Influences of the life of grace

2. In things of remote nature, this is seen, 2 Kings 13. 19. If thou had smitten the ground five or six times, then hadst thou smitten Syria, till thou had consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice. The connection of the Kings smiting of the ground and of smiting of the Syrians, is not from the nature of the things themselves, but from the free appointment of God: if Christ talk with the woman of Samaria and ask of her a Drink of water, he shall convert her, and the Samaritans before he leave her. If Job be spoiled, he shall humbly submit himself to God, and bless him. There may be more or less conveniency between the things, but all the connection of things in this kind might in their contraries have been as true, if so holy Sovereignty had appointed.

2. In things of remote nature, this is seen, 2 Kings 13. 19. If thou had smitten the ground five or six times, then hadst thou smitten Syria, till thou had consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice. The connexion of the Kings smiting of the ground and of smiting of the Syrians, is not from the nature of the things themselves, but from the free appointment of God: if Christ talk with the woman of Samaria and ask of her a Drink of water, he shall convert her, and the Samaritans before he leave her. If Job be spoiled, he shall humbly submit himself to God, and bless him. There may be more or less conveniency between the things, but all the connection of things in this kind might in their contraries have been as true, if so holy Soveraignty had appointed.

3. He who decrees the existence of things in time and place, he decrees the co-existence of the same things. Now that Joseph should be the subject matter of killing or selling when the Ishmaelites came by, and that Ahasuerus cannot sleep in the night, when that very passage of the Persian Chronicle must be read in the which is the story of Mordecai's ⟨p. 48⟩loyal revealing the treason was from him, and they were tied together by no nature of things, by no influences of Planets and Stars, but by the Sovereign will of God: now the co-existence of things is a real event of providence as is clear. Its from the Lord that Peter and Paul lived together in the same age and time, and Abraham and David lived not together, and from the holy decree of God that Jezebels body be cast out, when there is none willing to bury her; and from the holy decree of God, that the Soldiers came with Spears to break the Legs of Christ, and that they find him dead and so break not one bone of him: yea the existence and living and acting of all things, and the co-existence, living and working together of them are from the same providence of God, or then from nature, or from the blind fortune, neither of which we can say; and who appoints the meeting of two Seas, or the meeting of two Rivers, or of two Men at the same place? or that the new Star should be in Cassiopeia rather then in another part of the Firmament? doth not David bless the Lord who sent Abigail to meet him with a counsel of peace? then must these confluences and co-existences of things be written in the Lord's book, and so decreed,