Use 1

USE I.

This shews us the way how men come to be the amazing monuments of God's wrath. When God has a purpose to suffer sinners to bring upon themselves, the most astonishing impressions of his indignation, and to fill up such a measure as shall make them peculiar instances of his revenging justice: he placeth them in the Church, gives them leave to sit under clearest Gospel light, and to enjoy all the advantages of the means to the highest, to have line upon line, and to suffer them to stand a long while in this state, until they have despised a world of endeavours used with them, and tired out a long continued patience, before he falls upon them, and cuts them off; that by abusing the best of mercies, and wearing out the most restrained forbearance, they may fall at last under the load of so great guilt, as will drag them down into the depths of destruction: and by this means, though for the present he seems to be a loser by these men, yet he does fully recover his injured glory at their hands in the winding up. Hence,