dies is much more excellent; God made other good creatures by a word of command, but man by counsel; it was not, Be thou, but, "Let us make man. We might have been made stones without sense, or beasts without reason, but we were made men. The noble structure and symmetry of our bodies invite our souls not only to thankfulness, but admiration. David, speaking of the curious frame of the body, saith, "I am wonderfully made," or, as the Vulgate reads it, painted as with a needle, like some rich piece of needle-work curiously embroidered with nerves and veins. Was any part of the common lump of clay thus fashioned? Galen gave Epicurus an hundred years time to imagine a more commodious situation, configuration, or composition of any one part of a human body; and (as one saith) if all the angels in heaven had studied to this day, they could not have cast the body of man into a more curious mould. 2. How little ease or rest have they? They live not many years, and those who do are in bondage and misery, groaning under the effects of sin; but God hath provided better for us even as to our outward condition in the world; we have the more rest, because they have so little. How many. refreshments and comforts hath God provided for us, of which they are incapable? If we be weary with labor, we can take our rest; but fresh or weary, they must stand to it, or sink under it from day to day. 3. What a narrow capacity hath God given to beasts! What a large capacity to man! Alas, they are only capable of a little sensitive pleasure; as you shall see sometimes, how they will frisk in a green pasture; this is all they be capable of, and this death puts an end to : but how comprehensive are our souls in their capacities! We are made in the image of God; we can look beyond present things, and are capable of the highest happiness, and that to all eternity: The soul of a beast is but a material form, which, wholly depending upon, must needs die with the body; but our souls are a divine spark or blast, and when the body dies, it dies not with it, but subsists even in its separated state. 1. How great a sin is ingratitude to God, for such a common, but choice mercy of creaA reflection for an tion and provision for me in this world? unthankful sinner. There is no creature made worse by kindness but man. There is a kind of gratitude which I may observe even in these brute beasts; they do in their way acknowledge their benefactors: "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib." How ready are they to serve such as feed and cherish them? But I have been both unthankful and unserviceable to my Creator and Benefactor, that hath done me good all my days: Those poor creatures that sweat and groan under the load that I lay upon them, never sinned against God, nor transgressed the laws of their creation, as I have done, and yet God hath dealt better with me than with them. O that the bounty of God, and his distinguishing mercy between me and the beasts that perish, might move and melt my heart into thankfulness! O that I might consider seriously what the higher and more excellent end of my creation is, and might more endeavor to answer and live up to it! or else, O my soul ! it will be worse with thee than with the beasts: It is true, they are under bondage and misery, but it is but for a little time; death will end all their pains, and ease them of all their heavy loads, but I shall groan through all eternity under a heavier burden than ever they felt; they have no account to give, but I have. What comfort is it that I have a larger capacity than a beast hath? That God hath endowed me with reason, which is denied to them? Alas! this will but augment my misery, and enlarge me to take in a greater measure of anguish. 2. But how many steps, O my soul! mayest thou ascend in the praises of thy God, when A reflection for an thou considerest the mercies that God elect soul. hath-bestowed upon thee; not only in that he made thee not a stone or tree without sense, or an horse or dog without reason; but that thou art not an infidel without light, or an unregenerate person without grace ? What! to have sense, and all the delights of it, which stones have not! Reason, with the most high and noble pleasures of it, which beasts have not; the light and knowledge of the great things of the gospel, which the heathens have not! and such an expectation and hope of inconceivable glory and felicity, which the unsanctified have not! O my soul! how richhow bountiful hath thy God been to thee! These are the overflowings of his love to thee, who was moulded out of the same lump with the beasts that groan on earth ; yea, with the damned that howl in hell: Well may I say, that God hath been a good God to me! 21 * CHAPTER III. UPON THE SEEKING OF LOST CATTLE. When seeking your lost cattle, keep in mind, OBSERVATION. WHEN cattle are strayed away from your fields, you use all care and diligence to recover them again; tracing their footsteps, crying them in the market towns, sending your servants abroad, and inquiring yourselves of all that you think can give news of them. What care and pains men will take in such cases, was exemplified in Saul, 1 Sam. ix. 4, 5. who, with his servant, passed through mount Ephraim, to seek the asses that were strayed from his father, and through the land of Shalisha, and through the land of Shalim, and they were not there, and through the land of the Benjamites, but found them not. APPLICATION. The care and pains you take to recover your lost cattle, carries a sweet and lively representation of the love of Jesus Christ, in the recovery of lost sinners. Jesus Christ came on purpose from heaven upon a like errand, to seek and to save that which was lost. Matth. xviii. 11. There are several particulars in which this glorious design of Christ in seeking and saving lost man, and the care and pains of husbandmen in recovering their lost cattle, do meet and touch, though there be as many particulars also in which they differ; all which I shall open under the following heads : 1. We sometimes find that cattle will break out of those very fields where they have been bred, and where they want nothing that is needful for them. Just so lost man departed from his God, brake out of that pleasant enclosure where he was abundantly provided for, both as to soul and body; yet then he brake over the hedge of the command, and went astray. Lo, this only have I found, that God made man upright, but he sought out to himself many inventions: he was not content and satisfied with that blessed state God had put him into, but would be trying new conclusions, to the loss and ruin both of himself and his posterity. 2. Strayers are evermore sufferers by it; all they get by it, is to be pinned and pounded: And what did man get by departing from his God, but ruin and misery to soul and body? Will you have an abbreviate of his sufferings and losses? The full account none can give you : Why, by straying from his God, he lost the rectitude and holiness of his nature; like a true strayer, he is all dirty and miry, overspread and besmeared both in soul and body with the odious filthiness of sin; he lost the liberty and freedom of his will to good, a precious jewel of inestimable value. This is a real misery incurred by the fall, though some have so far lost their understandings and humility, as not to own it; he hath lost his Godhis soul-his happiness, and his very bowels of compassion towards himself in this miserable state. 3. When your cattle are strayed, yea, though it be but one of the flock or herd, you leave all the rest and go after that which is lost; so did Jesus Christ, who, in the forecited place, compares himself to such a shepherd; he left heaven itself, and all the blessed angels there, to come into this world to seek lost man. O the precious esteem and dear love that Christ hath to poor man! How did his bowels yearn towards us in our low state !— |