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discourse by itself. That which I now intend to treat of, is the pointing out or specifying the particular sin, or sins, for which we suppose God's judgments to have fallen upon any particular person or persons. The motives for doing this are many and various, as circumstances vary, though all centering in selfflattery, or partial fondness to ourselves.

Sometimes it is vanity and ostentation, while we affect to make a show of more than common sagacity in discovering the hidden springs of events, and in interpreting the secrets of Divine Providence.

Sometimes party prejudices and passions have the greatest hand in it; while we are willing to measure God by ourselves, and to fancy that he takes the same side that we do. If our opposers or adversaries fall into troubles or disasters; how agreeable a thought is it to imagine, that it was a judgment upon them for their opposition to us, and that God has thereby declared himself a friend to our cause, and an enemy to theirs!

But the most common and prevailing motive of all, for censuring others in this manner on account of their afflictions, is to ward off the apprehension of the like from our own doors, and to speak peace to ourselves. Observe it carefully, and you will scarce find a man charging a judgment of God upon others for any particular sin, and at the same time acknowledging himself guilty in the like kind. No, he will be particularly careful to pitch upon some vice, which he himself, in imagination at least, stands clear of, and is the furthest from: and so he persuades himself, that he is perfectly safe and secure from suffering in such manner as others have suffered, because he has not sinned in the like instances as they have. Here lies the secret root and source of men's proneness to charge the unfortunate with such or such particular sins, as the ground of their troubles: it is to fence off home applications, to throw off all apprehension of danger from themselves. Having seen what motives men go upon in their constructions of God's judgments upon others; let us now proceed to observe how rash and unwarrantable a thing it is, generally speaking, to pretend to specify the particular sin, or sins, which draw down God's judgments on particular persons. It is difficult in most cases to determine, without a special revelation, (which now cannot be had,) upon what particular errand God's judgments come; or for what sins, exclusive of others, they have been sent. The designs of Providence are vast and large;

God's thoughts are very deep, his judgments unsearchable, his ways past finding out.

1. Sometimes the primary reasons, or moving causes, of the Divine judgments lie remote and distant in place or in time; several years, perhaps, or even generations, backwards. God may "visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the "third and fourth generation of them that hate him.” He has at any time full power and right to take away the life which he gives, or any worldly comforts which himself bestows: and if he sometimes chooses to exercise this right and power on account of things done several years or ages upwards, there can be no injustice in so doing; but it may more fully answer the ends of discipline, and God may shew forth his wisdom in it. This I hint, by the way, as to the reason of the thing: the facts are evident from the sacred history. When king Ahab had sinned, God denounced his judgments against him, but suspended the execution, in part, to another time; assigning also the reason for deferring it: "Because he humbleth himself before me, I "will not bring the evil in his days, but in his son's days will I bring the evil upon his house:" which was accordingly executed, in the days of his son Jehoram, about fifteen years after. The case of the Amalekites is a very remarkable one: they were dreadfully cut off, root and branch, by the hands of king Saul, pursuant to the express orders of God: but we must look three hundred years backwards, to account for that heavy judgment; and there we shall find what the Amalekites did to the children of Israel in their passage through the wilderness. The case of the Amorites, and other inhabitants of Canaan, is not unlike to the former. Their iniquities had been growing several hundred years before the Divine vengeance came upon them; and we must take the sum total of the sins of the past and the then present age, in accounting for God's judgment upon them. This we know by the light of Scripture: but what human sagacity, unassisted by inspiration, could ever have suspected it?

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In the First Book of Samuel, we read of the miserable slaughter of the Lord's priests, who fell a sacrifice to the rage of king Saul, for the civilities they had shewed to David in his troubles. Saul did very wickedly in destroying those innocent men, who had deserved no evil at his hands: but God did righteously, in so executing the sentence upon the house of Eli, which he had denounced against them about a hundred years

before. Revelation informs us as to this particular, otherwise it had been impossible for any mortal upon earth to have seen through it. When David had offended in the affair of Bathsheba, it pleased God that the first child he had by her should be smitten with death. The child suffered for the sin of the Father this we learn from Scripture, and we could never have learned it any way else.

I shall mention one instance more, which lies a little out of the compass of the sacred story. It is of the well-known destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, in the year of our Lord, seventy. Josephus, the Jewish historian, who relates the facts at large, imputes that terrible judgment of God to the monstrous wickedness of his countrymen of that time: and indeed, according to human appearances and human views, his conjecture was not amiss but as many as know the New Testament, know that the Jewish nation had been sealed up to utter destruction seven and thirty years before; and it was for their condemning and crucifying the Lord of glory. The flagrant iniquities, which followed after, were but the natural consequences of that judicial blindness under which God had left them, to be a miserable spectacle, to all the world, of a most wretched and abandoned people. These instances are sufficient to shew, how the judgments of God may frequently have a retrospect to things transacted several years upwards, in the days of our ancestors: and since we cannot certainly know when this is the case, or when otherwise; it must be great presumption and rashness, generally speaking, to be peremptory as to the particular sin, or kind of sin, for which a judgment is sent.

