A29709:42
A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse…
A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse about the favourable, signal and eminent presence of the Lord with his people in their greatest troubles, deepest distresses, and most deadly dangers : with the resolution of several questions, concerning the divine presence, as also the reasons and improvements of this great and glorious truth ... / by Thomas Brooks ...A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse about the favorable, signal and eminent presence of the Lord with his people in their greatest troubles, deepest distresses, and most deadly dangers : with the resolution of several questions, concerning the divine presence, as also the reasons and improvements of this great and glorious truth ... / by Thomas Brooks ...
London: printed for Dorman Newman, 1675
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Secondly, the Lord doth manifest his favourable, his signal, his eminent presence with his People in their greatest troubles, deepest distresses, and most deadly dangers, 1by his teaching and instructing of them, Psalm 94. 12. Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy Law. This divine presence turns every lash into a happy lesson. In this Psalm the holy Ghost useth six arguments to prove, that a man is blest who is chastened; First, because he is instructed by being afflicted as here. 2. Because the end why God lays affliction on his People is to give them rest; from the days of adversity, Verse 13. 3. Until the pit be digged for the wicked in the same Verse, until the cold grave hold his body, and hot hell hold his soul. 4. Because God will support them under all their afflictions, when God casteth his People into the Furnace of afflictions, his everlasting arms shall be underneath them; though God may cast down his People, yet he will never cast off his People. 5. Because there shall be a glorious restoration, Ver. 15. Judgment shall return unto righteousness. 6. Because all the upright in heart shall follow it, in the same Verse, viz. in their affections they are carried out after it; earnestly desiring that dear day, when God will unriddle his providences, and clear up his proceedings with the sons of men. Jerome writing to a sick friend, hath this expression: I account it a part of unhappiness not to know adversity, I judge you to be miserable, because you have not been miserable. Demetrius saith, nothing seems more unhappy to me, than he to whom no adversity hath happened. Impunitas securitatis matter, virtutum noverca, 2Religionis virus, tinea sanctitatis; Freedom from punishment ⟨p. 22⟩is the mother of security, the stepmother of virtue, the poison of Religion, the moth of holiness. It was a speech of 3a German Divine in his sickness, In this disease (saith he) I have learned how great God is, and what the evil of sin is, I never knew to purpose what God was before, nor what sin meant before; Gods corrections are our