CHAP. IV. Of listening to the voice of Providence.
The magnificent and wise King Solomon bids us cry after knowledge, and lift up our voice for understanding; by which is meant, religious knowledge, for it follows: Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. By which undoubtedly he meant, to enquire after every thing he has permitted us to know, and not to search into those ways that are unsearchable, and are effectually locked up from our knowledge.—Now, as listening to the voice of Providence is my present subject, I intend, in the first place, to write to those who own, 1. That there is a God, a first great moving cause of all things, and eternal power, prior, and consequently superior to all created power or being.—2. That this eternal power, which is God, is the sovereign creator and governor of heaven and earth.
To avoid all needless distinctions, what persons in the God-head exercise the creating, and what the governing power, I offer that glorious text, Psal. xxiii. 6. where the whole Trinity is entitled to the whole creating work: and, therefore, in the next place, I shall lay down these two propositions.
I. That the eternal God guides, by his providence,
the whole
universe, which was created by his
power.
II. That this providence manifests a particular
care over, and
concern in, the governing
and directing man, the most noble
creature upon earth.
It is plain, that natural religion proves the first, by intimating the necessity of a providence guiding and governing the world, from the consequence of the wisdom, justice, prescience, and goodness of the Almighty Creator: for otherwise it would be absurd to think, that God should create a world, without any care or providence over it, in guiding the operations of nature, so as to preserve the order of his creation.
Revealed religion gives us a light into the care and concern of his providence, by the climate’s being made habitable, the creatures subjected and made nourishing, and all vegetative life made medicinal; and all this for the sake of man, who is made viceroy to the King of the earth. The short description I shall give of providence is this: That it is that operation of the power, of the wisdom, and goodness of God, by which be influences, governs, and directs, not only the means, but the events of all things, which concern us in this sublunary world; the sovereignty of which we ought always to reverence, obey its motions, observe its dictates, and listen to its voice. The prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself; that is, as I take it, there is a secret providence intimates to us, that some danger threatens, if we strive not to shun it.
The same day that Sir John Hotham kept out Hull against the royal martyr King Charles I. the same day Sir John Hotham was put to death by the parliament for that very action: The same day that the King himself signed the warrant for the execution of the Earl of Stafford, the same day of the month was he barbarously murdered by the blood-thirsty Oliverian crew: and the same day that King James II. came to the crown against the bill of exclusion, the same day he was voted abdicated by the parliament, and the throne filled with King William and Queen Mary.