A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse…

Such queryings as this carry greatest contempt in them, and would lay the Almighty quite below the required duty, as if Almighty were but an empty Title, and will God ever honour such with his favourable presence, who bid him be packing, who reject his acquaintance, and are willing to be rid of his company? surely no. Such as are only his People by creation, and an outward profession, such are under the wrath ¹and displeasure of God. [God is angry with the wicked every day;] not with a paternal, but with a ²judicial anger; even to hatred and abhorment. [The wicked is an abomination to him, and he hates all workers of iniquity.] And therefore to these he will never vouchsafe his signal presence, such may well expect that God will pour on them the fierceness of that wrath and indignation, that they can neither decline nor withstand; such wrath is like the tempest and whirlwinds, that breaks down all before it. It is like burning fire, and devouring flames, that consumes all. This wrath will break down all the sinners arrogancies, and strangle all his vain hopes, and mar all his sensual joys, and fill him with amazing distractions, and make him drunk with ⟨p. 137⟩the wine of astonishment. And will God dwell with these? will he keep house with these? surely no. By these short hints it is most evident, that the special presence of God is entailed upon none out of Covenant; ³God loves to keep house with none but his Covenant-People; he will grace none with his gracious presence, ⁴but those that are his People by special grace. When wicked men are in great troubles, deep distresses, and most deadly dangers, God either leaves them, as he did Saul; or else pursues them to an utter over-throw, as he did Pharaoh; or else cuts them off by an invisible hand, as he did Sennacherib's mighty Hosts, and proud King Herod; ⁵or else he leaves them to be their own executioners, as he did Ahithophel and Judas, &c. But,