health—O bless God for this little lift of thy head from thy pillow.  May be thou hast been, as to thy spiritual state, in great dis­tress—as it were in the belly of hell—swallowed up with terrors from the Lord, but now thy agony abates; though the Comforter be not come, yet thou hast some strictures of divine light let into thy dungeon, that raise a little hope to wait for more: O, let not this handsel of mercy pass without some thankful ac­knowledgment.  Some, alas! are like great ships that cannot be set afloat but with the spring-tide and high­water of a mercy completed; if they have not all they would, they cannot see what they have, nor tune their hearts into a praiseful frame.

3. Mercies are such as are received in this life or reserved for the next—mercies in the hand or mercies in hope.  There are promises which God will have us stay till we come to heaven for the performance of, and these we are to praise God for, as well as what we receive here; bless God for what he hath laid up for thee in heaven, as well as that he lays out upon thee on earth.  The more our hearts are enlarged in thank­fulness for these mercies, which we now have only in hope, the more honour we put upon his faithful promise.  He that bestows much cost upon a house he hath in reversion, shows his confidence is great one day to be possessed of it.  When a bill of exchange is paid at sight, it shows the merchant whose it is to be a man of credit and ability.  By the joy thou takest up, and the thankfulness thou layest out for what the bare promise tells thee thou shalt at death receive, thou glorifiest the truth of God that is the promiser.
4. There are bitter mercies and sweet mercies—some mercies God gives in wine, some in worm­wood.  Now we must praise God for the bitter mercies as well as the sweet.  Thus Job, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’  Too many are prone to think nothing is a mercy that is not sweet in the going down, and leaves not a pleasant farewell on their palate; but this is the childishness of our spirits, which, as grace grows more manly, and the Christian more judicious, will wear off.  Who that understands himself will value a book by the gilt on the cover?  Truly none of our temporals—whether crosses or enjoyments—consid­ered in themselves abstractly, are either a curse or a mercy.  They are only as the covering to the book.  It is what is written in them that they must resolve us whether they be a mercy or not.  Is it an affliction that lies on thee?  If thou canst find it comes from love, and ends in grace and holiness, it is a mercy though it be bitter to thy taste.  Is it an enjoyment?  If love doth not send it, and grace end it—which appears when thou growest worse by it—it is a curse, though sweet to thy sense.  There are sweet poisons as well as bitter cordials.  The saints commonly have greater advantage from their afflictions in the world, than enjoyments of the world.  Their eyes are oftener en­lightened with wormwood than honey—those dis­pen­sations that are bitter and unpleasing to sense, than those that are sweet and luscious.
5. Mercies are either personal, or such as we re­ceive in partnership with others—and these must be recognized as well as the other.  ‘Pardon, O God,’ said he, ‘my other men’s sins.’  Thus, ‘Blessed be God,’ say thou, ‘for my other men’s mercies.’  Haply, Christian, thou hast prayed for a sick friend, and he is restored to health: for another in distress of spirit, and the Comforter at last is come to him.  Now thou who hadst an adventure in his bottom, hast a mercy also in the return that is made to him, and therefore art to bless God with him.  He that prays for his friend, and joins not with him in thankfulness when the mercy is given, is like one that is a means to bring his friend into debt, but takes no care to help him out.  Thy friend, Christian, needs thy aid much more to pay the thanks, than to borrow the mercy, because this is the harder work of the two.  But above all mercies to others, be sure church mercies and nation mercies be not forgot.

Thanksgiving, or the gratulatory part of prayer 2/3

1. Mercies are either ordinary or extraordinary—our everyday commons or exceedings, with which God now and then feasts us.  Thou must not only praise God for some extraordinary mercy which once in a year betides thee—a mercy that comes with such pomp and observation, that all thy neighbours take notice of it with thee, as the mercy which Zacharias and Elizabeth had in their son, that was ‘noised abroad throughout all the hill country,’ Luke 1:65—but also for ordinary, everyday mercies.  For,

(1.) We are unworthy of the least mercy, Gen. 32:10; and therefore God is worthy of praise for the least, because it is more than he owes us.

