to his sufferings, according to the contract passed between the Father and him; and so he should be Jesus, a saviour, a saviour from sin, and this by this way and means. And then that all this should be established and declared by an infallible sign, with this, Ecce, Behold; that whosoever can call upon God by that name Immanuel, that is, confess Christ to become in the flesh, that man shall have an ecce, a light, a sign, a token, an assurance that this Immanuel, this Jesus, this Saviour belongs unto him, and he shall be able to say, Behold, mine eyes have seen thy salvation. We begin with that which is older than our beginning, and shall over-live our end, the mercy of God. I will sing of thy mercy and judgment, says David; when we fix ourselves upon the meditation and modulation of the mercy of God, even his judgments cannot put us out of tune, but we shall sing and be cheerful even in them. As God made grass for beasts before he made beasts, and beasts for man before he made man: as in that first generation, the creation, so in the regeneration, our recreating, he begins with that which was necessary for that which follows, mercy before judgment. Nay, to say that mercy was first, is but to post-date mercy; to prefer mercy but so, is to diminish mercy; the names of first or last derogate from it, for first and last are but rags of time, and his mercy hath no relation to time, no limitation in time, it is not first nor last, but eternal, everlasting; let the devil make me so far desperate as to conceive a time when there was no mercy, and he hath made me so far an atheist as to conceive a time when there was no God; if I despoil him of his mercy any one minute, and say, Now God hath no mercy, for that minute I discontinue his very Godhead and his being. Later grammarians have wrung the name of mercy out of misery; misericordia præsumit miseriam, say these, there could be no subsequent mercy if there were no precedent misery; but the true root of the word mercy, through all the prophets, is racham, and racham is diligere, to love; as long as there hath been love, (and God is love,) there hath been mercy; and mercy considered externally, and in the practice and in the effect, began not at the helping of man, when man was fallen 3 Psal. ci. 1. and become miserable; but at the making of man, when man was nothing. So then here we consider not mercy as it is radically in God, and an essential attribute of his, but productively in us, as it is an action, a working upon us, and that more especially, as God takes all occasions to exercise that action, and to shed that mercy upon us: for particular mercies are feathers of his wings, and that prayer, Lord let thy mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is in thee, is our birdlime; particular mercies are that cloud of quails which hovered over the host of Israel, and that prayer, Lord let thy mercy lighten upon us, is our net to catch, our Gomer to fill of those quails. The air is not so full of motes, of atoms, as the church is of mercies; and as we can suck in no part of air but we take in those motes, those atoms; so here in the congregation, we cannot suck in a word from the preacher, we cannot speak, we cannot sigh a prayer to God, but that that whole breath and air is made of mercy. But we call not upon you from this text to consider God's ordinary mercy, that which he exhibits to all in the ministry of his church; nor his miraculous mercy, his extraordinary deliverances of states and churches; but we call upon particular consciences, by occasion of this text, to call to mind God's occasional mercies to them; such mercies as a regenerate man will call mercies, though a natural man would call them accidents, or occurrences, or contingencies: a man wakes at midnight full of unclean thoughts, and he hears a passing-bell; this is an occasional mercy, if he call that his own knell, and consider how unfit he was to be called out of the world then, how unready to receive that voice, Fool, this night they shall fetch away thy soul. The adulterer, whose eye waits for the twilight, goes forth, and casts his eyes upon forbidden houses, and would enter, and sees a Lord have mercy upon us upon the door; this is an occasional mercy, if this bring him to know that they who lie sick of the plague within pass through a furnace, but by God's grace, to heaven; and he without carries his own furnace to hell, his lustful loins to everlasting perdition. What an occasional mercy had Balaam when his ass catechised him! What an occasional mercy had one thief when the other catechized him so, Art not thou afraid, being under the same condemnation? What an occasional mercy had all they that saw that when the devil himself fought for the name of Jesus, and wounded the sons of Sceva for exorcising in the name of Jesus, with that indignation, with that increpation, Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are ye? If I should declare what God hath done (done occasionally,) for my soul, where he instructed me for fear of falling, where he raised me when I was fallen, perchance you would rather fix your thoughts upon my illness, and wonder at that, than at God's goodness, and glorify him in that; rather wonder at my sins than at his mercies, rather consider how ill a man I was, than how good a God he is. If I should inquire upon what occasion God elected me, and writ my name in the book of life, I should sooner be afraid that it were not so, than find a reason why it should be so. God made sun and moon to distinguish seasons, and day and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons; but