whereof His Magistrates are but the instruments to convey it to you, and therefore you cannot despise them, but you must needs despise it too; which if you do, He will soon withdraw it from you, and be no longer your God.

There are many other sins too common among us, as blaspheming of God's Name, profanation of His Sabbath, neglecting of His Public Ordinances, drunkenness, uncleanness, perjury, cozenage, oppression, and many others, too many to be here named; which may justly provoke God to forsake and cast us off from being any longer His peculiar people: which therefore that He may not do, as it concerns you all to avoid them, so in a particular manner it concerns you, whom the Most High God is pleased to entrust with the government of this city, to use the utmost of your power and authority to restrain them. And verily you have both all the reason and encouragement in the world to do it, as considering from Whom you receive your power, and for what end it is conferred upon you; for, seeing the Lord Jehovah Himself, of His infinite mercy in Jesus Christ, is pleased to be the God of this land, and of this city in a peculiar manner, the constitution of all its magistrates and governors must needs be acknowledged to belong immediately unto Him. Though the election of them be in the commonalty, He disposeth their hearts and affections so as to choose whom He pleaseth; and seeing it is the Most High God Himself that investeth you with this power, you need not fear but whatsoever difficulties may occur, He will stand by you and assist you in the due execution of it. Be strong, therefore, and of a good courage (Deut. 31. in defending your Lord and Master's cause against His adversaries, even in suppressing all manner of vice and wickedness, and expelling it, if possible, from amongst His people; which if ye shall neglect to do, you will bear the sword in vain, and frustrate the end of your constitution. For, wherefore doth the Lord confer this power upon you, but that you should exercise it for Himself, in giving vice its condign punishment, as well as virtue its just reward? For the Apostle tells you, that you "are the ministers of God," His revengers to execute "wrath upon them that Rom. 13. 4. do evil." This is the work that He hath put into your

CXLI.

SERM. hands, and you act but under Him in the doing of it. In His Name, therefore, and for His sake, set yourselves in good earnest upon the performance of this great trust that is committed to you, that so the Lord may still continue to be our God, and delight to dwell amongst us.

Which that He may do, let me also in His Name beseech and advise you all in your several places, degrees, and stations in the city, to endeavour to the utmost of your power to serve and please God; content not yourselves any longer with the bare profession of that excellent religion you are baptized into, but live up unto the practice of it. Carry yourselves, as God's peculiar people indeed, zealous of good works, devoting yourselves, and all you have, wholly to His service and honour; for that end, redress the evils before spoken of, provide yourselves places fit for so great, so holy, so divine a work, as the worshipping of your God, and therein perform your public devotions to Him with all manner of reverence and godly fear. Let fraud and avarice, pride and luxury, be expelled from among you; and as for atheism and profaneness, irreligion and debauchery, let it not be so [Heb. 12. much as named amongst you. "Follow peace with all 14.] men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." Be ye loyal to your sovereign, submissive to your governors, and thankful for the care which under God they take of you. Be you kind and helpful to one another, faithful to your friends, loving to your enemies, charitable to the poor, and just to all. Oh, that we might once see this city thus flourishing in all true piety and virtue! How happy should we then be! so happy as still to be a "people whose God is the Lord."

Which God grant we may be, in, and through the merits of Jesus Christ, to Whom with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, both now and for ever.

SERMON CXLII.

THE DUTY OF THINKING UPON GOD.

PSALM X. 4.

God is not in all his Thoughts.

If we consider man in his first estate, as he was designed and created by the eternal God, we may justly admire at the excellency of his composure and endowments; all the powers and faculties of his soul being so contrived, that they ran exactly parallel in their finite capacities to that infinite perfection of God Himself: so that he conceived of every thing as God conceives of it, understanding all things as far as his finite intellect could reach, as God understands them; willing only what He wills, loving what He loves, and rejoicing only in what He rejoiceth in and though his soul was carried about in an earthly vehicle, yet it was noways clogged or hindered, much less diverted or seduced by it, his body being perfectly subject to, and punctually observing and following the motions of his soul; his superior and rational part exercising an entire dominion over the inferior and sensitive appetite, so that there was a perfect harmony betwixt God and man, His image and similitude being exactly pourtrayed and enstamped upon man, who by consequence was as pure, as holy, as wise, as good, as happy, every way as perfect, as the Angels themselves were, or any creature could possibly be.

