An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

Secondly, These preventing mercies do empty themselves in a two-fold channel. ¹For they are either Temporal evils, or Spiritual evils, that these mercies do relate unto: and thus preventing mercies do compass us about all the day long; what evil might not have fallen upon thee every moment? This disease, that casualty, such a sudden and unexpected calamity. Insomuch that thou canst not hear of any misery, fallen upon any living, but it also might have come upon thee. Doth any sit mourning and wringing their hands, crying out, O ye that pass by, see if there be any afflicted with bitterness, as I am! And is not this thy case? Is not thy house a house of mourning, for dead fathers, or dead husbands, as well as others? Is not all this from the preventing mercy of God? The second channel in which these mercies may be discovered, is, In spiritual things. And certainly here we may cry out also, That they are more than can be numbered. For what sin, what temptations, what terrors and troubles of heart, what wounds and gashes of soul do any of the godly fall into, and thou mayest not also be plunged into the same? Who maketh thee to differ? Why must not the branch engrafted in, insult over that which is broken off, but take heed and tremble? Is it not because God may break off those also? Oh then with bleeding and melting hearts, acknowledge and say, O Lord, what would have become of me, if left to such a passion, if forsaken in such a temptation! Why is it that I have not the guilt, the condemnation that others lie under? Is it not because thy goodness did keep me? Even as David was preserved in respect of that business of the men of Keilah, he asketh of God, Whether they would deliver him into Saul's hands, and God telleth him, they would certainly do it; thereupon David will not commit himself to them. It is thus often in respect of thy soul; if thou go to such a place, if thou art put into such a temptation, if placed in such a condition or relation, God knoweth that this would prove a snare to thee, it would be a ruin to thee. Therefore the Lord doth so order by his mercy, that thou shalt not come into that condition. Divines have one kind of grace, that they call Gratia praeveniens, which doth prevent us, it cometh upon us before we have any thought, any will or desire about it. As God said, He was found of those, that sought him not.

Secondly, These preventing mercies do empty themselves in a two-fold chanel. ¹