The fiery trial no strange thing delivered in a sermon preached at Charlestown February…The fiery tryal no strange thing delivered in a sermon preached at Charlestown February…

2. That God overrules all instruments: yea, though, as they are rational agents, and causes by counsel of their own actions, they design nothing but mischief, yet he will use them as mere instruments in his hand, not to gain their own projected ends, but his, which they neither know nor design: they shall but do his pleasure, and not their own, Isai. 10 7. Ah Assyrian! the rod of my anger: what can a rod do without an hand to manage it? no more can they but as God improves them: we look too much on men, and think their power is great, and rage implacable, and now what are we not to expect to suffer? but remember, their wrath shall but serve to praise God, and the remainder he will restrain.

2. That God overrules all instruments: yea, though, as they are rational agents, and causes by counsel of their own actions, they design nothing but mischief, yet he will use them as meer instruments in his hand, not to gain their own projected ends, but his, which they neither know nor design: they shall but do his pleasure, and not their own, Isai. 10 7. Ah Assyrian! the rod of my anger: what can a rod do without an hand to manage it? no more can they but as God improves them: we look too much on men, and think their power is great, and rage implacable, and now what are we not to expect to suffer? but remember, their wrath shall but serve to praise God, and the remainder he will restrain.

3. That Gods people, though in the furnace, are yet very precious to him; yea that he chooseth them in the furnace: ⟨p. 17⟩Israel in affliction is often tempted to say, My God hath forgotten me; but God assures us that it is far otherwise: they are then as tender to him as the sucking child is to the pitiful Mother: you see how God thus expostulates the case with Zion in this regard, Isai. 49, 14, 15, 16.