eople might speak more sensibly of it. It hath been the manner of
the Lord's dealing with us, to use fair means to gain us, to threaten
before he laid on, to give a proclamation before his stroke, and yet it
hath been our manner from our youth up to harden ourselves against him,
and go on in our own way. Therefore hath the Lord, after long patience,
laid on sad strokes, and smitten us, yet have we not turned to him. It may
be, when the chastisement was fresh and green, some poured out a prayer,
and in trouble visited God, (Isa. xxvi. 16,) but the body of the land hath
not known him that smote them, and never ran into their hiding place, but
the temptation of the time, like a flood, hath carried them away with it.
And for the Lord's children, how soon doth the custom of a rod eat out the
sense of it, and prayer doth not grow proportionably to the Lord's rods.
The Lord hath expected that some might stand in the gap and intercede, yet
few or none called on his name. General corrections of the land hath made
general apostacy from God, not a turning in to God; so that we may say, we
never entered a furnace, but we have come out with more dross, contracted
dross in the fire. Men's zeal and tenderness hath been burnt up, reprobate
silver may God call us. We have had so much experience of the
unprofitableness of former afflictions, that we know not what the Lord
shall do with us. We think it may be the Lord's complaint of Scotland,
"Why should you be afflicted any more? you will revolt more and more,"
Isa. i. 5. What needeth another rod? You are now all secure, it is true,
because you are not stricken; nay, but what needeth a rod? For it cannot
awake you,--all the fruit of it would be, not to purge away sin, but to
increase it. General judgments will prove general temptations, and will
alienate you more from me, and make you curse God and the covenant. And
indeed, the truth is, we know not what outward dispensation can fall on
that can affect this generation, we know not what the Lord can have behind
that can work on us. Judgment hath had as much terror, mercies as much
sweetness, and as much of God in the one and the other, as readily hath
been since the beginning of the world. Only this we know, all things are
possible to him which are impossible to us, and if the Spirit work to
sanctify the rod, a more gentle rod shall work more effectually; his word
shall do as much as his rod.

The case we are now into is just this--"None ca