Verse 6

VER. 6.

For lo, they are gone, because of destruction.

But do you say to us, What will we do in such a day? Why, we know well enough what to do, we have a way to help us; if all your threatnings should befall us, yet we can have help: why, 'tis not like that all this misery and disolation that you prophesie of, it's not like that it will come suddenly; then surely we know what to do, we will get to Egypt, that's not far off; and if we cannot live here in our own Country, we will go to Memphis, that's a brave City and there we may live well enough; Many of us are Merchants, and Memphis is as great a place for Mercandize as where we live, and we will get there.

Thus carnal hearts have always some shifting thoughts and some plots in their heads thinking of ways to provide for themselves, and indeed it's this that takes off the hearts of men from humbling themselves before the Lord and making their peace with him, because they think they may shift off God's strokes thus and thus, therefore they do not fall down with trembling hearts before the Lord, and cry to him, Lord, what will you have us to do? But they know what to do themselves; and were it not for this, that their hearts were thus taken off by shifts, Oh! what humiliation would there be then before the Lord, what subjecting to him, what seeking of him? Isaiah 57:10. You are wearied in the greatness of your way; yet you said not, There is no hope: you have found the life of your hand, therefore you were not grieved. You thought you could tell what to do, therefore you were not grieved. When God does intend mercy to men, he takes them off from their vain hopes, from all their shifting reasonings, and then mercy is at hand. When the hearts of men are brought to this, to cry, Men and Brethren, what shall we do? and as Jehoshaphat, We know not what to do: but our eyes are towards you: I say, when men's hearts are taken off from all their shifts, and they come to this pass; As for any thing in ourselves we know not what to do, but only our eyes are towards you; then is mercy at hand, and never till then. And therefore all the time that you are reasoning thus in your own imaginations, all that while you are far from mercy.