The dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in several treatisesThe dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in severall treatises

¹1. Here Admire the greatness of Gods patience in bearing with sinners. It may be thou hast been an Unclean Sinner, a Drunken sinner, a Swearing-wretch, these twenty, thirty, forty, it may be threescore years, and more. And hath God spared thee? Oh! here see the wonder of Gods patience!

1. 11. Admire Gods patience in bearing with sinners.

If it were not, that God is Almighty in the power of his patience, it had been impossible he should have spared thee so long. He tells us so, Hos. 11.9. I am God, and not man—I will not enter into the city, viz. to destroy it. So Mal. 3.6.—I am JEHOVAH, I change not—Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed; Implying, if he had not been God, if he had not been Almighty in the power of his patience, they had certainly been cut off long before.

If men be daily provoked and irritated with injuries, and do not come out to revenge, we attribute it either to their Pusillanimity, or to their Impotency; either to their want of courage, or want of Power. But now it is not so with God, His patience is his power. Numb. 14.17, 18. when God had threatened to destroy them, Moses prays to God to forbear them, and he calls that Act of his patience, no less than his power—Now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken—The Lord is long-suffering, &c. where you see, he makes his patience his power. And so it is indeed, if you consider what sin is. Shall I say no more of it, than this, which God saith,