Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

When you see the cunningest designs baffled by some small thing intervening, when you see men of profound Wisdom infatuated, mistake their way, and grope in the noon day as in the night. Job 5.14. bewildered in a plain way. When you see the hopes of mighty attempters dashed into despair, their triumphs turned into funerals, and their joyful expectations into sorrowful disappointments; when you see the weak devoted to destruction, victorious, and the most presumptuous ⟨p. 746⟩defeated in their purposes, then read the divine Dominion in the desolation of such devices. How often doth God take away the Heart and Spirit of grand designs, and burst a mighty wheel, by snatching but one man out of the World? How often doth he cut off the spirits of Princes, Psal. 76.12. either from the World by death, or from the execution of their projects by some unforeseen interruption, or from favouring those contrivances, which before they cherished, by a change of their minds? How often hath confidence in God, and religious Prayer, edged the weakest and smallest number of weapons, to make a carnage of the carnally confident? How often hath presumption been disappointed, and the contemned Enemy rejoiced in the spoils of the proud expectant of victory.^* Phidias made the Image of Nemesis or revenge at Marathon, of that Marble, which the haughty Persians despising the weakness of the Athenian forces, brought with them, to erect a Trophy for an expected, but an ungain'd victory. Hamans neck by a sudden turn was in the Halter, when the Jews necks were designed to the block. Julian designed the overthrow of all the Christians, just before his breast was pierced by an unexpected Arrow. The Powder-Traitors were all ready to give fire to the Mine, when the Sovereign hand of Heaven snatched away the match. Thus the great Lord of the World cuts off men on the pinnacle of their designs, when they seem to threaten Heaven and Earth. Puts out the Candle of the wicked, which they thought to use to light them to the execution of their purposes; turns their own Counsels into a curse to themselves, and a blessing to their Adversaries, and makes his greatest Enemies contribute to the effecting his purposes.