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

Fourthly, consider the eminence of their preservation, ¹though in the fire yet unconsumed. The Church of God was hot, yea all in flames, and yet not consumed. Let the fire be never so hot, so fierce, so furious, so spreading, the Church shall have a being, and live and bear up in the midst of the flames. If the Church like the Sea loose in one place it gets ground in another; when the worst of men, and Devils, and Informers have done their worst, the Lord will have a name among his People on Earth. The Church with the Lamp in the story laughs at all those winds, that would blow it out. Well may we stand amazed and wonder, that so flaming and terrible a fire, falling upon so contemptible a Bush, and so dry and despicable a shrub, should not presently turn ⟨p. 40⟩it into ashes, for why is the fire too weak? O no. Is the Bush so strong, as to defend and secure it self against devouring flames? O no. Or is the Bush not apt to burn and consume by so fier•e a fire? O no. It is not from the impotency of the fire, nor from the strength or constitution of the Bush; for a dry Bramble-bush in the matter of it is as combustible as any chaff, and as easily destroyed as any stubble; but because the natural force thereof was restrained by the glorious power of God: for if God concur not with the nature of things, they cannot work nor show their kind. There are two inseparable qualities of fire: 1. To give light. 2. To burn; And yet Divine power divides and separates these two: for this fire giveth light, but burneth not. O what a mighty, what an astonishing preservation is here! The afflictions and sufferings of the Church are not a consuming fire, but a trying fire, as the fire in a Furnace consumes the dross, but tries the gold, and puts a new lustre, beauty, and glory upon it. Hesiod speaks of thirty thousand Demy-Gods, ²that were keepers of men; but what are so many thousand Gods, to that one God that neither slumbers nor sleeps, but day and night keeps his People as his Jewels, as the apple of his eye, that keeps them in his Pavilion as a Prince his Favourite. There is a Dialogue between a Heathen and a Jew; after the Jews return from captivity (all Nations round about them being enemies unto them) the Heathen asked the Jew, how he and his Country-men could hope for any safety, because (saith he) every one of you is as a silly sheep compassed about with fifty wolves.