all things be this day rightly considered. We see in what fury and rage
the world, for the most part, is now raised, against the poor church of
Jesus Christ, unto which he has proclaimed liberty, after the fearful
bondage of that spiritual Babylon, in which we have been holden captives
longer space than Israel was prisoner in Babylon itself: for if we shall
consider, upon the one part, the multitude of those that live wholly
without Christ; and, upon the other part, the blind rage of the pestilent
papists; what shall we think of the small number of them that profess
Christ Jesus, but that they are as a poor sheep, already seized in the
claws of the lion; yea, that they, and the true religion which they
profess, shall in a moment be utterly consumed?
But against this fearful temptation, let us be armed with the promise of
God, namely, that he will be the protector of his church; yea, that he
will multiply it, even when to man’s judgment it appears utterly to be
exterminated. This promise has our God performed, in the multiplication of
Abraham’s seed, in the preservation of it when satan laboured utterly to
have destroyed it, and in deliverance of the same, as we have heard, from
Babylon. He hath sent his Son Christ Jesus, clad in our flesh, who hath
tasted of all our infirmities, (sin excepted,) who hath promised to be
with us to the end of the world; he hath further kept promise in the
publication, yea, in the restitution of his glorious gospel. Shall we then
think that he will leave his church destitute in this most dangerous age?
Only let us cleave to his truth, and study to conform our lives to the
same, and he shall multiply his knowledge, and increase his people. But
now let us hear what the prophet saith more:
“Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when
thy chastening was upon them,” verse 16.
The prophet means, that such as in the time of quietness did not rightly
regard God nor his judgments, were compelled, by sharp corrections, to
seek God; yea, by cries and dolorous complaints to visit him. True it is,
that such obedience deserves small praise before men; for who can praise,
or accept that in good part, which comes as it were of mere compulsion?
And yet it is rare, that any of God’s children do give unfeigned
obedience, until the hand of God turn them. For if quietness and
prosperity make them not utterly to forget their duty, both towards God
and man, as David for a season, yet it makes them careless, insolent, and
in many things unmindful of those things that God chiefly craves of them;
which imperfection being espied, and the danger that thereof might ensue,
our heavenly Father visits the sins of his children, but with the rod of
his mercy, by which they are moved to return to their God, to accuse their
former negligence, and to promise better obedience in all times hereafter;
as David confessed, saying, “Before I fell in affliction I went astray,
but now will I keep thy statutes.”
But yet, for the better understanding of the prophet’s mind, we may
consider how God doth visit man, and how man doth visit God; and what
difference there is betwixt the visitation of God upon the reprobate, and
his visitation upon the chosen.
God sometimes visits the reprobate in his hot displeasure, pouring upon
them his plagues for their long rebellion; as we have heard before, that
he visited the proud, and destroyed their memory. At other times God is
said to visit his people, being in affliction, to whom he sends comfort or
promise of deliverance, as he visited the seed of Abraham, when oppressed
in Egypt. And Zacharias said, that God had visited his people, and sent
unto them hope of deliverance, when John the Baptist was born. But of none
of these visitations our prophet here speaks, but of that only which we
have already touched; namely, when God layeth his correction upon his own
children, to call them from the venomous breasts of this corrupt world,
that they suck not in over great abundance the poison thereof; and he
doth, as it were, wean them from their mother’s breasts, that they may
learn to receive other nourishment. True it is, that this weaning (or
speaning, as we term it) from worldly pleasure, is a thing strange to the
flesh. And yet it is a thing so necessary to God’s children, that, unless
they are weaned from the pleasures of the world, they can never feed upon
that delectable milk of God’s eternal verity; for the corruption of the
one either hinders the other from being received, or else so troubles the
whole powers of man, that the soul can never so digest the truth of God as
he ought to do.
Although this appears hard, yet it is most evident; for what can we
receive from the world, but that which is in the world? What that is, the
apostle John teaches; saying, “Whatsoever is in the world, is either the
lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, or the pride of life.” (1 John
ii.) Now, seeing that these are not of the Father, but of the world, how
can it be, that our souls can feed upon chastity, temperance, and
humility, so long as our stomachs are replenished with the corruption of
these vices?
