hear? Why
take ye so much needless pains? Your coming here seems to speak that ye
think it to be God's word and yet your conversation declares more plainly
that ye believe it not. Yet Christ takes notice of you and O that ye,
beloved, would search yourselves that so ye might hear the word as in the
sight of the all seeing God, and in his sight, who will judge you
according to it; a sermon thus heard, would be more profitable than all
that ever ye heard. Now to what purpose speak we of these things unto you,
and why do we choose this discourse, when ye expect to hear public things?
I will tell you the reason of it. Because I conceive this is the great sin
of the times, and the most reprehensive and fountain sin, the root of all
our profanity and malignity, even this which Christ points out in this
similitude. The great blessing and privilege of Scotland is the gospel. Ye
all must grant this. Now, then, the great misery and sin of this nation
is, the abuse and contempt of the glorious gospel, and if once we could
make you sensible of this, ye would mourn for all other particular sins.

The words are very comprehensive. Ye shall find in them the different
manifestations of God in his word, reduced to two heads. The Lord either
mourns to us to make us mourn, or joys to us to make us dance. A
similitude and likeness is the end of all the manifestations of himself,
that we be one with him. Therefore when he would move our affections in
us, he puts on the like, and clothes himself, in his word and
dispensation, with such a habit as is suitable. So ye have both law and
gospel. He laments in the one, he pipes in the other. Both sad and glad
dispensations of his providence may be subordinate to these; the one, I
mean his judgments, representing that to our eyes which his law did to our
ears, making that visible of his justice, which we heard; the other, I
mean mercies, represents that to our eyes, which the gospel did to our
ears, making his good will, his forbearance, and long suffering, and
compassion visible, that men might say, "As we have heard so have we seen
in the city of our God." Now these should stir up suitable affections in
men. This is their intendment and purpose, to stir up joy and grief,
sorrow for sin, on the one hand, and joy in the Lord's salvation on the
other hand; hatred of sin by the one, and the love of Christ by the other.

But what is the entertainment(453) these get in the world? Ye shall see it
diffe