(2.) These common ordinary mercies are many. Thus David enhanceth the mercies of this kind: ‘O God! how great is the sum of them? if I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee,’ Ps. 139:17, 18.  As if he had said, There is not a point of time wherein thou art not doing me good; as soon as I open my eyes in the morning, I have a new theme, in some fresh mer­cies given in since I closed them overnight, to employ my praiseful meditations.  Many little items make together a great sum.  What less than a grain of sand? yet what heavier than the sand on the sea-shore?  As little sins—such as are vain thoughts and idle words —because of their multitude, arise to a great guilt and will bring in a long bill, a heavy reckoning, at last; so ordinary mercies,what they want in their size, particu­larly and individually considered, of some other great mercies, they have it compensated in their number. Who will not say that a man shows as great, yea greater, kindness to maintain one at his table with ordinary fare all the year, as in entertaining him at a great feast twice or thrice in the same time?

(3.) The sincerity of the heart is seen more in thankfulness for ordinary mercies than extraordinary. As it shows a naughty heart upon every ordinary occa­sion to fall into sin, so the soul very gracious that takes the hint of every common mercy to bless his God.  Some, they are bound up in their spirits, that none but strong physic will work upon them; they can digest little afflictions, and swallow ordinary mercies, without humbling themselves under the one or prais­ing God for the other.  That is the upright heart which gentle physic prevails with, little chastisements humble, and ordinary mercies raise to thankfulness.

2. Mercies are complete or imperfect—begun mercies, or finished.  We must not make God stay for our praises till he hath finished a mercy, but praise him at the beginning of a mercy.  We should be as ready to return our praises for a mercy, as God is to hear our prayers when begging a mercy.  Now God comes forth early to meet a praying soul: ‘At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth,’ Dan. 9:23.  ‘I said, I will confess my trans­gressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest,’ Ps. 32:5. Thus should we echo in our thankfulness to the first intimation that God gives in his providence of an approaching mercy.  If you do but hear the king is on the road toward your town, you raise your bells to ring him in, and stay not till he be entered {through} the gates.

The birds, they rise betimes in the morning, and are saluting the rising sun with their sweet notes in the air.  Thus should we strike up our harps in praising God at the first appearance of a mercy. Notable instances we have for this: Moses did not promise God, when he had saved them from Phar­aoh’s wrath and the sea’s waves, that, at his landing them safe in Canaan, and lodging his victorious colours at the end of their journey in their full rest, he would then praise him for all his mercies together. No, but he presently pens a song, and on the bank, within sight of the howling wilderness, which they were now to enter into, he sings it with Israel in thankfulness for this first handsel after their march out of Egypt.  So, II Sam. 6:13, ‘And it was so, that when they that bare the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed oxen and fatlings.’  And, I Chr. 15:26, which is a place parallel to this, and speaks of the same passage, ‘When God helped the Levites that bare the ark,...they offered seven bullocks and seven rams.’  That is, so soon as, by going a few paces or steps, they perceived God graciously to favour their enterprise—making no breach as formerly he had done upon them—they presently express their thank­fulness upon the place for this hopeful beginning, well knowing no way was better to engage God in the continuance and enlargement of this mercy, than by a praiseful entertainment thereof at its first approach.

Thanksgiving, or the gratulatory part of prayer 1/3

Second. The second of the twofold division of the whole matter of prayer, viz. thanksgiving.  In handling of this I shall still keep my former method.

First. I shall show what we are to return praises and thanks to God for.  Second. How we are to frame our thanksgiving we return.

