408 FORGIYENESS OF SIN. sinned, what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men l" Job, 7: 20. If this consideration will not satisfy thy mind, yet it will assuredly stop the mouths of all the sons of men. Though all the curses of the law should be executed upon us, yet every mouth must be stopped, because all the world is become guilty before God. Rom. 3: 19. " And why should a living man com- plainV' saith the prophet, Lam. 3 : 39. Why, it may be it is because that his trouble is great and inexpressi- ble, and such as seldom or never befell any before him; but what then, saith he, "Shall a man complain of the punishment of his sins 1" If this living man be a sinful man, as there is none that liveth and sinneth not, he has no ground of murmuring or complaint. For a sinful man to complain, especially whilst he is yet a living man, is t. most unreasonable. For, 1. Whatever has befallen us, it is just, because we are sinners before God; and to repine against the judgments of God, that are rendered evidently righteous on ac- count of sin, is to anticipate the condition of the damned in hell, a great part of whose misery it is, that they al- ways repine against the sentence and punishment which they know to be most righteous and holy. If it were now my design to treat of the sins of professors gene- rally, how easy were it to stop the mouths of all men in respect to their troubles; but that is not my present business : I speak to particular persons, and that not with a special design to convince them of their sins, but to humble their souls. When our souls are ready to be entangled with the thoughts of any severe dispen- sation of God, and our own particular pressures, trou- bles, miseries occasioned thereby, let us turn into our
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