they will bear no part amongst them that cry for mercy. Think, what this will come to, if the Spirit of the living God be still withheld, and do not awaken men, and reduce their spirits to a better state. Despised ordinances, contemned worship, neglected seasons and opportunities of grace, how dreadful a testimony will they bear in the consciences of many, if once light should come to be extinguished amongst us, and all the frame of things, wherein they seem to take comfort, should be dissolved and shattered in pieces! SERMON XV.* IT remains now to make some improvement of so great and important a subject, as we have been upon-The dependance of the happy state of the church of God upon the pouring forth of his Spirit-which shall be in certain practical notes or corollaries, that are deducible from the whole of what hath been opened to you. And we shall begin, where we ended at the close of the last discourse. 1. Since the happiness of the church doth so immediately and necessarily depend upon a pouring forth of the Spirit; it must needs be of very dreadful import, when that Spirit retires; when there is a manifest suspension of its light and influence. Every gradual retraction of that Spirit speaks a vergency to death, to a total dissolution; as if the whole frame of the church were ready to drop asunder. It is a dismal thing, when that which is the only light and life of it retires, visibly withdraws; when that Spirit breathes not as it hath done through the world, souls are not born by it unto God in a proportion to what hath been; considering, that this is the only way of entering into God's kingdom, either in the initial or consummate state of it, the kingdom of grace or the kingdom of glory. It is a dismal thing, when conversions are grown rare, and infe * Preached October 16, 1678. rior in number to apostacies: when christians are not born so fast as they die, whether in the moral sense, or in the natural; for all die alike. This ought to be considered as a thing of dreadful import, when the Spirit works not as he hath been wont, for the rescuing of souls out of a precedent death: and farther, when those that live, languish; and much more, when death insensibly creeps on them that have but a name to live as you know it doth with many languishing persons, seiz ing one limb first and then another, so that the man is dead while he is alive. With how many is it so, that have lost themselves either in the cares or pleasures of this world, and are dead while they live? This it becomes us to consider as a most melancholy case. If all the happiness and weal of the church depend upon the pouring out of the Spirit, how dreadful is it, when there is a discernible retraction! 2. All our hope of good lying in the pouring forth of the Spirit, it is very strange, that the retraction of it should not be considered with more sense; that we are not more apprehensive of so dismal a case as that is. It is a case exceeding gloomy in itself, as hath been said; but how strange is it, that we should so little understand and consider it as such! that this should be our danger, lest God should be quite gone from amongst us before we know it! that life is retiring, but we perceive it not! Alas! with too many there is scarce life enough left to feel themselves die, or light enough to perceive that darkness is gathering upon them. Strange, that men should be dying, and say they are alive! Light is diminishing and blindness increasing and growing upon them, yet they say they see well, and carry it as if nothing ailed them! This is a strange infatuation upon the minds of men, even of the professors of religion in our time: we keep up our wonted course while we can, our wonted forms and ways of worship; we assemble as we have been accustomed to do, we have praying and preaching and other ordinances of the gospel: but there is not the wonted Spirit, such appearances and demonstrations of the power and presence of the Spirit as formerly, and yet we seem not aware of it. We do as we have been wont at other times; but we find it not with our souls in what we do, as christians were used to find it :-as it is said of that mighty man Samson; he said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself, but he wist not that the Lord was departed from him, Judg. 16. 20. So, we seem not to know that the Lord is departing, but say we will do as at other times: indeed we reach not him; he said he would go forth and shake himself as at other times; we do not that, but as the complaint is in Isa, 64. 7. so is our case; There is none (scarce any,) that stir up themselves to take hold of God; for, as it there follows, he hath bid his face from us and consumed us, we are consuming, because of our iniquities. We are pining away, but not aware of it: grey hairs are here and there upon us, but we seem not to know it. We read concerning men in general in the dying hour, Eccl. S. 8. No man hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit, neither hath he power in the day of death. When the soul must dislodge and be gone, no man can hold it; but they would if they could, men are loth to die; they would retain the spirit longer, if it were any way in their power: what strivings and strugglings for breath are there in dying men? but there seems with us hardly to be so much as that, "Oh that we could retain the Spirit of life and grace!" It is not indeed in our power, any more than to retain the departing, dislodging soul, when the hour is come that it must be gone but it is strange, that we should not be filled with complaint, that we should cross what is so common as to be a proverb; every thing would live, but it seems so would not we. When God as it were says to us by what he doth, (the most emphatical way of speaking,) "My Spirit shall not always strive, it shall no longer strive; for it is actually withheld from striving;" yet we dread not this greatest of all threats, and when the threatening is enforced by a gradual execution, an execution already in a dreadful degree: not to be afraid what this will come to, is very strange. 3. We further collect, that such a dismal state of things is likely immediately to forego the more eminent effusion of the Spirit, and the shining of the light of God's face, here spoken of. When the time approaches, concerning which the text speaks, then a most dismal gloominess and darkness must be expected to precede. That is plainly implied, when it is said, "I will no more hide my face:" I have done it hitherto, but will not do it any more: it bespeaks, that till the time of this eminent effusion there was a very displeased hiding of God's face, and a great retraction and holding back of the Spirit. Other scriptures, that relate as I conceive to the same eminent season, intimate also a dreadful foregoing desolation. The prophet (Isaiah chap. 32.) describes the desolation of the Christian church, (for I doubt not his prediction is ultimately meant of that,) by the emblem of the land of Israel's lying waste, and the great city, the metropolis being all ruined, the very houses of joy in the joyous city covered over with briars and thorns, ver. 13. 14. And thus it is said it should be, ver. 15. Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high; then the wilderness shall be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest; that which was before reckoned a fruitful field, shall now seem to have been but a wild forest, in comparison of the fruitfulness it shall now arrive at by the effusion of the Spirit. So that great pouring of it forth, in Ezek. 37. meant no doubt of the same time with this in the text, is preceded by such a forlorn and desolate state of the church, that it is represented by the emblem of a slaughtered army covering all the ground about with the dead carcasses, till the Spirit of life enter into them, bring bone to bone, cover them with flesh, and form them all into a regular army of living men again, ver. 1.—14. It imports, that almost a universal death, next to total, will be upon the church before this happy day. And do not we seem in a tendency thither? we seem to be descending gradually into the dark shady vale, the region of darkness and of death: nor must we expect it to be silent darkness; no doubt it will rather imitate that of hell, a region turbid as well as dark. A night seems approaching, that will be equally stormy and gloomy; for it is the season of God's anger. It is never to be thought, that he will be neutral towards us; if he be not a friend, he will be an enemy; when he ceases to be our light and life and hope and joy, it cannot be but he must become an astonishing terror. "Be not a terror unto me, thou art my hope;" says the prophet, Jer. 17. 17. When he is not the one, he must be the other. Are we prepared to meet him in such a way and in such a time? It cannot but be a dreadful time, the time of managing his controversy: when he hideth his face in displeasure, that is not all, it is not a bare hiding. Observe the passage in Deut. 31. 17. "Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them :" and what then? It follows, "So that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not amongst us? and I will surely hide my face in that day; as it follows again in ver. 18. This is to make a way for wrath; and when you can see him no longer, you shall hear from him in a most terrible way. The case of the Christian church seems to be as Israel was represented, in Psal. 106. 35. &c. They were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works: and they served their idols, which were a snare unto them. And, ver. 39. Thus they were defiled with their own works; (now they are called their own, since they had adopted them, and so made them their own;) and went a whoring with their own inventions. What follows there, and what may we expect to follow in the like case? "For this the Lord abhorred his own inheritance," ver. 40. Now take them who will, they are an abomination to |