SERMON XIII.

The Miracles of the Divine Mercy.

[From Bishop TAYLOR'S Sermons. ]

PSALM 1xxxvi. 5.

Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee.

M

AN, having destroyed that which God delighted in, that is, the beauty of his foul, fell into an evil portion; and, being feized upon by the divine juftice, grew miferable, and condemned to an incurable sorrow. Adam, being driven out of paradise, had no means ever to return thither; for God was his enemy, and by many of his attributes oppofed himself against him. God's power was armed against him, God's knowledge

was man's accufer, his Severity was the judge, and his juftice the executioner.

But in the midst of these fadneffes, God remembered and pitied his own creature, and by his mercy refcued him from the hand of his power, and the fword of his juftice, and the guilt of his punishment, and placed him in that order of good things wherein he ought to have stood.

It was mercy, that preferved the nobleft of God's creatures here below. He who flood condemned and undone, under all the other attributes of God, was only faved and refcued by his mercy; that it may be evident, that God's, mercy is above all his works, and above all ours, greater than the creation, and greater than our fins. As is his majefty, fo is his mercy, that is, without measures and without rules; fitting in heaven, and filling all the world; calling for a duty, that he may give a bleffing; making man, that he may fave him; punishing man, that he may preferve him. And God's juftice bowed down to his mercy, and all his power

paffed

paffed into mercy, and his knowledge converted into care and watchfulness for man's avail; and heaven gave its influence for man, and rained fhowers for our food and fuftenance; and the attributes and acts of God fat at the foot of mercy, and all that mercy defcended upon the head of man: For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee.

But for him that confiders God's mercies, and dwells a while in that depth, it is hard not to talk confusedly, and without art and order of difcourfings. St. Peter spoke he knew not what, when he entered into a cloud with Christ upon mount Tabor, though it paffed over him like the little curtains that ride upon the north wind, and pafs between the fun and us. And when we converse with a light greater than the fun, and tafte a sweetness more delicious than the dew of heaven, and in our thoughts entertain the ravishments and harmony of that atonement which reconciles God to man, and man to felicity; it

will not be wondered at, if we be like perfons that admire much, and say but little : and indeed we can beft confess the glories of the Lord, by dazzled eyes, and a faul→ tering tongue, and a heart overcharged with the miracles of this infinity.

But because the subject leads us to speak of the divine mercies, that is, as it were, to tell the drops of the ocean, and to span the measures of infinity, we must do it by the great lines of revelation and experience, and tell concerning God's mercy as we do concerning God himself, that he is that great fountain of which we all drink, the great rock by which we are all fuftained, on which we dwell, and under whose fhadow we are all refreshed. God's mercy is all this; but we can only reckon of it by what we feel and fee. And though there be in every one of these mercies, 'enough to engage us for ever to do God fervice, and to give him praifes; yet it is certain, there are very many mercies of God upon us, and towards us, and concerning us, which we neither feel nor fee, nor under

stand

ftand as yet; but yet we are bleffed by them, and are preferved and fecure; and we shall then know them, when we come to give God thanks in the festivities of eternal joy.

But that we may confine our thoughts into fome order, in treating upon this fub→ ject; let this be confidered in the

ift Place, That mercy, being an emanation of the divine goodness upon us, fuppofeth us and found us miserable.

In this account, concerning the mercies of God, we are not to reckon the miracles and graces of the creation, or any thing of the nature of man; nor tell how great an endearment God paffed upon us, that he made us men, capable of felicity, fitted with inftruments of difcourfe and reason, of affections and defires, of notions of sense and reflections upon that fenfe, that we were not made beafts, or worms, or ferpents. Our excellent bodies and useful faculties, the upright motion and the te nacious hand, the fair appetites and proportioned

VOL. IV.

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