Divine Conduct, or The Mystery of Providence

(4.) To conclude, how innumerable hazards and accidents, (the least of which hath cut off others) hath God carried us all through! I think I may safely say, your privative and positive mercies of this kind are more in number than the ⟨p. 105⟩hairs of your heads. Many thousands of these dangers we never saw, nor were made particularly sensible of; but though we saw them not, our God did, and brought us out of danger, before he brought us into fear. Some have been evident to us, and those so remarkable, that we cannot think, or speak of them to this day, but our souls are freshly affected with those mercies.

It is recorded of our famous Jewell, ¹that about the beginning of Queen Mary's Reign, the Inquisition taking hold of him in Oxford, he fled to London by night; but providentially losing the Road, he escaped the Inquisitors who pursued him: however, he fell that night into another eminent hazard of life, for wandering up and down in the snow, he fainted, and lay starving in the way, panting and labouring for life, at which time Mr. Latimer's servant found and saved him.

1. 1Clark's Lives, p. 262.

It were easy to multiply Examples in this kind, Histories abounding with them; but I think there are few of us, but are furnished out of our own experience abundantly; so that I shall rather choose to press home the sense of these Providences upon you, in order to a suitable return to the God of your mercies for them, than add more Instances of this kind. To this purpose, I desire you seriously to weigh the following particulars.