communion of saints, and wholsome discipline, and what sweet intercourse with thyself in all? now, Lord, thou hast threatened, and in part executed this spiritual plague, the famine of thy word, obstructing and removing ordinances, and thy hand is still upon us; thy end is not attained; Papists threaten to darken our heaven and totally to put out our lights, and thyself seemest to menace the complete removal of our candlestick; stop, O Lord! execute not thy whole displeasure. Alas! shall we be that cursed generation, that must again be involved in worse than Egyptian darkness? Alas! who shall live when God doth this? God forbid that we should outlive this bright sunshine of the gospel, that we should not be heirs of our fathers' spiritual privileges, as well as earthly patrimonies. Oh! when these are lost, we must sadly sigh and say, what have our forefathers been doing that they have deprived us of the means of our soul's good? Must they and we meet in hell? they for non-improvement, we for nonenjoyment? Woe is to us! cursed children of cursed parents! Lord, if we have not peace, or plenty, let us have the gospel of peace and true piety; the gospel of grace, and grace by the gospel, and then we shall say, "the lines are fallen to us in pleasant places, we have a goodly heritage," Psal. xvi. 6. 4. Aged persons and householders. You that are parents have reason to lament after the Lord of the ark, and the ark of the Lord, that the waters of the sanctuary may run both with a clear and strong current to your families and posterity. Alas! we that have children, have been instrumental in propagating depravity and guilt, and wrath to our offspring, and what can we do to heal and help them? But if the Lord be our God, he hath promised to be the God of our seed. God forbid we should entail a curse on our posterity, and give them occasion to curse us to all eternity. What unworthy parents are those that have fair estates left them, and by their prodigality leave their children beggars or bankrupts! But oh! how sad would it be to deprive our posterity of this gospellegacy? it would be both their loss and our own. Lord, suffer us not to go off the stage in a snuff, and leave such a stench behind us. Better we had never been born, than to blaze and be consumed in hell flames, we and our descendants of following generations bundled up in faggots together. God thinks good to bind up parents and their seed in the bond of the covenant. O Lord! we are resolved to follow after thee for the sure mercies of David. Be thou our God, and we shall have better hopes for our seed. O remember that word, Isa. lix. 21, "As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord, my Spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever." This word is full and satisfying: -Thy Spirit shall be upon me and mine in sanctification. -Thy words in my mouth, and children's mouths in profession, and solemn worship. They shall not depart from my seed's seed to many generations. -No, not for ever. God, even Jehovah undertakes this. It is through Christ the Redeemer that is come to Sion. - It is a new covenant mercy. And it doth concern all converts, even such as turn from transgression in Jacob; and am not I one of these? My dear Lord, make thou this word good to me and mine, thou that livest for ever and ever. I shall live in my posterity, when I shall be here no more, let the gospel message survive me, and the gospel grace live in them when I am gone. Oh! cut not off thy kindness from my seed; let not them that follow me be deprived of that which I have found so much sweetness in. O that my Ishmaels may live in thy sight!* What will become of such as are born in sin, if they want means of conviction and conversion? There is much ado to awaken the sleepy consciences of our dead posterity under quickening ordinances. O what then would become of these, if such helps were gone? How could I endure to see or foresee the destruction of my own offspring? Oh! it cuts me to the heart to think of the damnation of any, much more those of my own flesh: Lord prevent. I will pray in hope, live in hope, die in hope of the continuance of gospel privileges. 5. Ministers must make it their work to lament after the Lord. You, you are the persons mainly concerned; you must sound an alarm to awake others; you are appointed by the Lord as instruments to carry on this work; and if ever God do return, he will excite his servants to rouse themselves and others to this exercise; as Samuel did here, "Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God."† Yea, let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, "Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them; wherefore should they say among the people, where is their God? Alas my brethren! have you been so long cast out of God's public work and worship, even twenty long years, and have you not yet learned to lament? Shall our master discard us from his service, and not judge us worthy to blow our trumpets of rams' horns, or break a pitcher, or hold + Joel i. 13. + Joel ii. 17. • Gen. xvii. 18. a lamp for him?* Surely he is very sorely provoked, shall I say, three shepherds he cut off in one month? † nay, near three thousand in one day: and hath drawn out his wrath to a great length, and is there no fault in us? Yes, certainly our Father would not have fixed such a brand, or poured so much contempt upon us, upon us particularly, but he must have found great fault in us; he hath doubtless seen much amiss in us. He doth not use to single out a class of men to shoot his arrows at, without cause; we cannot excuse instruments, but certainly we have deserved all this at God's hands; is not God punishing Eli's house for the iniquity he knoweth of? Let us, my brethren, deal faithfully and impartially with ourselves before God and the world, cast the first stone at ourselves, and at last justify the Lord, by taking shame to ourselves. Hath God set us in this office only to tell others of their faults? Have we not reason to call to remembrance our own faults this day? I hope such as are truly gracious have made this reflection many times. Nor is it my present design to rake in this muddy channel; only it becomes us to inquire why God hath made us contemptible before all the people, Mal. ii. 1 -9. My present object is to excite our lamenting after the Lord, that if it be possible we may fetch him again. I may say as the prophet, Mal. i. 9, "And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us. This hath been by your means." O it is well if our people have not reason to say so of their ministers, (howbeit sincere repentance will not make men throw it off themselves by laying it on others,) but we may sadly echo, yes, yes, it hath been by our means, we have put out our candles, by the thief we have lodged therein; we have obscured our glory by ‡ 1 Sam. iii. 13. * Josh. vi. 8. + Zech. xi. 8. sinning; we have robbed our people of the ark, and exposed them to seduction and destruction by the abominations that have been found amongst us. Let us fall earnestly to our work of preaching, reforming, praying, and calling God again; who knows but if we mourn among our people, they may lament also? * Our watery eyes may affect the people's hard hearts. If the fishers mourn and such as angle at the brooks lament, † our people will be moved, and God will hear our universal cry, and awake for us. Some will needs have our wearing black to import our mourning; if so, let us not be hypocrites, but lament indeed, not merely in show. Some observe, that people are much formed after the preaching, examples, and dispositions of their teachers: but it is to be feared, they will sooner dance after our mirth-stirring pipes, than mourn after our pious elegies: however God forbid the blame or blemish should proceed from us. "For Zion's sake let us not hold our peace, and for Jerusalem's sake let us not rest until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth," Isa. lxii. 1. For God saith, ver. 6, 7, "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace, day nor night. Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." 6. Magistrates, supreme and subordinate, should lament after the Lord. It is not a work below them, though they may think it a work above us, to remind them of it; but humble persons have been monitors to mighty princes. An inconsiderable page rouseth up Philip, king of Macedon with this admonition, "Remember, sir, you are a man." Daniel's counsel was seasonable (he wisheth it may be acceptable) to the * Matt. xi. 17. + Isaiah xix. 8. |