Now so it is, that flesh can never willingly refuse these fore-named, but
rather still delights itself in every one of them; yea, in them all, as
the examples are but too evident.
It behoves therefore, that God himself shall violently pull his children
from these venomous breasts, that when they lack the liquor and poison of
the world, they may visit him, and learn to be nourished of him. Oh if the
eyes of worldly princes should be opened, that they might see with what
humour and liquor their souls are fed, while their whole delight consists
in pride, ambition, and the lusts of the corrupt flesh! We understand then
how God doth visit men, as well by his severe judgments, as by his
merciful visitation of deliverance from troubles, or by bringing trouble
upon his chosen for their humiliation; and now it remains to understand
how man visits God. Man doth visit God, when he appears in his presence,
be it for the hearing of his word, or for the participation of his
sacraments; as the people of Israel, besides the observation of their
sabbaths and daily oblations, were commanded thrice a-year to present
themselves before the presence of the tabernacle; and as we do, and us
often as we present ourselves to the hearing of the word. For there is the
footstool, yea, there is the face and throne of God himself, wheresoever
the gospel of Jesus Christ is truly preached, and his sacraments rightly
ministered.
But men may on this sort visit God hypocritically; for they may come for
the fashion, they may hear with deaf ears; yea, they may understand, and
yet never determine with themselves to obey that which God requires: and
let such men be assured, that He who searches the secrets of hearts will
be avenged of all such; for nothing can be more odious to God, than to
mock him in his own presence. Let every man therefore examine himself,
with what mind, and what purpose, he comes to hear the word of God; yea,
with what ear he hears it, and what testimony his heart gives unto him,
when God commands virtue, and forbids impiety.
Repinest thou when God requires obedience? Thou hearest to thine own
condemnation. Mockest thou at God’s threatenings? Thou shalt feel the
weight and truth of them, albeit too late, when flesh and blood cannot
deliver thee from his hand. But the visitation, whereof our prophet
speaks, is only proper to the sons of God, who, in the time when God takes
from them the pleasures of the world, or shows his angry countenance unto
them, have recourse unto him, and, confessing their former negligence,
with troubled hearts, cry for his mercy. This visitation is not proper to
all the afflicted, but appertains only to God’s children: for the
reprobates can never have access to God’s mercy in time of their
tribulation, and that because they abuse his long patience, as well as the
manifold benefits they receive from his hands; for as the same prophet
heretofore saith, “Let the wicked obtain mercy, yet shall he never learn
wisdom, but in the land of righteousness,” that is, where the true
knowledge of God abounds, “he will do wickedly.” Which is a crime above
all others abominable; for to what end is it that God erects his throne
among us, but that we should fear him? Why does he reveal his holy will
unto us, but that we should obey it? Why does he deliver us from trouble,
but that we should be witnesses unto the world, that he is gracious and
merciful?
Now, when men hearing their duty, and knowing what God requires of them,
do malapertly fight against all equity and justice, what I pray you, do
they else, but make manifest war against God? Yea, when they have received
from God such deliverance, that they cannot deny but that God himself hath
in his great mercy visited them, and yet they continue wicked as before;
what deserve they but effectually to be given over unto a reprobate sense,
that they may headlong run to ruin, both of body and soul? It is almost
incredible that a man should be so enraged against God, that neither his
plagues, nor yet his mercy showed, should move him to repentance; but
because the Scriptures bear witness of the one and the other, let us cease
to marvel, and let us firmly believe, that such things as have been, are
even at present before our eyes, albeit many, blinded by affection, cannot
see them.
