BAXTER'S FAREWELL SERMON. 513 Psalm ciii. 9. 14. His short corrections are purposely fitted to prepare us for endless consolations. . Reas. 3. Our trial also must be but short, and, therefore, so must be our sorrows. Though God will not have us receive the crown, without the preparationof a conflict and a conquest, yet will he not have our fight and race too long, lest it overmatch our strength, and his grace, and we should be overcome. 'Though our faith and we must be tried in the fire, yet God will see that the furnace be not over hot, and that we stay no longer, but till our dross be separated from us ; 1 Pet. i. 6, 7.,9. God putteth us not into the fire to consume us; but to refine us, (Psalm cxix. 67. 75.) that when we come out we may say, (Psalm cxxix. 1-3.) " It is good for us that we were afflicted,' (Psalm cxix. 71; Isaiah Xlix. 13.) and.then he will save the afflicted people ;. Psalm xviii. 27. Reas. 4. The power of those that afflict God's servants wrong- fully is but short ; and, therefore; the sorrows ofsuch afflictioncan be but short ; though it be foreign churches ofwhom I speak, I hope it is to such as take their case to be to them as their own : while theyare breathing out threateaings,.they.are ready to breathe out their guilty souls. Ifa man in a dropsy or consumption per- secute us, we would not be over fearful ofhim, because we see he is adying man. And so little is the distance between the death of one man and another, that we may well say, ' All men's ]ides are in a consumption, and maybear their indignation, as we would do the injuries 9f a dying man. How short is the day of the power of darkness.! Christ calleth it but an hour ; "This is your hour, and the power.of darkness ;" Luke xxii. 53. How quicklywas Herod eaten of wornìs, and many another cut off in the height of their prosperity, when they have been raging in the heat of perse- cution. Little thought Ahab that he had been so near his woful day, when he had given order that Micaiah should be fed with the bread and water of affliction, till he returned in peace. What persecutions have the death of a Licinius, a Julian, a' Queen Mary, &c., shortened! While they are raging, trey are dying; while they ,are condemning the just, they are going to be condemned by their most just avenger. How quickly will their corpse be laid in dust, and their condemned souls be put under the chains of dark- ness, till the judgment of the great and dreadful day ! 2 Pet. xxiv. He is not only an unbeliever, but irrational or inconsiderate, that cannot see their,end (Jude 6.) in the greatest of their glory. How easy is it to see these bubbles vanishing, and to foresee the sad and speedyperiod of all their cruelties and triumphs! "Know- est thou not this ofold, since man was placed upon earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of.the hypocrite but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up to the heavens. VOL. n. 65
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