What we are to praise and thank God for

First.  I shall show what we are to return praises and thanks to God for.  Now the object of thanksgiv­ing, as of requests, is something that is good, but un­der another notion. We ask what we want; we bless and praise God for the mercies we have received, or for the hope we have from the promise that we shall in due time receive them.  So that we see the Chris­tian hath as large a field for the exercise of his thank­fulness in praising God, as he hath in the petitionary part of prayer for his desires.  This duty circumscribes heaven and earth; it takes both worlds within its circumference.  As God does nothing but he aims at his own glory thereby, Prov. 16:4; so no act of God to­wards his people, wherein he intends not their good, and as such becomes the subject of their thanksgiving. Hence we are bid ‘in everything give thanks.’  O what a copious theme hath God given his people to enlarge their meditations upon—‘in everything!’  The whole course and series of divine providence towards the saints is like a music‑book, in every leaf whereof there is a song ready pricked for them to learn and sing to the praise of their God.  No passage in their life of which they can say, ‘In this I received no mercy for which I should bless God.’  Now, as a partial obedi­ence is not good, so partial thanks is stark naught. Not that any saint is able to keep all the commands, or reckon up all the mercies of God, much less return particular and express acknowledgement for every single mercy.  But, as he hath respect to all the commandments, Ps. 119:6, so he desires to value highly every mercy, and to his utmost power give God the praise of all his mercies.  ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?’ Ps. 116:12. This is an honest soul indeed; he would not sink any debt he owes to God, but calls his soul to an account for all his benefits, not this or that.  The skipping over one note in a lesson may spoil the grace of the music; unthankfulness for one mercy disparageth our thanks for the rest.  But to sort the mercies of God into several ranks, that you may see more distinctly your work in this duty lie before you.

Third kind of petitionary prayer—the imprecatory 3/3

(1.) Matter of comfort to the saints against those direful imprecations which the wicked world belcheth out against them.  The saints in this sense are a cursed people.  The wicked make the greatest part of the world; the church is a little flock, but her enemies a huge herd; and these cannot wish well to the saints.  Cain, as Luther saith, will hate and kill Abel to the end of the world; the same spirit that was in him remaineth in his seed.  Sometimes when the church of God flourisheth, and hath the sun of outward pros­perity on her side, they may cry hosanna in the crowd—as Shimei, when David was going up the hill of honour, then he could worship the rising sun, and crouch to him whom he had bitterly cursed in his distress—but when ‘they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly’ in their heart, Ps. 62:4.  A wicked man cannot wish well to a saint as a saint, as, on the contrary, a saint cannot bless the wicked as such.  ‘Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the Lord,’ Ps. 129:8.  They do, indeed, desire their conver­sion, and therein wish them well, but in the wicked way they are in at present they cannot bless them.  So the wicked can desire the saints should come over to their party, do as they do, and then they would ap­plaud and hug them.  But, let the saints keep close to God, and refuse to run into riot and excess with them, and they are sure to meet with their curse and imprecation; it is not their unblamable and peaceable will free them from their wrath and fury.  ‘I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me,’ Jer. 15:10. But fear not, thou who art a saint, their imprecations. This is but anathema secundum dici; like false fire in the pan of an uncharged gun, it gives a crack but hurts not.  God’s blessing will cover thee from their curse; ‘Let them curse, but bless thou,’ Ps. 109:28.  When the viper flew out of the fire upon Paul’s hand, the bar­barians looked that he should presently drop down dead, but it proved no such matter.  Thus the ene­mies of God and his people have looked one genera­tion after another, when the church, that hath been always laden with their curses, should perish under them; but it lives yet to walk over the graves of all those that have wished it ill.  Alas, poor wretches! what is your imprecation worth?  Truly as your bles­sing can do no good, so neither your curse any hurt, till you can get God to set his seal and say amen to it; which is impossible for you to obtain.

           Did our Saviour so sharply rebuke the rash request of his disciples, calling for fire to fall on them whom they thought deserved it? and will he gratify the lust of your devilish wrath and fury against his own dear people, by pouring on them what you auda­ciously, yea blasphemously, desire of him?  Will nothing serve you but to have God your executioner to hang whom you condemn? and those no other than his dear children, and for nought else but because they dare not be as wicked as yourselves?  Go bid the tender mother imbrue her hands in the blood of her sweet babe, that even now came out of her womb, and now lies at her breast; or the husband betray and deliver the wife of his bosom into the hands of murderers that wait for her life.  Would these be an errand to make the messenger that brings them welcome to loving mother or husband?  But if any such anomalies in nature’s grammar and monsters among men were to be found, yet remember he is a God thou solicitest whose nature is unchange­able and covenant with his people inviolable.  How was God courted by Balak and Balaam with altar after altar, from place to place!  But all to no purpose: ‘Nevertheless the Lord thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee,’ Deut. 23:5.  Never was any design carried on with more zeal and passionate desire to effect it than this; one would think that God had said enough to Balaam at first to make him sick of his enterprise, as a thing infeasible, Num. 22:12: ‘Thou shalt not go with them; thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed.’  But the liked the work and loved the wages, and therefore baffles his conscience, not telling the messengers all that God said to him, and they also report not all to Balak what Balaam said to them, so loath were both the work should fall: yet we see by the event, that they took but pains to lose their labour, nay worse, to lose themselves, for God made them, and him that set them on this work, to drink the curse which they would so fain have brewed for Israel.

