202 FIFTH SERMON Hos. x. 1. Grapes of gall and bitter clusters ; full of vanity, windiness, vexation, disappointment ; friends fail either in their love, or in their power, people cry Hosanna to day, and Crucify him to morrow. Men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree a lie. Counsels clash, or are puzzled with intricacies, and unhappy obstacles, like the wheels in Ezekiel's vision, that seem hampered in one another. Armies like Reuben, unstable as waters, that flow now, and anon ebb, and sink away again. Treasures, like the mountains out of which they were first Jigged, bar- ren, and fruitless, better fuel to feed our sins, than water to quench our flames ; matter of prey to the wicked, more than of help to the miserable. In one word, take any creature -helps in the world, and there will be something, nay very much of defect in them All being, but God's, is mixed with not being; and as every man, so every creature else which is nothing but creature, is a liar, like Job's brook, or friends which he compareth thereunto, that vanisheth into nothing when there is most need of it, Job vi. 17. 21. A liar, either by way of perfidiousness, which pro - miseth and then deceives, or by way of impotency, which undertaketh and then miscarries. But when- ever God promiseth and undertaketh to bless any man or any people, he carrieth on his work to perfection ; his blessings are all milk and honey, dew and fatness, wine and oil, the fruits of Lebanon, full of sweetness and maturity : he perfects that which he begins con- cerning his servants, Psa. cxxxviii. S. Phil. i. 6. There dotli not one thing fail of all the good he speaks concerning his people, they all come to pass, and not one faileth, Josh. xxiii. 14. The riches which are gotten byhuman lusts and sinful resolutions, do come along with many and piercing sorrows, 1 Tim. vi. 10
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