him time? It is but justice to allow much time to one that is to repent much. What hath been your course for twenty, forty, fifty years, for these hundred years, since we and our fathers have enjoyed the gospel. You have forgotten: how cold, how formalizing, how careless in your families, how excessive and abusive of the creature, how bowelless and merciless; who can reckon up how you have ordered your time and talents? God can, but he must have time: will you thrust much work upon God, and not give him time to go through with it? God takes time to administer justice: he was forty years telling Israel how they grieved him by their murmuring. You would think much if he should be so long a telling England of her present murmuring. So afterwards he took eight years, and then eighteen years, and then twenty years, to tell Israel what they did under their judges; and then seventy years to tell Israel what they did under their kings: not any public body that I know of in the scripture, but when God hath come to administer justice to it, he hath taken some years to do it. Great houses that have many rooms in them, and these very foul, cannot be swept presently.

Further as God takes time to administer justice to public bodies, so he takes time to administer mercy to public bodies. The tabernacle was long a raising; the first temple, which was to exceed that, longer; the second temple, which was to exceed that, much longer; the third, which is to exceed all, longest of all. The tent, or tabernacle, which was but small, I judge, was a year a making: the first temple, seven years; the second temple, forty and six years. If this had any typical signification, as I believe it had, it might well point at this, that a

public house for Christ, under the gospel, would be long a raising. The sun rises more and more; and so must up to the perfect day, this is the order that Christ will proceed in, to bring full mercy into the world: will you be impatient that the sun rises no faster? that he is not at the meridian as soon as the day dawns?

A second principle is this; God doth fit for favours, and then gives them: he doth hew stones for this last temple. We are a generation low in spirit, and yet impatient that we have not high things. Do you give children and fools what they desire? do you not instruct and discipline, and then give? yea, and then too, what in your wisdom you know good. When I look upon that cold, neutral, indifferent spirit, that is in English christians generally, I wonder to hear any complain that their best mercies are so long a coming. I tell you, it is England's neutrality, that hath brought her to this state, that keeps her in this state, that will spend her, and end her with bleeding, if any thing do.

A third principle is this, inferior agents are all overruled; Judas and his crew move by a supreme council, they could not else have done to Christ what they did, and so Christ told them. Providence orders all agents and actions to his own end. Actions and agents may move very strangely in our view, and yet very orderly to the greatest good, as their supernatural end. I would ask any impatient soul but this, What is in the breast of God respecting our cause-love, or not love? if you judge love to be in God to our cause, believe that all agents and actions are ordered by it, and will bring forth in God's time a blessed end.

God will so carry the great works of these last

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times, that all men shall acknowledge him, which should make us patient that we can see man no more in our great works. The finger of God is in it, that he may be seen and admired as the Author of all.

SERMON IX.

COLOSSIANS I. 11.

-UNTO ALL PATIENCE, &C.

CONCERNING patience, according to its general form, you have heard: concerning patience now according to its degrees, I am to speak according as the term here in my text leads me, "all patience,' &c. Patience is a quality, and qualities admit of intension and remission; a man may have less or more, much or "all patience," as the expression here is. As there is little faith and great faith, so there is little patience and great patience; "Could ye not watch with me one hour?" that was little patience : "What if I will that he tarry till I come ?" this is great patience, "all patience," as the term here is.

All patience denotes a totality, under a fourfold reference. It denotes a totality in reference to subject, quality, condition, and time. "All patience" denotes the man all patient: that is, patient in tongue and in heart. It is very usual to make false coin, to put silver and gold without, when the piece is brass within, and not a quarter so much worth as

it goes for. Many a piece is pure metal to look upon, and yet take away the gilding, and there is but base metal within: so many a man hath a painted patience, an outside patience, a lip-patience, as there is a lip-love;-very patient to talk with, and to look upon; very cool in the lips, but burning within. There is a white powder, wildfire so ordered as to make no great report; so there is a pale impatience, that looks white in the face, but red and bloody within; it makes little report in the tongue, but yet is deadly wildfire. Man is a creature of art, he can carry fire in his bosom, and keep it from flaming forth; he can hide coals under embers, and seem as if there were no fire; he can make words as smooth as oil when war and hell are in the heart. He can forgive and not forget; scorch and burn himself inwardly, and say nothing; hurt nobody, but kill himself: this is fretting; it is not patience; it is impatience within door or behind door; it is discontented thoughts pent up; heart-passion stifled, which is deadly impatience, which "all patience," and no less than this thoroughly takes away.

"All patience" is man all in good temper, vital spirits and pulse beating well, as well as lips and countenance looking well. "All patience" is all powers and parts, within and without, moving divinely and sweetly when all in a distressed state. It is every faculty and organ in tune to move towards God when scarce any are at ease to move towards man. It is a man begging forgiveness in a storm of stones for them that unjustly throw them, Acts vii. 60.

As this expression denotes the whole subject, so it denotes the whole of the very quality, of the very grace of patience. "All patience," that is patience, that is all patience-patience, without mixture of

passion-pure patience; patience that is throughout what it is called; as far from all mixture, as it is possible for flesh and blood to be. Patience so far from all impatience that man sees none, God takes notice of none; patience so far from impatience as to grieve no spirit, human or divine.

Man's virtues are mixed, yea, his very graces are mixed; in some more mixed than in others; in some so much mixed that grace is, in a manner, buried, and of no gloss to denominate the man, of no strength to make the man useful. Mixture makes corruption; the more mixture the more corruption. It is hard to call some men gracious, or to say what they are fit for, passion is so strong, and patience so weak and low. Such a man is a torment to himself, and all near him. A christian hath his gloss and his use, as eminent in patience; this the apostle considered in this expression, therefore, I think, this may be his meaning. All pa

tience" is patience all pure-the spirit of an angel, free from all perturbation, above all scandal, very amiable and very useful, fit for all service that God and his gospel can call to.

"All patience" denotes the whole, a totality, as in reference to quality, so in reference to condition; when wholly beset with dangers, a heart so principled, so self-possessed, so master of itself, that no evil can make evil; not the greatest evil, the least impression of evil. Evil is a name of magnitude and of multitude, it speaks one, and it speaks many it speaks a great one, and it speaks a great many. Now all patience" is such a height as holds its own fully, under all trials, under all the waves of God, without sinking or shrinking; under evils mustered by God, weaponed, marshalled,