           (2.) A word to the wicked.  Take heed that by your implacable hatred to the truth and church of God, yo do not engage her prayers against you.  These imprecatory prayers of the saints, when shot at the right mark, and duly put up, they are murdering pieces, and strike dead where they light.  ‘Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?  I tell you that he will avenge them speedily,’ Luke 18:7, 8.  They are not empty words—as the imprecations of the wicked poured into the air, and there vanish with their breath—but are received into heaven, and shall be sent back with thunder and lightning upon the pates of the wicked.  David’s prayer unravelled Ahithophel's fine-spun policy, and twisted his halter for him.  The prayers of the saints are more to be feared—as once a great person said and felt—than an army of twenty thousand men in the field.  Esther’s fast hastened Haman's ruin, and Hezekiah’s against Sennacherib brought his huge host to the slaughter, and fetched an angel from heaven to do the execution in one night upon them.

Third kind of 1/ petitionary prayer—the imprecatory 2/3

3. When praying against the persons of those that are open enemies to God and his church, it is safest to pray indefinitely and in general: ‘Let them all be confounded...that hate Zion,’ Ps. 129:5; because we know not who of them are implacable, and who not, and therefore cannot pray absolutely and per­emptorily against particular persons.  There may be an elect vessel for a time in open hostility against God and his church, whom afterward God may conse­crate to himself by converting grace, and so make him a holy vessel for the use of his sanctuary.  We do, it is confessed, find some in Scripture prayed against by name.  So Moses prayed against Korah and his comp­lices, Num. 16:15; and Paul against Alexander the cop­persmith, ‘The Lord reward him according to his works;’ but these and other in the Scripture had an extraordinary spirit, and not to be patterns for us in this case.  Elias called for fire from heaven upon the captains, but the disciples were soundly chid for a preposterous imitation of this act, who had not his spirit, ‘Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,’ Luke 9:55.  Pray thou for vengeance against all the im­placable enemies of God, and leave him to direct thy arrow to its mark. Ahab was hit, though the arrow was shot at a venture by one that may be thought not of him.  Prayers are sorted in heaven before their answer returns.  Some of those emperors for whom the church in the primitive times prayed, yet proving implacable enemies to God and his people, felt the weight of those imprecations, which in general they put up against the adversaries of the truth.

1. In praying against the implacable enemies of God and his church, the glory of God should be prin­cipally aimed at, and vengeance on them in order to that.  ‘Arise, O Lord, and let thine enemies be scat­tered.’  As the sun, when it hath dispelled the vapours that muffled it up from our sight, breaks out in the glory of its beams; so God, by taking vengeance on his enemies, and scattering them in their wicked imagina­tions with which they endeavoured to obscure his glory in the world, doth display and make visible the splendour of his attributes before his people’s eyes. The saddest consequence which attends the pros­perity and success of God’s enemies in the world, is their pride and blasphemy against God, his truth, and church.  Then they belch out their horrid blasphemies against heaven; then they mock the poor saints, and pierce them with the sharp sword of their mocking language, while they say unto them, ‘Where is now their God?’  But when God takes to himself power and strength, and confounds these giants and sons of the earth, by tumbling destruction upon their heads in the midst of their wicked enterprises; when he recoils their own plots they have charged against his church upon themselves—making them go off like a pistol in their pocket—to procure their own death and ruin; now the reproach is taken off, and they have an answer given to their question, ‘Where is now your God?’  He is at their throat, he is with his sword of vengeance vindicating his glorious name upon them.  When Julian the Apostate was slain—and con­fessed at whose hand he received his fatal blow, in crying, vicisti Galilæ—thou hast conquered, O Gali­lean—then Libænius, his scoffing sophister, had his question, ‘What is the carpenter’s son now a do­ing?’ —which a little before he had put to a Christian in scorn of his Saviour—thrown in his teeth to the confusion of his face, and found the Christian’s answer—that he was making a coffin for his master —prove truer than he was aware of.  It cannot but be a joyful day to a saint, that prizeth the honour of his God above his own life, when he sees even the wicked —that before denied a providence, and thought all events were thrown out of blind fortune’s lap, as if the world were but a lottery, wherein everyone had his portion by chance—now forced by the remarkable appearance of his power and wisdom in saving his people, and destroying his implacable enemies, to confess, ‘Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth,’ Ps. 58:11.  The exaltation of the glorious name of God, every saint doth, and should, aim at, in the prayers wherein he imprecates vengeance.  ‘Let them be confound­ed...let them be put to shame, and perish, that men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art the most high over all the earth,’ Ps. 83:17, 18.  Now from this head of imprecatory prayer, there is—