But alas! where shall we now find such a man? Nowhere certainly, but in Heaven. For all mankind upou

CXLII.

SERM. earth are quite another thing; being all so strangely corrupted and depraved both in their principles and practices, that they are every whit as simple and wicked, as they were at first made to be wise and holy. How strangely are all the faculties of our souls altered from their primitive constitution! Our understandings darkened, our judgments deceived, our consciences debauched, our wills perverted, our affections disordered, and by consequence, all the motions and acts of our souls turned upside down from what they were at first designed to be! Our sensitive appetites domineering and lording it over reason, our flesh warring against the spirit and subduing it too; so that instead of being like to God and His holy Angels, we are now degenerated into the likeness of the devils and impure spirits; so that generally, we are become as proud, as envious, as unjust, as malicious, every way as wicked and sinful, as much averse from good and inclined to evil, as the very fiends of hell themselves. Neither is it thus only with the more barbarous and savage part of mankind, that never had the oracles of God committed to them, nor the light of the Gospel shining upon them as we have had; but even amongst ourselves, who have the Scriptures, the Sacraments, the ordinances of Almighty God entrusted with us; who have His will and pleasure most clearly revealed unto us; who have the Gospel of Christ continually sounding in our ears; yet what impiety towards God, what contempt of His word, what irreverence in His presence, what uncharitableness to the poor, what pride and avarice, what hypocrisy and censoriousness, what wickedness and debaucheries of all sorts are to be seen commonly amongst ourselves! Insomuch, that we that pretend so much to know God, and enjoy the Gospel, are for the most part as wicked and impious as they that never heard either of God or Gospel.

When I thus consider sometimes seriously with myself the vast difference betwixt the primitive and degenerate estate of mankind, I cannot but wonder with myself, how it comes to pass, that we, who were made so conformable to the laws and nature of the chiefest good, should now become not unlike only, but altogether contrary to what we were; as much averse from good and inclined to evil, as ever we were averse from evil and inclined to good; and this too, notwithstanding

the clear knowledge that we have, or may have, of God Himself, and our duty to Him. And when I have searched and considered all things, I can find nothing which I can resolve this strange degeneracy of mankind so much into, as into their not thinking of God aright, as the great and principal cause of most of the actual sins which they indulge themselves in, and the chief reason, too, why our actual sins are so often multiplied into habits; even because, as David here saith, "God is not in all their thoughts;" so he here describes a

All his thoughts",אין אלהים כל מזמותיו,wicked man, saying

are that there is no God:" so these words may be expounded according to that other expression of the Psalmist, "The Ps. 14. 1. fool hath said in his heart there is no God." And therefore, saith he there, "They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doth good:" but our translation seems to give the more proper interpretation of the words, "God is not in all his thoughts:" so the Syriac expressly renders them, "God is not in all of his thoughts;" with which the Arabic agrees in sense, translating them, “God is not before him." And so the Septuagint, Oux ioriv ó ☺sòs évúπiov aurav, "God is never in his sight." For David is here describing a wicked man, and saith, "He is such a one as through the pride of his countenance will not seek after God; yea, that God is not in all his thoughts;" that is, he never thinks of God, nor regards and minds Him as he ought to do, but lives as without God in the world, as if he had neither God to serve, nor soul to save; as if there were neither any Hell to avoid, nor any Heaven to enjoy he never troubles his thoughts with God Himself, nor with any thing that belongs to him. In speaking to which, I shall endeavour to shew how it comes to pass that men generally think so little of God, and then, that this is both a sign that they are wicked men, and a great cause too why they are so; and, by consequence, how we ought to think of God aright, and why we must do so if we desire to be good or holy, and not wicked and sinful.

I. First I say, How doth it come to pass that men generally have not God in all their thoughts? A question something difficult to be resolved; for, all things considered, one would think it almost if not altogether impossible that men should