An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second,…

Hence note; It is most unnatural to be hardened against those to whom we stand engaged by near relation or natural bonds.

Hence note; It is most unna•ural to be hardned against those to whom we stand engaged by neer relation or natural bonds.

To look upon those as not ours, that are ours, is an extremity of hardness. She is a hard mother indeed, who deals with her children as if they were not her children. The Apostle concludes universally in the Negative (Eph. 5.29.) No man ever hated his own flesh, but loved it and cherished it, as the L•rd doth the Church. Now as it is an unnatural thing for a man to hate his own flesh personal, so his own flesh relational. Christ speaking of the world, saith (John 15.19.) The world loves its own. The world doth not love you, saith Christ to his disciples; yea, because I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. The world and you are not of a piece, are not of a Pedigree, nor of the same extraction; you are of another world, and have had both a birth and a breeding, differing (toto coelo) heavenly wide from theirs; and therefore 'tis no great wonder if the world hate you, who are not of it: but the world loves its own. They have a nature more unnatural than the world, who are hardened against their own relations. Jesus Christ (John 1.11.) came to his own, and his own received him not. Now, as not to be respected by our own, so not to respect our own, is unnatural. It was the sin of the Jewish Nation, that they did not respect Christ, they being Christs own according to the flesh. Their sin is great, and they do shamefully, who will not do what good they ought and can for their own. The Prophet Jeremiah in his Lamentations (Chap. 4.3.) speaking of the women of Jerusalem in that extremity of famine, saith, Even the Sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones; but the daughter of my people is become cruel like the Ostriches in the wilderness. The Prophet compares that people to the Ostrich, though that cruelty of theirs to their young ones proceeded not so much from the hardness of their hearts, as from the hardness of the times, and was to be charged rather upon their necessity, than their nature. The famine upon them was so great, and pressed them so sore, that they were so far from having any thing to give their children to eat, that they were forced to eat their children; and yet this necessitous hard-heartness of theirs towards their own, the Prophet upbraids them