           

Third kind of petitionary prayer—the imprecatory 1/3

           Third. Imprecatory prayer; wherein the Chris­tian imprecates the vengeance of God upon the ene­mies of God and his people.  On such a sad and sol­emn errand are the saints’ prayers sometimes sent to heaven, and speed as effectually as when they go to obtain blessings for themselves and the church of God.  And no wonder, for they are perfumed with Christ’s merits, and thereby are as acceptable to God as any other they put up in his name.  ‘And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God,’ Rev. 8:4.  Now what kind of prayers these were is clear by the next words, ‘And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake,’ ver. 5.  By which is signified the dreadful judgments which God in answer to his saints’ prayers would bring upon the wicked world, whose bloody persecutions of the church, and fury against the truth of God, made the saints to cry to heaven for vengeance upon them; and that it should come inevitably come as thunder, lightning, and earthquakes, that can be resisted by no power or policy of the greatest monarch on earth.  Thus, as at the firing of some cannon planted against a city, you may see its turrets or wall come tumbling down; so, upon the prayers of the saints, great judgments were certainly to befall the enemies of God and his church. Now, the path wherein the Christian is here to tread being very narrow, he is to be the more cautious that he steps not awry.  He is, in this part of prayer which is imprecatory, like one that drives a chariot on the brow of a steep hill, who, if he hath not the quicker eye and steadier hand, may soon spoil all.  The high­est strains of a saint’s duty run nearest the most dan­gerous precipices, as the most mysterious truths are soonest perverted into the most damnable errors.  I shall therefore first lay down a few particulars which may serve as a rail to compass in this duty, for the better securing the Christian from falling into any miscarriage about it.

1. Take heed thou dost not make thy private particular enemies the object of thy imprecation.  We have no warrant, when any wrong us, presently to go and call for fire from heaven upon them.  We are bid, indeed, to heap coals upon our enemy’s head, but they are of love, not of wrath and revenge.  Job sets a black brand upon this, and clears himself from the imputation of so great a sin: ‘If I rejoiced at the des­truction of him that hated me,...neither have I suffered my mouth to sin by wishing a curse to his soul,’ Job 31:29, 30.  He durst not wish his enemy ill, much less deliberately form a wish into a prayer, and desire God to curse him.  Our Saviour hath taught us a more excellent way: ‘Bless them that curse you,...and pray for them which despitefully use you,’ Matt. 5:44.  I know this is counted a poor sheepish spirit by many of our gallants.  Go pray for them? No, send them the glove rather, and be revenged on them in a duel by shedding their blood.  This is the drink-offering which these sons of pride delight to pour out to their revenge.  Or, curse them to the pit of hell with their God damn them oaths!  O tremble at such a spirit as this!  The ready way to fetch a curse from heaven on thyself, is to imprecate one sinfully upon another.  ‘As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones,’ Ps. 109:17, 18.  Moses, I suppose, has as noble a spirit as any of these that style them such men of honour; yet, did he draw upon Aaron, or fall a cursing of Miriam, when they had used him so unworthily?  I trow not, but bears all pa­tiently.  Nay, when God declares his displeasure against Miriam for this affront put upon him, see how this holy man intercedes for her with God, Num. 12. This is valour of the right make, to overcome evil with good, and instead of seeking revenge on him that wrongs us, to get the mastery of our own corruption so far as to desire his good the more.  Thus our Lord, when he was numbered amongst transgressors, even then ‘made intercession for the transgressors,’ Isa. 53:12; that is, those very men which used him so bloodily, while they were digging his heart out of his body with their instruments of cruelty, then was he begging the life of their souls with his fervent prayers.
2. When thou prayest against the enemies of God and his church, direct thy prayers rather against their plots than person.  Thus the apostles, ‘And now, Lord, behold their threatenings,’ Acts 4:29.  Not, ‘con­found their persons,’ but, ‘behold their threatenings;’ and so they leave their case with the Lord to right it for them.  So David, ‘O Lord, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness,’ II Sam. 15:31. Indeed, did do more, he destroyed plot and plotter also; and in this sense the saints may oft say with the prophet, ‘Thou hast done terrible things we looked not for’—by pouring out his vengeance on the per­sons, when they have only prayed against their wicked designs.

