rmed with the promise of
God, namely, that he will be the protector of his church; yea, that he
will multiply it, even when to man's judgment it appears utterly to be
exterminated. This promise has our God performed, in the multiplication of
Abraham's seed, in the preservation of it when satan laboured utterly to
have destroyed it, and in deliverance of the same, as we have heard, from
Babylon. He hath sent his Son Christ Jesus, clad in our flesh, who hath
tasted of all our infirmities, (sin excepted,) who hath promised to be
with us to the end of the world; he hath further kept promise in the
publication, yea, in the restitution of his glorious gospel. Shall we then
think that he will leave his church destitute in this most dangerous age?
Only let us cleave to his truth, and study to conform our lives to the
same, and he shall multiply his knowledge, and increase his people. But
now let us hear what the prophet saith more:

"Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when
thy chastening was upon them," verse 16.

The prophet means, that such as in the time of quietness did not rightly
regard God nor his judgments, were compelled, by sharp corrections, to
seek God; yea, by cries and dolorous complaints to visit him. True it is,
that such obedience deserves small praise before men; for who can praise,
or accept that in good part, which comes as it were of mere compulsion?
And yet it is rare, that any of God's children do give unfeigned
obedience, until the hand of God turn them. For if quietness and
prosperity make them not utterly to forget their duty, both towards God
and man, as David for a season, yet it makes them careless, insolent, and
in many things unmindful of those things that God chiefly craves of them;
which imperfection being espied, and the danger that thereof might ensue,
our heavenly Father visits the sins of his children, but with the rod of
his mercy, by which they are moved to return to their God, to accuse their
former negligence, and to promise better obedience in all times hereafter;
as David confessed, saying, "Before I fell in affliction I went astray,
but now will I keep thy statutes."

But yet, for the better understanding of the prophet's mind, we may
consider how God doth visit man, and how man doth visit God; and what
difference there is betwixt the visitation of God upon the reprobate, and
his visitation upon the chosen.

God sometimes visits the reprobate in his h