God, in all your troubles and disquietments. (Micah vii. 18, 20.)Thus did this gracious person in my text: "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” (Psalm li. 1.) "I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me. Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to thy word unto thy servant." (Psalm cxix. 75, 76.) Nothing can stint or bound God's mercies, nor check the efforts and sensible explications and productions of God's most gracious name, but the culpable unfitness of your souls to be receptive of his royal favours. "I will hear what God the Lord will speak for he will speak peace unto his people and to his saints." (Psalm lxxxv. 8.) Rejoice the soul of thy servant for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. O God, the proud are risen against me, and the assemblies of violent men have sought after my soul; and have not set thee before them. But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. O turn unto me, and have mercy upon me; give thy strength unto thy servant, and save the son of thine handmaid." (Psalm lxxxvi. 4, 5, 14—16.) The . gracious soul can never justify its own despondencies: for, take it under its severest pressures from evil men and things, let it but act still like itself, and it hath more causes for consolation than for dejected"In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." (2 Cor. vi. 4, 10.) Think not that God forgets or hates thee, because thy bitter cups are not to be dispensed with. "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." (2 Cor. iv. 8-10.) "Sing therefore unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks to the memorial of his holiness. his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night; but joy cometh in the morning." (Psalm xxx. 4, 5.) And "He that is our God is the God of salvation." (Psalm lxviii. 20.) Think on him therefore as infinitely amiable, trusty, and compassionate. For were not his fidelity inviolable, his mercy and grace exceeding rich, and his compassionate bowels deep, how could these characters of excellence, which he imprints upon the gracious soul, be called "his image?" It is blasphemy against the grace and goodness of your God, and a flat contradiction to all the endearing accounts which he hath given you of his grace and clemency, for you to think him careless or cruel, inaccessible and inexorable, or false.

ness.

For

EXHORT. II. Bless God for Jesus Christ, by whom we are brought to this relief, and our hope in God." Blessed be the God and

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." (1 Peter i. 3, 4, 9.) For Christ brought-in this "better hope," by which we thus draw nigh to God." (Heb. vii. 19.) By Christ "we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing" what excellent fruits they are now made productive of. (Rom. v. 2-5.) See Eph. i. 11; and let those two chapters engage your deepest and most serious thoughts. cannot now stand to open them, lest I should grow too large.

I

When sin had torn us from our God, and set his face against us, how dismally did all things look about and toward us then! The face of God was terrible; the thoughts of God were frightful and amazing; the way to God was blocked up from us; and the majesty of God was nowhere visible, but in the presages and effects of dreadful jealousies and revenges; till Christ arose, "a Prince and Saviour," sent from God, to give a glorious resurrection to our dead and buried hopes. There was enough to cast and keep our spirits down, and to disquiet us for ever:-infinite Wisdom, to contrive our snares and miseries; insuperable Power, to bind and keep us to our torturing racks; inflexible and inexorable Justice (as to us) incensed and prompted by deep and keen resentments of our degeneracies and defections, to call for rigid satisfaction, and to demand the absolute resignation of our all unto divine revenges; and the concerns and glory of God's disturbed government rendering it needful, that God's violated laws by us be fully executed on us, to cut off all relief and hope from us; and nothing in ourselves to be discerned but what must justify divine severities and revenges on us, and fit us for and vex us in that sea of wrath and fury which we expected, and over which we hung. Surely such things as these could not but make us every way hopeless, helpless, and disconsolate, and rack our spirits to the utmost with disquietudes and dejections. But our hope dawned when Christ was promised and prefigured; and made its advances, by gradual discoveries, toward the glorious shining of that more perfect day, wherein "the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in his wings." (Mal. iv. 2; with Isai. 1. 10.) And when the Lord-Redeemer came, our hope and trust in God were taught by his doctrine, enjoined and regulated by his laws, sanctified and illustrated by his practice, purchased by his blood, ingenerated and cherished by his Spirit, confirmed by his exhibited and sealed covenant and all his federal relations to us, enforced and encouraged by his intercession with the Father for us; and its accomplishment undertaken and secured to the full by his most glorious resurrection and ascension. (1 Peter i. 21.) And its success is to be visibly and completely full at his appearance and his kingdom; and hence Christ is called "the blessed hope." (Titus ii. 13.) So that with most triumphant thank

fulness and joy may we cry out: "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who is he that condemneth? seeing it is God that justifieth; and Christ that died; yea rather, that is risen again; who is even at the right hand of God; who also maketh intercession for us. Who," or what, "shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." (Rom. viii. 31, 32, 34, 35, 37.) And what acknowledgments to God can bear proportion to so great a gift as this, whereby our hope and trust in God is thus revived and exalted? (Col. i. 21, 27.) View but the face of God in Christ; and let that name of CHRIST be studied by you, in Isaiah ix. 6, 7; and then see what can any way discourage you from hope or trust in God. The smiles of majesty, and the supplies of grace, which we expect and covet, are all from God in Jesus Christ. (Phil. iv. 19; Eph. iii. 19—21.) Christ is himself "our hope," and the great anchor of it. (1 Tim. i. 1; Heb. vi. 18, 20.) And it is by him that God so reconciles us to himself, as to encourage and accept our hope and trust in him. (2 Cor. v. 18, 21.) Both Comforter and comforts are through him. (John xvi. 7, 22.) And he is the Patron and Exemplar of our hope in God.

