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

4. Examples are of wondrous benefit to give efficacy to Doctrines, and move upon the affections, and bring them to consideration, they are useful to persuade; and to move the soul to make out after God: Psal. 78.6, 7, 8.

4. Examples are of wondrous benefit to give efficacy to Doctrines, and move upon the affections, and bring them to consideration, they are useful to perswade; and to move the soul to make out after God: Psal. 78.6, 7, 8.

1. Because there is a natural sympathy between the children of men, there is a kind of a fellow feeling of sufferings; when we read only of Doctrines, these may reach the understanding, but when we read or hear of Examples, humane affection doth as it were represent to us the case as our own; whereupon the judgements of God, do in the very hearing dwell upon the thoughts, and take upon the heart: when I read the story of Sodom's overthrow, me thinks I see the Sun rising in glorious brightness, the Sodomites sporting and pleasing themselves in their opulence and security; when on a sudden, me thinks I see the heavens covered with those sable clouds, and hear the great Cannon of heaven thundering down tempests upon them, and the streams of fire with horror and dread, till I behold a proud City, on a sudden become a desolate heap; when I read Jerusalems history, me thinks I see the battering Engines placed against the walls, the proud enemy climbing up the battlements, the feeble and saint-hearted Citizens flying into corners, overtaking by the insulting foe; who without mercy or pity sheaths his sword in their bowels; me-thinks I see the fire-balls flying […] and fro, and the glorious buildings, the work of many years, yielding to that prevailing and merciless enemy, I hear the cries of ravished virgins and bereaved Orphans, yea, I look on till I see all Gods threatenings fulfilled, and the glory of the Nations stripped of all ornament and become a widow, &c.