SERMONS* 371 



God's judgments of all sorts. Is it not on purpose 

 to remind us, whenever we hear the sound, or 

 m ike use of the things, or feel the smart of either, 

 to reflect upon the heavy wrath of God against 

 sin in his so solemn expressions of it? Once more, 

 fire is the tyrant in nature, the king of the ele- 

 ments, the mighty Nimrod in the material world. 

 God hath given us this active creature for our 

 servant, and we degrade him to the meanest 

 offices, to the drudgery of the kitchen, and the 

 labour of the furnace. But God can infranchize 

 him when he pleases, and let him loose upon us ; 

 and for our sins, of an useful servant, make him 

 to us a rigorous and a tyrannical master. You 

 saw him the other day, when he escaped from 

 all your restraints, mocked all your resistance, 

 scorned the limits you would have set him : — 

 winged with our guilt, he flew triumphant over 

 our proudest heights, waving his curled head, 

 seeming to repeat us that lesson which holy St. 

 Austin taught us long since. That the inferior 

 creatures serve us men, only that we may serve 

 Him, who made both us and them too. If we 

 rebel against Heaven, Sui/gxTroAfuifo-s* o KoV/*o?, saith 

 the wise man, *The world shall rise in arm.s upon 

 us, and fight with him against the unwise. Even 

 the holy fires of the Altar too, though kindled 

 from Heaven on purpose to propitiate an angry 

 Deity, proved often, through men's provocations, 

 the instruments of his fury : the Mercy-seat be- 



* Wisd. V. 20. 

 B B 2 



