42 FIRST SERMON there in the earth to be found any mines or harvests of grace or comfort. In God alone is the fountain of life ; he that only is good, he only doth good ; when we have wearied ourselves with having recourse to second causes, here at last, like the wandering dove, we must arrive for rest : " Many will say, Who will show us any good? do thou lift up the light of thy countenance upon us," Psal. iv. 6. From Him alone comes every good gift ; Jam. i. 17. whether temporal, it is his blessing that maketh the creature able to comfort us ; (the woman touched the hem of Christ's garment, but the virtue went not out of the garment, but out of Christ, Luke viii. 44.) or whether spiritual, sanctified faculties, sanc- tified habits, sanctified motions, glorious relations, in predestination, adoption, and christian liberty, ex- cellent gifts, heavenly comforts, all and only from him, and that without change and alteration. He doth not do good one while, and evil another, but goodness is his proper and native operation ; he is not the author of sin, that entered by the devil ; he is not the author of death, that entered by sin ; but our de- struction is of ourselves. And therefore, though the prophet say, Is there any evil in the city which the Lord hath not done ? yet he doth it not but only as it is good in order to his glory : for it is just with God, that they who run from the order of his commands, should fall under the order of his providence, and doing willingly what he forbids, should unwillingly suffer what he threateneth. In one word, God is the author of all good, by his grace working it ; the permitter of all evil, by his patience enduring it ; the orderer and disposer of both, by his mercyrewarding the one,by his justice revenging
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