SERMONS. 393 



with David pay the vows which they speak with 

 their mouths, when they were in trouble ? Do not 

 the engagements on the sick bed vanish, like the 

 dreams of the sick, forgotten, as if they had never 

 been? I appeal to your own bosoms; though af- 

 fected at first with this late dismal accident, doth 

 it not prove to you a nine-days' wonder, and your 

 thoughts, though much startled at first, by de- 

 grees reconcile to it ? Do not your devotions be- 

 gin to grow cold with the fires ; raked up, like 

 those dying sparks in dead ashes, and buried in 

 the dust; — Ignes suppositi cineri doloso? Just as 

 our Prophet states it here. While thy Judgments 

 were upon them, they learned; but, as it follows im- 

 mediately, '^ Fiat gratia impio, Let favour be 

 showed to the wicked, the least intermission or 

 kind interval, and he will not learn righteousness, 

 saith the text expressly; he soon lays by his 

 book, and gives over. But, 



4. Lastly, what is it that we learn? Or, to 

 what good end or purpose ? The Chaldee Para- 

 phrast interposeth here a very material and ope- 

 rative word, Discent operari, they will learn 

 TI^d'? to do, or to work rio^hteousness. And this 

 addition shows us another of our defects ; cuts 

 ofi*, I fear, above half the roll of our learners at 

 once. We live (as I said) in a learned age : but in 

 all this crowd and throng of learners, how few put 

 themselves in good earnest into God's school ? And 



* Verse 10. 



