calves of our lips: they shall not be bestowed upon those that need them not, or that know where else to provide themselves. It is true, we have gone to the Assyrian, we have taken our horses instead of our prayers, and gone about to find out good; we have been so foolish as to think that the idols which have been beholden to our hands for any shape that is in them, could be instead of hands, and of God unto us, to help us in our need; but now we know that men of high degree are but a lie, that horses are but a vanity, that an idol is nothing, and therefore can give nothing. That power belongeth unto thee, none else can do it; that mercy belongeth unto thee, none else will do it; therefore since in thee only the fatherless find mercy, be thou pleased to do us good.

We will consider the words, 1. Absolutely, as a single prayer by themselves; 2. Relatively, in their connexion, and with respect to the scope of the place.

1. From the former consideration we observe, that all the good we have is from God; he only must be sought unto for it; we have none in ourselves; "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good," Rom. vii. 18. we can neither think, nor speak, nor do it.

And, missing it in ourselves, it is all in vain to seek for it in things below ourselves. They can provide for our back and belly, and yet not that neither without God: the roots out of which the fruits of the earth do grow, are above in heaven, the genealogy of corn and wine is resolved into God, Hos. ii. 22. But if you go to your lands, or houses, or treasuries for medicine, for a sick soul, or a guilty conscience, they will all return an ignoramus* to that inquiry; salvation doth not grow in the furrows of the field, neither are *Confess their inability to answer.

there in the earth to be found any mines or harvests of grace or confort.

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, sanctified habits, sanctified motions, glorious relations, in predestination, adoption, and christian liberty, excellent 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 destruction 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 mercy rewarding the one,by his justice revenging

the other, and by his wisdom directing both to the ends of his eternal glory.

This serves to discover the free and sole working of grace in our first conversion, and the continued working of grace in our further sanctification; whatsoever is good in us habitually, as grace inhering, or actually, as grace working, is from him alone as the author of it. For though it be certain, that when we will and do, we ourselves are agents, yet it is still under and from him. By grace we are that we are, we do what we do in God's service: vessels have no wine, bags have no money in them, but what the merchant putteth in the bowls of the candlesticks had no oil but that which dropped from the olive branches.

Other things which seek no higher perfection than is to be found within the compass of their own nature, may, by the guidance and activity of the same nature, attain thereunto; but man aspiring to a divine happiness, can never attain thereunto but by a divine strength impossible it is for any man to enjoy God without God.

The truth of this point shows it in five gradations. (1.) By grace, our minds are enlightened to know and believe Him: for spiritual things are spiritually discerned.

(2.) By grace, our hearts are inclined to love and obey Him, for spiritual things are spiritually approved. He only by his almighty and ineffable operation worketh them in us.

(3.) By grace, our lives are enabled to work what our hearts do love, without which, though we should will, yet we cannot perform, any more than the knife which hath a good edge is able actually to cut, till moved by the hand.

(4.) By grace, our good works are carried on unto

perfection. Adam wanting the grace of perseverance, fell from innocence itself. It is not sufficient for us that God prevent* and excite us to will, that he co-operate and assist us to work, except he continually follow and supply us with a residue of the Spirit, to perfect and finish what we set about. All our works are begun, continued, and ended in him.

(5.) By grace our perseverance is crowned: for our best works could not endure the trial of justice, if God should enter into judgment with us. Grace enables us to work, and grace rewards us for working; grace begins, and grace finishes both our faith and salvation. The work of holiness is nothing but grace, and the reward of holiness is nothing but grace for grace.

Again this teaches us how to know good from evil in ourselves. What we look on as good, we must see how we have derived it from God; the more recourse we have had unto God by prayer, and faith, and study of his will, in the procurement of it, the more goodness we shall find in it. A thing done may be good in the substance of the work, and yet evil in the manner of doing it; as the substance of a vessel may be silver, but the use sordid. Jehu's zeal was rewarded as an act of justice, and it was punished too as an act of policy, for the perverse end. A thing which I see in the night may shine, and that shining proceed from nothing but rottenness. We must not

measure ourselves by the matter of things done: for there may be a bad design in a good work. Doeg prays, and Herod hears, and hypocrites fast, and pharisees preach; but when we would know the goodness of our works, look to the fountain, whether they proceed from the Father of lights by the Spirit of

*Go before.

love, and the grace of Christ, from humble, penitent, filial, heavenly dispositions; nothing will carry the soul unto God, but that which cometh from him. Our communion with the Father and the Son is the trial of all our goodness.

Further this should exceedingly abase us in our own eyes, and stain all the pride, and cast down all the plumes of flesh and blood, when we seriously consider that in us, as now degenerated from our original, there is no good to be found: our wine is become water, and our silver dross. As our Saviour saith of the devil, when he lies he speaks of his own, so when we do evil, we work of our own, and, as the apostle speaks,

according unto man," 1 Cor. iii. 3. Lusts are our own, our very members to that body of sin which the apostle calleth "the old man," with which it is as impossible to do any good, as for a toad to spit cordials.

Men are apt to glory of their good hearts and intentions, only because they cannot search them, Jer. xvii. 9. and being carnal themselves, to entertain none but carnal notions of God's service. But if they knew the purity and jealousy of God, and their own impotence to answer so holy a wili, they would lay their hands upon their mouths, and with Job, abhor themselves; and with Isaiah, bewail the uncleanness of their lips; and with Moses, fear and quake, as not being able to endure the things that are commanded; and with Joshua acknowledge, that they cannot serve God because he is holy. They would then remember that the law of God is a law of fire, Deut. xxxiii. 2. and the tribunal of God, a tribunal of fire, Ezek. i. 27. that the pleadings of God with sinners, are in flames of fire, Isa. lxvi. 15, 16. that the trial of all our works shall be by fire, 1 Cor. iii. 13, that the God before whom we must appear, is a consuming fire, Heb. xii. 29