SERMOXS. 359 



Judgments, ver. 8. — and in this, ver. 9. earnestly 

 to desire him from the very soul in the night (in 

 the darkest and blackest of the affliction,) to seek 

 him early, when it begins to dawn towards a 

 better condition ; and, in the mean time, as it is 

 in the text, to improve all this severe discipline, 

 as he intends it, for the advancing us in the know- 

 ledge of Him, and of ourselves, and of our whole 

 duty; For when thy Judgments are in the Earth, 

 the Inhabitants of the World will learn Righteous- 

 ness. 



A text, you see, that supposeth judgments in 

 the earth, or upon a land, (as its occasions) and 

 so suitable to our sad condition : a text, too, that 

 proposeth our learning as its end and design, and 

 so suitable (one would think) to our inclination 

 too. The character and genius of the age we live 

 in is learned : the pretence at this day so high, 

 and so universal, that he is nobody now, who 

 hath not a new system of the world, a new hy- 

 pothesis in nature, a new model of government, a 

 new scheme of God's decrees, and the greatest 

 depths in theology. We are many of us acute 

 philosophers (that must not be disputed us); most 

 of us grand politics and statesmen too; all of us 



(without exception) deep divines : will needs 



be wiser than our neighbours, but however wiser 

 than our teachers and governors, if not wiser than 

 God himself. A kind of moral rickets, that 

 swells and puffs up the head, while the whole 

 inner man of the heart wastes and dwindles. For 



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