Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy

Use 1. Or Information of our judgements in divers things:

1. That Afflictions and Calamities are not by casualty, they are Gods Judgements, ordered and •ore-determined by him; not a Sparrow falls to the ground without him: and therefore let it teach us not to slight them, o• look upon them in a negligent manner, as things that come promiscuously, and imprudently to pass, but by the wise disposal of God. See God in all that falls out in the world, and adore him.

2. That it is our duty to look beyond Instruments in every Judgement that befalls us. It is true, Instruments are some of them rational some are […]; and hence some Instruments may be […] give opportunity, may in a way of Equity b• proceeded against: but we must not rest in ⟨p. 29⟩the malice of Instruments, but look […], and see the hand of God: its a foolish dog that runs after the stone, and minds not the hand that threw it. If we look upon the most •ational Instruments, as they be in the hands of God, and consider them as under his Sovereign […], they are no more then […] or Knife, or any other instrument in the hands of a man: The Assyrian my […] Isa. 10. 5. Hence God is nevertheless to be seen for the malice of spite of the creature, because he improves even the wrath of man to his praise, and the remainder of wrath he restrains. •earn we hence in all the Judgements that befall us, not so much to say what means the instruments, but what provokes God, though Syrian before and Philistine behind, yet et Israel return to God that smies him.