LV. He doth search the hearts, and try the reins of men; he SERM. doth weigh their spirits, and their works; he doth know their frame, he doth understand their thoughts afar offa; he perceiveth their closest intentions, their deepest contrivances, their most retired behaviours; he consequently is acquainted with their true qualifications, capacities, and merits; unto which he most justly and wisely doth accommodate his dealings with them; the which therefore must often thwart the opinions and expectations of us, who are ignorant of those particulars, and can only view the exterior face or semblance of things: for (as Samuel, in the case of preferring David before his brethren, did say) God seeth not as man seeth; for man 1 Sam. xvi. looketh on the outward appearance, but God looketh on the heart. 7. God also hath a perfect foresight of contingent events; he seeth upon what pin each wheel moveth, and with Isa. xlv. 11. what weight every scale will be turned; he discerneth all the connections, all the entanglements of things, and what the result will be upon the combination, or the clashing of numberless causes; in correspondence to which perceptions he doth order things consistently and conveniently; whereas we being stark blind, or very dim-sighted in such respects, (seeing nothing future, and but few things present,) cannot apprehend what is fit and feasible; or why that is done, which appeareth done to us. God observeth in what relations, and what degrees of comparison, (as to their natures, their virtues, their consequences,) all things do stand, each toward others; so poising them in the balance of right judgment, as exactly to distinguish their just weight and worth: whereas we cannot tell what things to compare, we know not how to put them into the scale, we are unapt to make due allowances, we are unable to discern which side doth overweigh in the immense variety of objects our knowledge ■ Prov. xvi. 2. Isa. xxvi. 7. 1 Sam. ii. 3. Psal. ciii. 14. cxxxix. 2. lxiv. 6. Job xiv. 16. Ἡμεῖς μὲν γὰρ μόνα ὁρῶμεν τὰ πράγματα· ὁ δὲ τῶν ὅλων Θεὸς, καὶ τῶν ταῦτα δρώντων ἐπίταται τὸν σκοπὸν, καὶ τούτῳ μᾶλλον, ἢ τοῖς ἔργοις δικάζων ἐκφέρει τὴν pov. Theod. Ep. 3. SERM. doth extend to few things eligible, nor among them can we LV. pick out the best competitors for our choice; hence often must we be at great losses in scanning the designs, or tracing the footsteps of Providence. 3. We are also incapable thoroughly to discern the ways of Providence from our moral defects, in some measure common to all men; from our stupidity, our sloth, our temerity, our impatience, our impurity of heart, our perverseness of will and affections: we have not the perspicacity to espy the subtile tracks and secret reserves of divine wisdom; we have not the industry, with steady application of mind, to regard and meditate on God's works; we have not the temper and patience to wait upon God, until he discover himself in the accomplishment of his purposes; Matt. v. 8. we have not that blessed purity of heart, which is requisite to the seeing God in his special dispensations; we have not that rectitude of will and government of our passions, as not to be scandalized at what God doeth, if it thwarteth our conceit or humour: such defects are observable in the best men; who therefore have misapprehended, have disrelished, have fretted and murmured at the proceedings of God: we might instance in Job, in David, in Elias, in Jonah, in the holy Apostles themselves, by whose speeches and deportments in some cases, it may appear how difficult Job x. 4. it is for us, who have eyes of flesh, as Job speaketh, and hearts too never quite freed of carnality, to see through, or fully to acquiesce in the dealings of God. It is indeed a distemper incident to us, which we can hardly shun, or cure, that we are apt to measure the equity and expedience of things according to our opinions and passions: affecting consequently to impose on God our silly imaginations as rules of his proceeding, and to constitute him the executioner of our sorry passions: what we conceit fit to be done, that we take God bound to perform; when we feel ourselves stirred, then we presume God must be alike concerned to our apprehensions every slight inconvenience is a huge calamity, every scratch of fortune is a ghastly wound; God therefore, we think, LV. should have prevented it, or must presently remove it; SERM. every pitiful bauble, every trivial accommodation is a matter of high consequence, which if God withhold, we are ready to clamour on him, and wail as children for want of a trifle. Are we soundly angry, or inflamed with zeal? then fire must come down from heaven, then thunderbolts Luke ix. 54, must fly about, then nothing but sudden woe and vengeance are denounced: Are we pleased? then showers of blessings must descend on the heads, then floods of wealth must run into the laps of our favourites, otherwise we are not satisfied; and scarce can deem God awake, or mindful of his charge. We do beyond measure hate or despise some persons, and to those God must not afford any favour, any mercy, any forbearance, or time of repentance; we excessively admire or dote on others, and those God must not touch or cross: if he doth not proceed thus, he is in danger to forfeit his authority: he