A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

¹Secondly, God providentially keeps Men from sinning, if not by shortening their Lives, yet by cutting short their Power, whereby they should be enabled to commit Sin. All that power that wicked men have to sin, it is either from themselves, or from their wicked Associates, whom they make use of as instruments for the accomplishment of their Impieties; but Providence can strike them in both, and thereby give their Lusts a miscarrying Womb, and dry Breasts. Sometimes God by his Providence cuts off their evil Instruments, and thereby disables them from sinning; sometimes their instruments for Counsel; thus Providence by over-ruling Absalom to reject the Counsel of Ahithophel, prevents all that Mischief that so wise and so wicked a Statesman might have contrived; and thereupon he goes and hangs himself. Sometimes he cuts off their Instruments of ⟨p. 271⟩Execution; and so God disappointed the hopes of blaspheming Rabshekah, & sent an Angel, that in one night kills almost two hundred thousand of the Assyrians dead on the place. Certainly it is great folly for men upon confidence of their wise and powerful Instruments, to set themselves up against that God, that can, without, or against all Means and Instruments confound their Designs, and frustrate all their Enterprises; And as God thus strikes their Instruments; so sometimes he strikes their Persons, and takes from them the use of those natural Faculties by which they should be enabled to commit their Sins; sometimes he hides their Wits from them, and besots them; so he did to the Jews, John 7.30. They sought to apprehend Jesus: Why, who did hinder them? Was he not there among them? Was there not enough of them to do it? Yes, there was; but yet they only stand gazing at him, like men besotted, till he escaped away from them. Sometimes God hides away their hands from them, and enfeebles them; as in Psal. 76.5. None of the mighty men have found their hands: God had benumbed them, and laid their hands out of the ⟨p. 272⟩way when they should have used them. The Sodomites, you know, swarmed thick about Lot's House, intending Villainy to his Guests, and God smites them with Blindness, that they grope for the door, even at Noon-day. Jeroboam stretcheth out his hand against the Prophet, and God suddenly withers it. This is God's frequent course with wicked men;