Second object of deprecatory prayer - How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings 4/4

   It was the speech of a gracious woman when on the very marches of death: ‘O Lord, send me not to hell among such filthy company, which thou knowest I have not liked on earth.’  But as for those that can fadge very well with their lusts, and the company of the wicked here, I know not how they can thus depre­cate that place where they shall meet with that which pleaseth them so much on earth.  David, Ps. 26, first protests his abhorrency against the ways and society of the wicked: ‘I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers; I have hated the congregation of evil-doers; and will not sit with the wicked,’ ver. 4, 5: then his zeal for God, and delight he had in his house to praise and serve him, ver. 6-8.  After which, he breaks out into this prayer, ‘Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men,’ ver. 9.  As if he had said, I am not of their knot in my life, O let me not be of their bundle at my death.  I have praised thee on earth, send me not to blaspheme thee in hell.  I have loved the habitations of thy house here, let me not dwell with unclean spirits hereafter.

           (b) Hell is a state of separation from the blissful presence of God.  Pray to be delivered from it under this notion—as it is the last, yea, everlasting excommunication of the creature from God.  ‘Go, ye cursed,’ that is, never to see my sweet face more—called therefore ‘outer darkness,’ because not the least beam or stricture of his favour to enlighten the souls of the damned, nor the least crevice is left open for hope to expect it.  The heat of hell-fire is not so dismal, as the want of this light.  This makes them cursed; ‘Go, ye cursed.’  The curse lies in their depar­ture from God, the fountain of all blessing.  All be­sides this were tolerable.  Would God cast but one kind look upon those miserable souls, as they swim in this lake of fire and brimstone, it were able to change the property of the place, and the joy thereof were enough to take away the sense of their torment.  The three worthies in Daniel could walk in the fire, having God to bear them company, as if they had been only in the sunshine.  That which a saint prizeth most in heaven is the presence of God: ‘So shall we ever be with the Lord,’ I Thes. 4:17.  And hell is most dreaded by them, because a gulf is fixed between the souls in it and God, that no communion can be had with him to all eternity.  O how few pray against hell under this notion! how few cry out with David, ‘Cast me not away from thy presence!’ Ps. 51:11.  If this were the thing above all they feared should befall them in the other world, would they so willingly live without ac­quaintance with God in this world?  Surely no.

