A fourth volume containing one hundred and fifty sermons on several texts of Scripture…

Secondly; The other Branch of Exhortation is to God's People, to walk as his peculiar Ones, and to carry your selves as becometh the People of God.

1. Praise him for enrolling you in this Company, Psal. 135.3, 4. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing Praises unto his Name, for it is pleasant. For he hath chosen Jacob to himself, and Israel to be his peculiar Treasure. To quicken you, consider what you were; you were not a People, God raised you up from the very Dunghill to this Preferment; remember your past Estate. Look as old Jacob considered what he had been when God preferred him, Gen. 32.10. —With my Staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two Bands. So do you say, I am a worthless Creature, it is God that hath taken me into Grace, praised be the Lord that hath chosen me. Then consider how many are left to perish in the wide World. Some live out of the Church's Pale, that never heard of Christ; and many others have only a loose General from Christianity; O blessed be God that hath chosen me to be of the number of his peculiar People. It is said, Zech. 13.8. And it shall come to pass in all the Land, saith the Lord, that two parts shall be cut off and die, but the third shall be left therein. We pass through many Bolters before we come ⟨p. 180⟩to be God's peculiar People; as the Corn is ground, bolted, searced before it comes to be fine Flower. There are many Nations have not the knowledge of God, and others live in the Church, but are carnal; and I to be one of his peculiar People, an invisible Member of Christ's Mystical Body, O what a Privilege is this! And then what moved him to all this? nothing but his own free Grace. Thus Moses debates the Case with Israel, Deut. 7.6, 7, 8. For thou art an holy People unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special People unto himself, above all People that are upon the face of the Earth. The Lord hath not set his Love upon you, or chose you, because ye were more in number than any People (for ye were the fewest of all People): But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the Oath which he had sworn unto your Fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty Hand, and redeemed you out of the House of Bond-men, from the Hand of Pharaoh King of Egypt. Therefore praise the Lord.