A supplement to the several discourses upon various divine subjects

(1.) Let not our Faith rest upon appearances. Flesh will then make a wrong Judgment of God. Providences are various, and should our Faith be guided only by them, it would have a liveliness one moment, and faint the next. As the Promise is the stability of the Church, so it is only the stability of our Faith. The Authority of the Word is the Life of our Faith, and not the sense of any particular Providence in the world. A Faith built upon protecting Providences is a sensitive Faith, a Faith built upon the Promise, is a spiritual Faith.

(2.) Yet the Experiences God hath given us hitherto of the continuance of the Church, may be called in to bear witness to the Truth of the Promise. He hath before conducted his Israel into Canaan, when Pharaoh meditated their utter ruin, or their continuance under his Chains; he fed them with Manna, and watered them with a Rock in a desert, that afforded no earthly assistance. The preserving the Vine could never be ascribed to the Vine it self, in ⟨p. 38⟩which there is no strength; nor to the Foxes, in whom there is no pity; but to the keeper of the vineyard. We have reason therefore to trust God, but not at all to trust man; Is it from man or from God that the Church hath subsisted so long in the world, a little flock in the midst of many Wolves, among enemies more numerous than her friends? What a small number hath the Church had in any age to mate the multitude of her enemies, what wisdom to countermine their policy, and what power to repel their force? The Church is not weaker now, than it hath been; the Sons of Zion were always Sheep; Sheep have not the strength of Lyons to resist, nor the swiftness of Eagles to fly away from danger; the danger cannot be greater than it hath been, there were always Dragons that spat out their venom, and Lyons that opened their mouths against her; the Devil never wanted diligence nor the world enmity to overturn her; could she for one moment have subsisted in the midst of so many furies, had not God been her shield, and glory? Call to mind how often God hath healed her diseases, and bound up her wounds. Let us rest in that promise, which hath so often been made good by his power, which he hath in many ages displayed upon as great occasions of danger as Zion can be in. Let us live believingly under his wings, and fear not our own weakness or our enemies strength.