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

Reas. 2. Because God will have a rebellious people left inexcusable, Ezek. 2. 5. though the prime end, and natural tendency of the Ministry, be for the Conversion and good of the people to whom they are sent, yet God in just judgement will sometimes have it to be to increase their Condemnation, and to make their misery more dreadful: Line upon line, &c. is sometimes given to make a people stumble and […] Isa. 28.13. all this is for Gods glory, the shine of the glory of his Justice, when he shall come to recover the honour of his despised Counsels and Warnings, and plead with a people for their wretched and inexcusable violation of both Covenants.

Reas. 2. Because God will have a rebellious people left inexcuseable, Ezek. 2. 5. though the prime end, and natural tendency of the Ministry, be for the Conversion and good of the people to whom they are sent, yet God in just judgement will sometimes have it to be to increase their Condemnation, and to make their misery more dreadful: Line upon line, &c. is sometimes given to make a people stumble and 〈…〉 Isa. 28.13. all this is for Gods glory, the shine of the glory of his Justice, when he shall come to recover the honour of his despised Counsels and Warnings, and plead with a people for their wretched and inexcusable violation of both Covenants.

Use I. See here a reason why Gods faithful Ministers use so little humane policy in the execution of their Place and Office: should they connive at our sins, few pillows under our elbows, fawn upon us, or at the least speak in the dark and aloof off, they were most likely, in an eye of humane Reason, to live more quietly, and less hated: he is ready to be accounted our enemy who tells us the truth. How easily might they accommodate themselves to humane affections, but they dare not do it, but speak plain; not because they are ignorant of the probability of what entertainment they are like to meet withal, but because they dare not to be false to the charge and trust which God hath laid upon them. I confess, concerning some things there may be an indiscreet zeal, in these there is a time to hold one's peace; but in the discovery of the Counsels of God, and laying open crying sins, &c. it's not the fear or favour of man, but the awful command of God, which must be, and is, the Rule of the serious Minister, who being sent from God, must deliver his Embassy.