Ahab, as it is written in the book of the Kings, received many notable
benefits of the hand of God, who visited him in divers sorts, sometimes by
his plagues, sometimes by his word, and sometimes by his merciful
deliverance. He made him king, and, for the idolatry used by him and his
wife, he plagued the whole of Israel by famine; he revealed to him his
will, and true religion, by the prophet Elijah; he gave unto him sundry
deliverances, but one most special, when proud Benhadad came to besiege
Samaria, and was not content to receive Ahab’s gold, silver, sons,
daughters, and wives, but also required, that his servants should have at
their pleasure whatsoever was delectable in Samaria. True it is, that his
elders and people willed him not to hear the proud tyrant, but who made
unto him the promise of deliverance? And who appointed and put his army in
order? Who assured him of victory? The prophet of God only, who assured
him, that by the servants of the princes of the provinces, who in number
were only two hundred thirty-and-two, he should defeat the great army, in
which there were two-and-thirty kings, with all their forces. And as the
prophet of God promised, so it came to pass; victory was obtained, not
once only, but twice, and that by the merciful visitation of the Lord.
But how did Ahab visit God again for his great benefit received? Did he
remove his idolatry? Did he correct his idolatrous wife Jezebel? No, we
find no such thing; but the one and the other we find to have continued
and increased in their former impiety: but what was the end thereof? The
last visitation of God was, that dogs licked the blood of the one, and did
eat the flesh of the other. In few words then we understand, what
difference there is betwixt the visitation of God upon the reprobate, and
his visitation upon his chosen. The reprobate are visited, but never truly
humbled, nor yet amended; the chosen being visited, they sob, and they cry
unto God for mercy; which being obtained, they magnify God’s name, and
afterwards manifest the fruits of repentance. Let us therefore that bear
these judgments of our God, call for the assistance of his Holy Spirit,
that howsoever it pleaseth him to visit us, we may stoop under his
merciful hands, and unfeignedly cry to him when he corrects us; and so
shall we know in experience, that our cries and complaints were not in
vain. But let us hear what the prophet saith further:
“Like as a woman with child, that draweth near her travail, is in sorrow,
and crieth in her pains, so have we been in thy sight, O Lord; we have
conceived, we have borne in vain, as though we should have brought forth
the wind. Salvations were not made to the earth, neither did the
inhabitants of the earth fall,” verses 17, 18.
This is the second part of the prophet’s complaint, in which he, in the
person of God’s people, complains, that of their great affliction there
appeared no end. This same similitude is used by our Master Jesus Christ;
for when he speaks of the troubles of his church, he compares them to the
pains of a woman travailing in child-birth. But it is to another end; for
there he promises exceeding and permanent joy after a sort, though it
appear trouble. But here is the trouble long and vehement, albeit the
fruit of it was not suddenly espied. He speaks no doubt of that long and
dolorous time of their captivity, in which they continually laboured for
deliverance, but obtained it not before the complete end of seventy years.
During which time, the earth, that is, the land of Judah, which sometimes
was sanctified unto God, but was then given to be profaned by wicked
people, got no help, nor perceived any deliverance: for the inhabitants of
the world fell not; that is, the tyrants and oppressors of God’s people
were not taken away, but still remained and continued blasphemers of God,
and troublers of his church. But because I perceive the hours to pass more
swiftly than they have seemed at other times, I must contract that which
remains of this text into certain points.
The prophet first contends against the present despair; afterwards he
introduces God himself calling upon his people; and, last of all, he
assures his afflicted, that God will come, and require account of all the
blood-thirsty tyrants of the earth.
First, Fighting against the present despair, he saith, “Thy dead shall
live, even my body (or with my body) shall they arise; awake and sing, ye
that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs,” verse 19.