EXHORT. III. Look to yourselves, lest any way your hope or trust in God be starved, or stifled, or trodden down by you. (Judges xx. 21; 2 Peter iii. 11-14; 1 John iii. 3; Phil. ii. 12, 13.)—If God make great provisions to countenance, sustain, and raise this hope and trust in him, must it not be our care and work to bear our spirits up in the liveliest exercise thereof? Let then my text be viewed again; and see therein how your work lies before you; see that you mind your souls, and be more conversant therewith than See what you have to trust to,—your God, and the salvations of his face or presence. See that your hope and trust be suited to the grounds and object thereof. Observe the timings of your duty: then most repair to this your hope and trust, when troubles and discouragements press most severely on you; and let your spirits be argued and urged hereto, by a due sense of God, and by motives drawn from him.

ever.

SERMON XXX. THE RELIGIOUS THE STRENGTH OF A NATION.

125

SERMON XXX.

BY THE REV. JOHN COLLINS, A.M.*

FELLOW OF HARVARD COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, NEW ENGLAND.

HOW THE RELIGIOUS OF A NATION ARE THE STRENGTH OF IT.

But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten : as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.-Isaiah vi. 13.

THE prophet was sent with heavy tidings to the people :

1. Of spiritual judgments like to befall them; blindness of mind, and hardness of heart, to which they should be left, the most dreadful plague on this side hell. (Verses 9, 10.)

2. Of temporals too: "Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land." (Verses 11, 12.) God many times seconds spiritual judgments with temporal: they that are under the former, cannot be secure against the latter; they that are insensible of the one, may be made to feel the other. But lest it should make the hearts of the few righteous among them over-sad, and should prove in the event a temptation to despair, and deject, instead of humbling, them, he hath a more comfortable message put into his mouth, some glad tidings to balance the evil. Saints sometimes tremble at those truths in which others are most concerned; and wicked men, that should most fear them, least regard them. This verse, therefore, brings a cordial for the saints, as the four former did a bitter dose for the ungodly among them. A gracious promise we have here of a remnant to be left in the midst of and after the dismal calamities before-threatened: "But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof."

In it-In "the land," mentioned verses 11, 12.

A tenth-A definite number for an indefinite: “a tenth," that is, a small remnant, a few in comparison of the whole body of the inhabitants. It was a severe punishment among the Romans, when, for

• In the manuscript announcements of authors' names, prefixed to a few presentation-copies of the "Continuation" of the Morning Exercise at Cripplegate, this sermon obtained no other notice than that of the signature N. N. But, soon after Mr. Collins's death, its authorship was ascribed to him, by one who possessed the best means of information, Dr. Cotton Mather, in his "History of New England," book iv. p. 200.-EDIT.

some great miscarriages in their armies, they would decimate the offending legions,-put every tenth man to death. But here is a more formidable severity, when God would destroy nine parts, and save only a tenth; they that were cut off, should be far more than they that were delivered.

It shall return, and shall be eaten-Either, as some, "return" from its captivity, and be inhabited again, and fed upon again; or, as others, "It shall be eaten," that is, consumed, or removed, or burnt; the Hebrew word will bear any of these interpretations. "Returning," then, must signify, by an usual Hebraism, the iteration of the thing mentioned, the repetition of the judgment; and so to "return and be eaten," is to be eaten again, or consumed again; which here must be understood of the remaining tenth. If we take it in this sense, it is not unlike that of Zech. xiii. 8, 9; where two parts are to "be cut off and die," and the third to be left; and then that third part is to be "brought through the fire." If we thus understand the words, the former part of the verse is rather a threatening than a promise, which yet I conceive the whole to be; and so it is, if we take this clause in the former sense.

As a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them--What the trees here mentioned are, whether the same with those that are so called with us, or any other peculiar to those countries, as expositors are not agreed, so we are not much concerned to inquire. It is more material to see what is meant by "substance," and their "substance being in them." the word here rendered "substance," is translated by some statio, locatio,* "standing, or placing," agreeably to the root : from whence it is derived; by some, statumen; † by others, it is taken for "the trunk" of the tree, or, as our margin, "the stock or stem." The word is sometimes taken for "a statue or standing image; sometimes for "a pillar:" so, "the pillar of Rachel's grave," (Gen. xxxv. 20,) and Absalom's "pillar.” (2 Sam. xviii. 18.) I take it in the second translation, for "the stock or body" of the tree; which yet is not much different from the last; "the trunk" or upright part of a tree being that which most resembles "a statue or pillar."

Whose substance is in them-Whose stock or trunk is in the tree, remains to it, still abides and continues; and so it is opposed to that which follows, its "casting its leaves."

When they cast their leaves-bwa. "In their casting." "Leaves" is not in the original, but supplied by the translators. Some take the word for a proper name of a place. In 1 Chron. xxvi. 16, mention is made of a gate belonging to the temple, called Shallecheth; where, they say, there was a "causeway" leading up to the temple, which they suppose planted with trees on both sides; which not only beautified the place, but strengthened it; the roots of the trees knitting and keeping up the earth which had been there cast up to make the way. This may have a good sense, if the words in the original will bear it. I conceive our own translation (with which others agree) to

• PAGNINES.

TREMELLIUS. "A prop, or support."-EDIT. 1 MERCERUS.