ness, till this be chief with you. Others have had as much of God's patience, and as fair opportunity, as you, whose souls and Christ had never met, and now know that they never shall. They had their time of worldly projects and enjoyment, as you now have, and followed them, as if they had been immortally to abide with them; but they are passed away as a shadow, and we are posting after them, and within a while shall lie down in the dust. Oh! how happy they whose hearts are not here, trading with vanity, and gathering vexation, but whose thoughts are on that blessed life above trouble. Certainly they that pass for fools in the world, are the only children of wisdom; that have renounced their lusts and their own wills, have yielded up themselves to Jesus, taking him for their King, and have their minds resting on him as their salvation.

While the ark was a preparing.] Observe, The delay of the Lord's determined judgment on the ungodly was indeed long-suffering towards them; but here was more in it to Noah and his family; the providing for their preservation; and till that was completed for them, the rest were spared. Thus, the very forbearance that the ungodly do enjoy, is usually involved with the interest of the godly; something of that usually goes into it; and so it is in a great part for their sakes, that the rest are both spared, and are furnished with common mercies. The saints are usually the scorn and contempt of others; yet are, by that love the Lord carries towards them, the very arches, pillars of states and kingdoms, and families, where they are, yea of the world; the frame whereof is continued mainly in regard to them. But they that are ungrateful to the great Maker and upholder of it, and regardless of him; what wonder if they take no notice of the advantage they receive by the concernment of his children in the world. Observe

Here, 1. The work. 2. The end of it. I. in the

work, preparing of the ark, observe, 1st, God's appointment; 2dly, Noah's obedience.

1st, For the appointment of God. The divine power was not tied to this, yet his wisdom chose it. He that steered the course of this ark safely all that time, could have preserved those he designed it for without it; but thus it pleases the Lord, usually, to mix his most wonderful deliverances with some selected means; exercising that way our obedience in their use, yet so as the singular power of his hand in them, whereon faith rests, doth clearly appear, doing by them what, in a more natural way, they could not possibly effect.

2dly, For the obedience of Noah, if we should insist on the difficulties, both in this work, and in the way of their preservation by it, it would look the clearer, and be found very remarkable. The length of the work, the great pains in providing materials, especially considering the opposition that probably he met with in it, from the profane about him, the mightier of them at least, the hatred, and continual scoffs of all sorts, it required principles of an invincible resolution to go through with it. What (would they say) means this old dotard to do? whither this monstrous voyage? and for that it spoke, as no doubt he told them their ruin, and his safety; this would incense them so much the more. You look far before you; and what, shall we all perish, and you alone escape? But through all the sovereign command and gracious promise of his God carried him, regarding their scoffs and threats as little in making the ark, as he did afterwards the noise of the waters about it, when he was sitting safe within it. This his obedience, having indeed so boisterous winds to encounter, had need of a well-fastened root, that it might stand and hold out against them all, and so it had. The Apostle St. Paul tells us what the root of it was; by faith, being warned of God, he prepared an ark. And there is no living and lasting obedience but what

1

springs from that root: He believed what the Lord spake of his determined judgment on the ungodly world; and from the belief of that arose that holy fear, which is expressly mentioned as exciting him to this work. And he believed the word of promise, that the Lord spake concerning his preservation by the ark; and the belief of these two carried him strongly on to the work, and through it, against all counter blasts and opposition; overcame his own doubtings, and the mockings of the wicked, still looking to him that was the master and contriver of the work.

Till we attain such a fixed view of our God, and such firm persuasion of his truth and power, and goodness, it will never be right with us. There will be nothing but wavering and unsettledness in our spirits and in our ways; every little discouragement from within, or without, that meets us, will be like to turn us over. We shall not walk in an even course, but still reeling and staggering, till faith be set wholly upon its own basis, the proper foundation of it: not set betwixt two, upon one strong prop, and another that is rotten, partly on God, and partly on creature helps and encouragements, or our own strength; that is the way to fall off. Our only safe and happy way is, in humble obedience, in his own strength, to follow his appointments without standing and questioning the matter, and to resign the conduct of all to his wisdom and love; to put the rudder of our life into his hand, to steer the course of it as seemeth him good, resting quietly on his word of promise for our safety. Lord, whither thou wilt, and which way thou wilt, be thou my guide, and it sufficeth.

This absolute following of God, and trusting hin with all, is marked as the true character of faith in Abraham, going after God from his country, not knowing nor asking whither he went, secure in his guide. And so in that other greater point of offering his Son, he silenced all disputes about it,

& Heb. xi. 8.

by that mighty conclusion of faith, accounting that he was able to raise him from the dead. Thus here, Noah, by faith, prepared the ark; did not argue and question how shall this be done, and if it were, how shall I get all the kinds of beasts gathered together to put into it, and how shall it be ended, when we are shut in? No, but believed firmly that it should be finished by him, and he saved by it; and he was not disappointed.

II. The end of this work was the saving of Noah, and his family, from the general deluge, wherein all the rest perished.

Here it will be fit to consider the point of the preservation of the godly in ordinary and common calamities, briefly in these positions.

1. It is certain that the children of God, as they are not exempted from the common universal calamities and evils of this life, that befal the rest of men, so not from any particular kind of them. As it is appointed for them, with all others, once to die', so we find them not privileged from any kind of disease, or other way of death; not from falling by sword, or by pestilence, or in the frenzy of a fever, or any kind of sudden death: yea, when these, or such like, are on a land, by way of public judgment, the godly are not altogether exempted from them, but may fall in them with others; as we find Moses dying in the wilderness with those he brought out of Egypt. Now, though it was for a particular failing in the wilderness, yet it evinces, that there is in this no encroachment upon their privileges, nothing contrary to the love of God towards them, and his covenant with them.

2. The promises made to the godly, of preservation from common judgments, have their truth, and are made good in many of them so preserved; though they do not hold absolutely and universally: for they are ever to be understood in subordination to their highest good: but when they are preserved, they ought to take it as a gracious accomplishment, Heb. xi. 19. Heb. ix. 27.

even of these promises to them, which the wicked, many of which do likewise escape, have no right to, but are preserved for after-judgment.

3. It is certain, that the curse and sting is taken out of all those evils incident to the godly with others, in life and death, which makes the main difference, though to the eye of the world invisible. And it may be observed, that in these common judgments of sword or pestilence, or other epidemic diseases, a great part of those that are cut off are of the wickedest, though the Lord may send of those arrows to some few of his own, to call them home.

The full and clear distinction of the godly and wicked, being reserved for their after estate in eternity, it needs not seem strange, that in many things it appears not here: one thing above all others, most grievous to the child of God, may take away the wonder of other things they suffer in common, that is, the remainders of sin in them while they are in the flesh: though there is a spirit in them above it, and contrary to it, which makes the difference; yet sometimes the too much likeness, especially in the prevailings of corruption, doth confuse the matter, not only to others eyes, but their

own.

4. Though the great distinction and severing be reserved to that great and solemn day, that shall clear all, yet the Lord is pleased, in part, more remarkably at some times to difference his own from the ungodly, in the execution of temporal judgments, and to give these as preludes of that final and full judgment. And this of Noah was one of the most eminent in that kind, being the most general judgment that ever befell the world, or that shall /

till the last, and so the liveliest figure of it; this was by water, as the second shall be by fire, and it was most congruous that it should resemble in this, as the chief point, the saving of righteous Noah and his family from it; prefiguring the eternal salvation of believers, as our apostle teacheth.