The prophet here pierces through all impediments that nature could object;
and, by the victory of faith, he overcomes, not only the common enemies,
but the great and last enemy of all, death itself; for this would he say,
Lord, I see nothing for thy chosen, but misery to follow misery, and one
affliction to succeed another; yea, in the end I see, that death shall
devour thy dearest children. But yet, O Lord! I see thy promise to be
true, and thy love to remain towards thy chosen, even when death appears
to have devoured them: “For thy dead shall live, yea, not only shall they
live, but my very dead carcase shall arise;” and so I see honour and glory
to succeed this temporal shame, I see permanent joy to come after trouble,
order to spring out of this terrible confusion; and, finally, I see that
life shall devour death, so that death shall be destroyed, and so thy
servants shall have life. This, I say, is the victory of faith, when to
the midst of death, through the light of God’s word, the afflicted see
life. Hypocrites, in the time of quietness and prosperity, can generally
confess, that God is true to his promises; but bring them to the
extremity, and there the hypocrite ceases further to trust to God, than he
seeth natural means, whereby God useth to work. But the true faithful,
when all hope of natural means fail, flee to God himself, and to the truth
of his promise, who is above nature; yea, whose works are not so subject
to the ordinary course of nature, that when nature fails, his power and
promise fail also therewith.
Let us further observe, That the prophet here speaks not of all the dead
in general, but saith, “Thy dead, O Lord, shall live:” in which words he
makes a difference betwixt those that die in the Lord, and those that die
in their natural corruption, and in the old Adam. Die in the Lord can
none, except those that live in him, (I mean, of those that attain to the
years of discretion;) and none live in him, but those that, with the
apostle, can say, “I live, and yet not I, but Christ Jesus that dwelleth
in me: the life that I now live, I have by the faith of the Son of God.”
(Gal. ii.) Not that I mean, that the faithful have at all hours such a
sense of the life everlasting, that they fear not the death and the
troubles of this life; no, not so; for the faith of God’s children is
weak, yea, and in many things imperfect. But I mean, that such as in
death, and after death shall live, must communicate in this life with
Jesus Christ, and must be regenerated by the seed of life; that is, by the
word of the everlasting God, which whosoever despises, refuses life and
joy everlasting.
The prophet transfers all the promises of God to himself, saying, “Even my
dead body shall arise;” and immediately after, gives commandment and
charge to the dwellers in the dust, that is, to the dead carcases of those
that were departed, (for the spirit and soul of man dwells not in the
dust,) “That they should awake, that they should sing and rejoice;” for
they should arise and spring up from the earth, even as the herbs do,
after they have received the dew from above.
Time will not suffer that these particulars be so largely treated as
ought, and as I gladly would do; therefore let us consider, that the
prophet, in transferring the power and promise of God to himself, does not
claim to himself any particular prerogative above the people of God, as
that he alone should live and arise, and not they also; but he does it, to
let them understand that he taught a doctrine whereof he was certain; yea,
and whereof they should have experience after his death. As if he should
say, My words appear to you now to be incredible, but the day will come,
that I shall be taken from you, my carcase shall be inclosed in the bosom
of the earth; and you shall be led away captives to Babylon, where you
shall remain many days and years, as it were buried in your sepulchres.
But then call to mind what I said unto you before hand, that my body shall
arise; even so shall you rise from your graves out of Babylon, and be
restored to your own country, and city of Jerusalem; this, I doubt not, is
the true meaning of the prophet. The charge that he gives to the dwellers
in the dust, is to express the power of God’s word, whereby he not only
gives life, where death apparently had prevailed; but also, by it, he
calls things that are not, even as though they were. True it is, that the
prophet Isaiah saw not the destruction of Jerusalem, much less could he
see the restitution of it with his corporeal eyes; but he leaves this, as
it were, in testament with them—that when they were in the extremity of
all bondage, they should call to mind what the prophet of God had before
spoken.
And lest that his doctrine, and this promise of God made unto them by his
mouth, should have been forgotten, as we are ever prone and ready to
forget God’s promises when we are pressed with any sorrow, God raised up
unto them, in the midst of their calamity, his prophet Ezekiel, unto whom,
among many other visions, he gave this—The hand of the Lord first led him
in a place, which was full of dry and dispersed bones. (Ezek. xxxvii.) The
question was demanded of the prophet, If these bones, being wondrous dry,
could live? The prophet answered, The knowledge thereof appertained unto
God. Charge was given unto him, that he should speak unto the dry bones,
and say, “Thus saith the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will give you
breath, and you shall live: I will give unto you sinews, flesh, and skin,
and you shall live.” And while the prophet spake as he was commanded, he
heard a voice, and he saw every bone join its fellow; he saw them covered
with flesh and skin, albeit there was no spirit of life in them. He was
commanded again to speak, and to say, “Thus saith the Lord God, Come, O
Spirit, from the four quarters, and blow on these that are slain, that
they may live.” And as he prophesied, the spirit of life came; they lived,
and stood upon their feet. Then the Lord interprets what this vision
meant, saying “O son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.
Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, our hope is perished, we are
plainly cut off. But behold, saith the Lord, I will open your graves, I
will bring you forth of them, ye shall live, and come unto the land of
Israel, and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”
This vision, I say, given to the prophet, and by the prophet preached to
the people, when they thought that God had utterly forgotten them,
compelled them more diligently to advert to what the former prophets had
spoken. It is no doubt but that they carried with them both the prophecy
of Isaiah and Jeremiah, so that the prophet Ezekiel is a commentary to
these words of Isaiah, where he saith, “Thy dead, O Lord, shall live, with
my body they shall arise.” The prophet brings in this similitude of the
dew, to answer unto that part of their fidelity, who can believe no
further of God’s promises than they are able to apprehend by natural
judgment; as if he would say, Think ye this impossible, that God should
give life unto you, and bring you to an estate of a commonwealth again,
after that ye are dead, and as it were rased from the face of the earth?
But why do you not consider what God worketh from year to year in the
order of nature? Sometimes you see the face of the earth decked and
beautified with herbs, flowers, grass, and fruits; again you see the same
utterly taken away by storms, and the vehemence of the winter: what does
God to replenish the earth again, and to restore the beauty thereof? He
sends down his small and soft dew, the drops whereof, in their descending,
are neither great nor visible, and yet thereby are the pores and secret
veins of the earth, which before by vehemence of frost and cold were shut
up, opened again, and so does the earth produce again the like herbs,
flowers, and fruits. Shall you then think, that the dew of God’s heavenly
grace will not be as effectual in you to whom he hath made his promise, as
it is in the herbs and fruits which from year to year bud forth and decay?
If you do so, the prophet would say your unbelief is inexcusable; because
you neither rightly weigh the power, nor the promise of your God.
The like similitude the apostle Paul uses against such as called the
resurrection in doubt, because by natural judgment they could not
apprehend that flesh once putrified, and dissolved as it were into other
substance, should rise again, and return again to the same substance and
nature: “O fool,” saith he, “that which thou sowest is not quickened,
except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that
shall be, but bare corn, as it falleth, of wheat, or some other, but God
giveth it a body as it pleaseth him, even to every seed his own body.” In
which words and sentence, the apostle sharply rebukes the gross ignorance
of the Corinthians, who began to call in doubt the chief article of our
faith, the resurrection of the flesh after it was once dissolved, because
that natural judgment, as he said, reclaimed thereto.(11) He reproves, I
say, their gross ignorance, because they might have seen and considered
some proof and document thereof in the very order of nature; for albeit
the wheat, or other corn, cast in the earth, appears to die or putrify,
and so to be lost, yet we see that it is not perished, but that it
fructifies according to God’s will and ordinance.
Now, if the power of God be so manifest in raising up of the fruits of the
earth, unto which no particular promise is made by God, what shall be his
power and virtue in raising up our bodies, seeing that thereto he is bound
by the solemn promise of Jesus Christ his Eternal Wisdom, and the Verity
itself that cannot lie? Yea, seeing that the members must once communicate
with the glory of the Head, how shall our bodies, which are flesh of his
flesh, and bone of his bones, lie still for ever in corruption, seeing
that our Head, Jesus Christ, is now exalted in his glory? Neither yet is
this power and good-will of God to be restrained unto the last and general
resurrection only, but we ought to consider it in the marvellous
preservation of his church, and in the raising up of the same from the
very bottom of death, when by tyrants it has been oppressed from age to
age.