God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies; in Paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn, his mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask our daily bread, and God never says you should have come yesterday, he never says you must again to-morrow, but to-day if you will hear his voice, to-day he will hear you. If some king of the earth have so large an extent of dominion in north and south, as that he hath winter and summer together in his dominions, so large an extent east and west, as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together; he brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupified till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon, to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons. If it were not thus in general, it would never have been so in this particular, in our case, in the text, in King Ahaz; if God 4 Acts ix. 14. did not seek occasion to do good to all he would never have found occasion to do good to King Ahaz. Subjects are to look upon the faults of princes with the spectacles of obedience and reverence to their place and persons; little and dark spectacles, and so their faults and errors are to appear little and excusable to them; God's perspective glass, his spectacle, is the whole world; he looks not upon the sun in his sphere only, but as he works upon the whole earth: and he looks upon kings, not only what harm they do at home, but what harm they occasion abroad; and through that spectacle the faults of princes, in God's eye, are multiplied far above those of private men. Ahaz had such faults, and yet God sought occasion of mercy. Jotham, his father, is called a good king, and yet all idolatry was not removed in his time, and he was a good king for all that. Ahaz is called ill, both because himself sacrificed idolatrously, (and the king was a commanding person,) and because he made the priest Uriah to do so, (and the priest was an exemplar person,) and because he made his son commit the abominations of the heathen; (and the actions of the king's son pierce far in leading others.) Ahaz had these faults, and yet God sought occasion of mercy. If the evening sky be red, you promise yourselves a fair day, says Christ; you would not do so if the evening were black and cloudy; when you see the fields white with corn, you say harvest is ready'; you would not do so if they were white with frost. If ye consent and obey, you shall eat the good things of the land, says God in the prophet; shall ye do so if you refuse and rebel? Ahaz did; and yet God sought occasion of mercy. There arise diseases for which there is no probatum est in all the books of physicians; there is scarce any sin of which we have not had experiments of God's mercies; he concludes with no sin, excludes no occasion, precludes no person; and so we have done with our first part, God's general disposition for the rule, declared in Ahaz' case for the example. Our second part consists of a rule and an example too; the rule, that God goes forward in his own ways, proceeds as he begun, in mercy; the example, what his proceeding, what his 5 That is, a person set for an example. 6 Matt. xvi. 2. 8 Isaiah i. 19. subsequent mercy to Ahaz was. One of the most convenient hieroglyphics of God is a circle, and a circle is endless; whom God loves, he loves to the end; and not only to their own end, to their death, but to his end, and his end is, that he might love them still. His hailstones and his thunderbolts, and his showers of blood, (emblems and instruments of his judgments,) fall down in a direct line, and affect and strike some one person or place; his sun, and moon, and stars, (emblems and instruments of his blessings,) move circularly, and communicate themselves to all. His church is his chariot; in that he moves more gloriously than in the sun; as much more as his begotten Son exceeds his created sun, and his Son of glory and of his right hand, the sun of the firmament; and this church, his chariot, moves in that communicable motion circularly; it began in the east, it came to us, and is passing now, shining out now in the farthest west. As the sun does not set to any nation, but withdraw itself, and return again, God, in the exercise of his mercy, does not set to thy soul, though he benight it with an affliction. Remember that our Saviour Christ himself, in many actions and passions of our human nature and infirmities, smothered that divinity, and suffered it not to work, but yet it was always in him, and wrought most powerfully in the deepest danger; when he was absolutely dead it raised him again; if Christ slumbered the Godhead in himself, the mercy of God may be slumbered, it may be hidden from his servants, but it cannot be taken away, and in the greatest necessities it shall break out. The blessed Virgin was overshadowed, but it was with the Holy Ghost that overshadowed her; thine understanding, thy conscience may be so too, and yet it may be the work of the Holy Ghost, who moves in thy darkness, and will bring light even out of that, knowledge out of thine ignorance, clearness out of thy scruples, and consolation out of thy dejection of spirit. God is thy portion, says David; David does not speak so narrowly, so penuriously, as to say, God hath given thee thy portion, and thou must look for no more; but, God is thy portion, and as long as he is God, he hath more to give, and as long as thou art his, thou hast more to receive. Thou canst not have so good a title to a subsequent blessing as a former blessing; where thou art an ancient tenant, L |