           (c) Hell is a state wherein the damned can never actually satisfy God’s justice; for their debt being infinite, and they, because creatures, but finite, will ever be paying.  But the last farthing can never be paid, which is the only reason they lie forever in prison, because it can never be said, ‘Now God hath his due.’  But Christ, the saints’ pay-master, dis­charged their whole debt at once, and took in the bond, which he nailed to his cross, leaving no back-reckoning unpaid, to bring the believer afterward into any danger from the hands of divine justice. Now, as an ingenuous debtor desires his freedom at his cred­itor’s hands, that thereby he may be capable of paying his debt, as well as to escape the misery that himself should endure by his imprisonment; so an ingenuous soul—and such is every saint—deprecates hell, as well with an eye to God’s glory, as to his own ease and happiness.  Lord, saith the sincere soul, if thou pack­est me away to hell, there I shall pay thee, it is true, by my just torments something in a dribbling way by retail, but never be able to discharge the whole sum; but at Christ’s hands thou mayest receive to the full what thy justice can demand at mine, and also make me thy poor creature a trumpeter of thy praise to eternity.  O send me not to blaspheme thee among that wretched crew of damned souls and unclean spirits, who so much desire to join with the choir of holy angels and saints in singing hallelujahs to thy holy and glorious name.

Second object of deprecatory prayer - How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings 3/4

   (d) Thou mayest not only deprecate these evils in thy affections, but also pray believingly for a happy issue out of them all.  The darkest lane of suffering shall, to the saint, have a lightsome end.  And all, we say, is well that ends well.  ‘Ye have heard of the pa­tience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful,’ James 5:11.  This is that which God so fully intends in all his saints’ troubles, that he takes pleasure in thinking of it beforehand: ‘I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace,’ Jer. 29:11.  And that petition comes in a happy time to court, which finds the king thinking of the very business it prays for.

           (2.) Eternal suffering.  The second kind of suf­fering is eternal in hell.  This is the center in which all the lines of sin and of misery meet—the common shoal into which they all disgorge themselves, as rivers do their streams into the vast ocean.  And as rivers, when they are fallen into the sea, lose their several names in one that comprehends them all—the ocean; so all the evils of this life, when resolved into this, forget their private names—sickness, pains, poverty, &c,—and are called hell.  Not that these are all for­mally and literally there, but virtually, in that the torment of the damned doth not only amount to, but, beyond expression, exceed them all.  As in heaven there is no belly-cheer, yet a feast; no silks and satins worn, yet all in glorious robes; as silver is in gold, and gold in a jewel, so all these are in heaven—because that which is of infinite more value and worth than such things as are of highest reckoning on earth. Thus the great miseries of this life are incomparably less than the least torment of hell.  Never can the creature say he is completely miserable, till the devouring jaws of that infernal pit inclose him.  Were the worst of his punishment what he feels here, he might in a manner bless himself; as Paul, on the contrary saith, he should judge the saint miserable above others, if all his hope were here.  But there is the sinner’s easeless endless state.  There is not so much as one well day to release him a while from his pain, but he shall con­tinue forever in the height of his paroxysm; no change of weather or hope of clearing, but a perpetual storm set in to rain fire and brimstone upon him to all eternity, for so long it will be before the arm of the Almighty is weary of pouring out his wrath, or his heart be brought in love with sin, and reconciled to the sinner.  Now, in deprecating this, we should endeavour to keep this threefold notion of hell in our thoughts, for which above all we are to desire to be delivered from it.

           (a) Conceive of hell as a state of sin as well as of suffering, yea, in its utmost height.  Earth is a middle place betwixt heaven and hell.  Neither sin in the wicked, nor grace in the saint, come here to their full ripeness.  Grace being an outlandish slip brought from heaven’s paradise, riseth not to its just height and procerity Tallness; highth of stature. — From Webster’s, till it be transplanted and set in its native climate from whence it came.  And sin, being a brat of hell, comes not to its full complexion and monstrosity, till it be sent back to the place it came from.  Here poor wretches are tolled on to sin by the pleasure it promiseth.  But there they sin out of mal­ice, for nothing else can invite them where this morsel is eaten with such sour sauce.  On earth the sinner is maidenly, and conceals the venom that is bagged in his heart; but in hell he spits it out in blasphemies against heaven. In a word, here he sins with wavering thoughts, and some weak purposes of repenting, but there he is as desperate as the devil himself—hard­ened beyond all relenting.  Now, under this notion, thou shouldst pray to be delivered from hell, that thou mayest never be one of that damned crew, who think it not enough to fight against God their Maker on earth, but carry the war with them into the other world also, and there continue their feud with implac­able enmity to eternity.  Certainly the saints—to whom the notions of sin in this life are so grievous, above all the crosses and losses that befall them, and who count a few years’ neighbourhood among the wicked so great an affliction, that they cry, ‘Woe is me, that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar’—must needs deprecate that dismal state with their utmost vehemency of spirit, wherein they should be everlastingly yoked with sin, and cooped up with unclean sinners, both which they loathe so perfectly.