2. It may further be considered, that sometimes the best sort of men are permitted to fall a sacrifice to the rage and violence of the worst; and this either because the world is not worthy of them, or because God gives them up, that their malicious persecutors may fill up the measure of their iniquities. In either view the thing is rather a judgment of God upon the wicked who remain, than upon the righteous so taken away. And if we cannot certainly determine which it is, as we seldom can, it will be a blameable presumption to be dogmatical or positive as to the particular sin for which the judgment is sent. But,

3. Supposing we were ever so certain, that any person is visited for his own sins only, without any respect to the sins of his ancestors, or of any man else; yet great mistakes may be

committed in conjectures made about the particular sins. We have a very remarkable instance of it in Shimei's censure upon king David. "Come out, come out," says he to the king, "thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial: the Lord hath "returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose "stead thou hast reigned; and the Lord hath delivered the "kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son: and, behold, thou "art taken in thy mischief, because thou art a bloody man a."

Shimei was a violent party man, of the house of Saul, and attached to Saul's faction; disaffected all along to David's person and government, and looking upon him as an usurper of the throne, against right hereditary, against the family of Saul, who had been his father-in-law. Now to Shimei, observing that by a strange turn of Providence David himself had been supplanted, and in a manner dethroned by his own son Absalom, the case and circumstances looked almost parallel to what had been done by David with respect to Saul's family and it was very natural, for a person of Shimei's persuasion, to fancy that, by this remarkable turn of affairs, God had declared from heaven in favour of Saul's friends, and in opposition to David's. The suggestion looked exceeding plausible, and carried in it a fairer colour of probability than such conjectures generally do. And yet we know for certain, that there was nothing of truth or justice in it. David had the clearest and best-grounded title to the kingdom that was possible for man to have: and he had done nothing amiss with respect to the house of Saul. That judgment of God upon him (for such it really was) respected quite another thing; being sent, as we learn from Scripture, on account of what David had transgressed in the matter of Uriah. This instance may be of use to teach us caution and reserve, as to passing our censures upon persons under affliction, and as to pointing out any particular sin, or sins, for which we may fancy the judgment to have been brought upon them. There is nothing more precarious, or fallacious, than our guesses of that kind and we can never be certain, without revelation, that we have hit upon the truth. It is a large field for superstition and bigotry, for prejudice and passion, and great uncharitableness, as well as for bold presumption, and sometimes downright profaneness. The Pagans, of old time, played this engine upon the primitive Christians; as the Romanists of late years have also a 2 Sam. xvi. 7, 8.

done upon the Protestants: and all sects and parties, more or less, as occasions have offered, have thus pelted one another, and have been pelted in their turns. The worst of the thing is, that it does no manner of service to any cause; but it does a great deal of harm, in turning men's thoughts from reforming their own lives, to condemning and censuring the lives of others; and, instead of answering the true design and purport of God's judgments, does nothing else but defeat both their meaning and I deny not, but that some kind of calamities have so plain a respect to some kind of vices, that one may even read the sin in the punishment consequent upon it. Thus, extravagance is often punished by extreme poverty, intemperance by diseases, and a dissolute life by an untimely end: but these, and the like, are rather the natural effects of vice, than judgments of God upon it.

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There may be also some very peculiar circumstances in a punishment, as in that of Adoni-bezek, where the exact resemblance of the penalty to the crime may point out to us that the finger of God was in it. But such cases are very rare; and when they do happen, we must first know for certain, that the person has been really guilty of such or such crimes, before we can justly draw the parallel: and then the observation is of little use to us; because plain undisputed iniquities do not want any special notices from heaven for a warning against them; while we have the law of nature, and Divine revelation, to do it more effectually.

The result of what hath been now said is, that we learn to be modest and cautious, as to the naming or specifying any particular sins as the causes of God's judgments upon other men. Specify your own sins if you please, or if you can, in such cases: but as to others, be content to lay the charge upon sin in general; and then, considering that we all have sinned, the use and application of God's judgments upon others will be brought home to ourselves, and will be an incitement to us to repent and reform; lest we also suffer for our sins, as others in our sight have. I have thus finished part only of what I intended from the text the remainder (God willing) shall be dispatched another time.

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