must hardly be allowed to govern the world, in case he will not square his administrations to our fond conceit, or froward humour: hence no wonder, that men often are stumbled about Providence; for God will not rule according to their fancy or pleasure, (it would be a mad world if he should,) neither indeed could he do so if he would, their judgments and their desires be ́ing infinitely various, inconsistent, and repugnant. Again, 4. The nature of those instruments which divine Providence doth use in administration of human affairs, hindereth us from discerning it: it is an observation among philosophers, that the footsteps of divine wisdom are, to exclusion of doubt, far more conspicuous in the works of nature, than in the management of our affairs b; so that some who by contemplation of natural apearances were convinced of b Nam cum dispositi quæsissem fædera mundi, SERM. God's existence, and his protection of the world, (who LV. thence could not doubt but that an immense wisdom had erected the beautiful frame of heaven and earth, had ranged Diod. Sic. 1. the stars in their order and courses, had formed the bodies xv. p. 482. and souls of animals, had provided for the subsistence and propagation of each species, had settled and doth uphold the visible world in its so comely and convenient state, that even such men,) reflecting on the course of human transactions, have staggered into distrust, whether a divine wis dom doth sit at the helm of our affairs; many thence hardly would admit God to be concerned in them, but supposed him to commit their conduct to a fatal swinge, or a causual fluctuation of obvious causes: one great reason of this difference may be, that whereas the instruments of divine power in nature are in themselves merely passive, or act only as they are acted by pure necessity, (as a pen in writing, or a hammer in striking,) being thence determinate, uniform, constant, and certain in their operation; whenever there any footsteps of counsel, any tendency to an end, and deviation from the common tracks of motion do appear, such effects cannot reasonably be imputed merely to natural causes, but to a superior wisdom, wielding them in such a manner, and steering them to such a mark: but the visible engines of Providence in our affairs are self-moving agents, working with knowledge and choice; the which, as in themselves they are indeterminate, irregular, and uncertain; so they are capable to be diversified in numberless unaccountable ways, according to various representations of objects, or by influence of divers principles inclining to judge and choose differently: temper, humour, passion, prejudice, custom, example, together with contingencies of occasion, (depending on like principles in adjacent free causes,) do move, singly or combinedly, in ways so implicate, to the production of so various events, that nothing hardly can fall out, which may not with some plausible colour of reason be derived from some one of those sources, or from a complication of them: nothing can appear so uncouth or extravagant, which may not be fathered on some fetch of wit, or some SERM. hit of fancy, or some capricio of humour, or some transport LV. of passion, or some lucky advantage, or on divers of those conspiring; whence in accounting for the reason of such events, men deem they may leave out providence as superfluous; especially considering, that usually disorders and defects only imputable to man's will, do accompany and further such events. 1. 20. 10. xxiv. 1. 15, 24. Acts ii. 23. For instance, what other cause would many think need-Gen. xlv. 5. ful to assign for the conveyance of Joseph into Egypt, than the envy of his brethren; for Shemei's reviling David, than 2 Sam. xvi. his base malignity; for David's numbering the people, than his wanton pride; for Jeroboam's revolt, than his unruly! Kings xii. ambition; for Job's being robbed, than the thievish dispo- Job i. 15. sition of the Arabs; for his being diseased, than a redund- &c. ance of bad humours; for our Lord's suffering, than the iv. 28. spiteful rage of the Jewish rulers and people; together with the treacherous avarice of Judas, and the corrupt easiness of Pilate? These events all of them are ascribed to God's hand and special ordination; but men could not see or avow it in them: what need, will men ever say, in such cases to introduce God'said, when human means suffice to achieve the feat? 5. Indeed, as in nature, the influences of heaven, and of inferior causes, so commonly in the production of these events, divine and human agency are so knit and twisted one with the other, that it is not easy to discriminate them, so as to sever the bounds of common and special Providence; or to discern what God performeth by natural instruments, what by superior efficacy; when the balance turneth from our inclinations, when it is cast from a grain thrown in by divine interposition; the management of these affairs being a concert, wherein God's wisdom beareth one part, man's free-will playeth another c; fortune and occasion also do strike in; we not seeing the first, are prone to ascribe all the harmony to the last, which are most obvious and visible. • Θεὸς μὲν πάντα, καὶ μετὰ Θεὸν τύχη καὶ καιρὸς τὰ ἀνθρώπινα κυβερνῶσι ξύμε ava, Mar. Tyr. diss. 3. e. Plut. |