e not? Or will these obey them? Yet at his decree
and command the sun is dark, the sea stands still, the mountains tremble;
"at thy rebuke the sea fled." Alas! what do we mean that we look upon
creatures, and act ourselves as if we were independent in our being and
moving? How many things fall out and you call them casual and attribute
them to fortune? How many things do the world gaze upon, think upon, and
discourse upon, and yet not one thought, one word of God all the time?
What more contingent than the falling of a sparrow on the ground? And yet
even that is not unexpected to him, but it flows from his will and
counsel. What less taken notice of or known than the hairs of your head?
Yet these are particularly numbered by him, and so that no power in the
world can add to them or diminish from them without his counsel. O what
would the belief of this do to raise our hearts to suitable thoughts of
God above the creatures, to increase the fear, faith, and love of God, and
to abate from our fear of men, and our vain and unprofitable cares and
perplexities? How would you look upon the affairs of men,--the counsels,
contrivances, endeavours, and successes of men,--when they are turning
things upside down, and plotting the ruin of his people, and establishing
themselves alone in the earth? What would you think of all these
revolutions at this time? Many souls are astonished at them, and stand
gazing at what is done and to be done. And this is the very language of
your spirits and ways. The Lord hath forsaken the earth, the Lord seeth
not. This is the language of our parliaments and people. They do imagine
that they are doing their own business and making all sure for themselves.
But, O what would a soul think that could escape above them all, and arise
up to the first wheel of present motions! A soul that did stand upon the
exalted tower of the word of God, and looked off it by the prospect of
faith, would presently discover the circle in which all these wanderings
and changes are confined, and see men, states, armies, nations, and all of
them doing nothing but turning about in a round, as a horse in a mill,
from God's eternal purpose, by his almighty power, to his unspeakable
glory. You might behold all these extravagant motions of the creatures,
inclosed within those limits, that they must begin here, and end here,
though themselves are so beastly that they neither know of whom nor for
whom their counsels and actions are. Ce