        

Second object of deprecatory prayer - How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings 2/4

  [2.] Affirmatively—how he may and should pray against sufferings; and in these particulars following.

           (a) Deprecate the vindictive justice and wrath of God in all temporal sufferings.  Thus Jeremiah shapes his prayer, ‘O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing,’ Jer. 10:24, and, ch. 17:17, ‘Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.’  He declines not suffering but deprecates wrath.  As if he had said, ‘Let trouble come, but not with this message—to tell me thou art mine enemy; shoot thy darts, my breast is open to re­ceive them; but let them not be envenomed arrows headed with thy punitive justice.’  Without this sting all suffering is innocent and harmless.  But if the creature does fear—though without just cause—that they are shot out of justice's bow, then they drink up his spirits and exanimate him presently.  ‘When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth,’ Ps. 39:11.  That holy woman, I Kings 17:18, was not so much distressed for her son's death as for the reflec­tion this sad providence made upon her conscience: ‘Art thou come...to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?’  Thou canst not therefore be too passionately importunate in deprecating this.

           (b) Deprecate the snare and temptation that suf­fering may expose thee to.  Satan commonly finds it easy to make some sinful impression upon the saint when he is heated, and his ‘heart made soft,’ as Job phraseth it, ‘in the furnace of affliction.’  He is a rare Christian in whom the stream of his grace runs clear upon such royling.  Job was a man of a thousand —God’s nonesuch: ‘None like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man,’ Job 1:8; yet bewrayed many weaknesses in his troubles, and would have done more, had not God in pity to his poor servant taken the devil off before he had quite run him down. Christ teacheth us to pray against suffering under the notion of temptation: ‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.’  That is, let us not be led into sin when we fall into suffering, let us not fall into thy hands and Satan’s together.  This discovers a holy frame of heart—to be more tender of our conscience than skin; not so much to fear affliction from God, as, left in it, we should be have ourselves unseemly and unholily towards him.  Agur is not so much ashamed to beg as afraid to steal, and so take the name of his God in vain, upon which account he chiefly prays against poverty, Prov. 30:8, 9.  There is nothing lost by serving God first and preferring his honour before our own private interest in our prayers. Self‑denial is the best for self‑seeking; for, by neg­lecting ourselves for God's sake, we oblige him to take the care of us upon himself, and he is the only happy man who hath his stake laid up in God’s hands.

           (c) Deprecate the excess of suffering—that thou beest not overladen, thy burden too heavy for thy back.  This is promised.  Thou mayest therefore pre­sent it in faith: ‘I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure;’ Jer. 46:28.  The patient doth not intrench upon the physician’s art by desiring him to proportion his dose according to the weakness of his body, if, when he hath done this, he acquiesceth in his skill and faith­fulness for the same.  Indeed, to desire God to con­sider our weakness, and then not to rely on his wis­dom and care, but continue jealous and suspicious, or to murmur at his prescriptions, as if the physic he gives were too churlish and strong, this makes a dis­honourable reflection upon God.  Sometimes the physician exceeds the proportion that his fearful pa­tient thinks strong enough, but withal tells him, ‘You are not so weak as you take yourself to be.  Your body may bear so many grains more in the composition. Leave me to my art and all shall be well.’  Thus God, who knows our frame exactly, deals with his people, and is highly pleased to see them satisfied with what he orders them out: ‘In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly,’ Job 1:22; @Û6 §*T6,< •ND@Fb<0< Jè 2,è—so the Septuagint reads it—he did not impute folly to God; indeed the word {Hebrew Characters Omitted} (tiphlah), is a noun.  The meaning of the place is, Job did not make any unworthy reflection upon God for the evils he suf­fered by his providence, as if anything were wanting in his care or wisdom, like some rash physician, who fails either in timing or tempering his physic.