love gold, though ye should find it in a mire. Beware lest the faults of others and their blemishes blind your eyes to their beauties and excellencies. It is unbecoming among those who have no beauty without blemish themselves.

6. Consider them rather as objects of pity and compassion, than of hatred. And this ye will do, if ye consider their enmity to you, more as a sin against God, than as a wrong to yourselves, Col. iii. 25. God is judge, and he will right all wrongs, and recompense every one according to his work.

7. Lastly, Consider the shortness of time, their and your own, Eccl. ix. 6. We have no time to spend in these petty quarrels of this world. Death will make them all to die out. Our enemies are but enemies for a day; night comes, and they are removed. And we ourselves go accordingly. Let us therefore be ready to go, in charity with all men, loving our enemies, that we may appear to be the children of God.

1

THE

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERS

OF

TRUE BELIEVERS.

VII. IN RELATION TO THEIR CARRIAGE IN A TIME OF ABOUNDING SIN, AND THEIR SAFETY IN A SUFFERING TIME.

*

THE CHARACTER OF ZION'S MOURNERS.

EREKIEL ix. 4.

And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.

[The first sermon on this text.]

DAYS of abounding sin usher in days of overflowing judgments. They are merry jovial days to the wicked and ungodly, who swim with the stream, and having the reins on their necks, give themselves the loose in the course of apostasy and irreligion: but they are heavy days to the serious godly, who dare not go along with the stream, but must oppose it, though their opposition cannot mend it, and therefore must issue in sighing and crying for it. But when the day of reckoning with the generation of God's wrath comes, the guise will turn, they shall get sorrow, and the seriously-godly shall rejoice.

Ezekiel prophesied in Babylon, to which he had been carried captive among those that were carried away several years before the completing of the captivity in the reign of Zedekiah. It would seem he was among those that were led captive in the time of Jehoiachin, 2 Kings xxiv. Those that are most dear to God may smart with the first in time of common calamity. Those that were

* The two sermons on this subject, were preached on occasion of a congregational fast, at Ettrick, March 31, 1725.

left, went on in their wickedness; and therefore Ezekiel is raised up in Babylon to prophesy of that utter overthrow which fell out in Zedekiah's reign, wherein the temple and holy city are sacked, and the land was laid desolate.

In the preceding chapter, the Lord shews Ezekiel in a vision the horrible abominations that people were yet going on in, chap. viii. 3. &c. and in this chapter he shews their terrible destruction by the Babylonians. This is represented by the destroying angels sent forth to kill; "They came from the way of the higher gate, which lieth toward the north, and every man a slaughter weapon in his hand," ver. 2. for their ruin was to be from Babylon. In the text we have two things.

1. A party distinguishing themselves from others in a sinning time. And this they do by their exercise, not by any particular name of sect or party, but by their practice. Here we may observe,

(1.) The heavy exercise they have on their spirits at such a time. It is expressed by two words, both passive, importing that there is a load and a weight of grief and sorrow on them: which makes them sigh, when others laugh; oppresses their spirits, while others go lightly and makes them cry. The word rather signifies to groan, as a deadly wounded man, who is hardly able to cry, Jer. li. 52. The sins of themselves and others pierce and wound their hearts, and they groan out their sorrows before the Lord, as under an evil which they are not able to remove. This word in the Hebrew, is in effect doubled, signifying, that groan, that groan; importing their fetching many a groan.

(2.) The ground of this their heavy exercise, the abominations done in the midst thereof. Jerusalem was the holy city, but the holy city was polluted with abominable wickedness of many sorts, whereby the name of God was dishonoured by a people called by his name. This made them sigh and groan. Not that they knew all the abominations done in it: but what they knew, all of it was heavy to them. and God constructed that to be mourning for what they knew not.

2. Here is God's distinguishing that party from others in a suffering time, seeing to their safety when the men with the slaughterweapons were to go through. And here consider,

(1.) Who gives the orders concerning them, The Lord said. God takes notice of the mourning remnant among them; he books their prayers and complaints, he bottles their tears, and so has a particular eye upon them for their safety, when others are to be destroyed.

(2.) Who gets the orders about them, He that was clothed with linen, having a writer's inkhorn by his side. This is Jesus Christ, the Angel of the covenant, the Father's servant, the great High Priest,

to whom the people of God owe their temporal as well as their eternal salvation. He appears here in all his offices: he is among the destroying angels as a king; he is clothed in linen as a priest; he has a writer's inkhorn by his side as a prophet. Both he and they stand by the brazen altar, ver. 2. to shew that it was the profanation and slighting of the altar, a notable type of Christ, that was the great ground of the controversy with those who were to be destroyed: and that it was from thence, and not from their own sighs and cries that the safety of the mourning party was to come. The destroyers were six: the Saviour was but one; to shew that the far greater part of that people would fall, as being devoted to destruction.

(3.) The charge given concerning them. Whereof there are three parts.

[1.] To go through the midst of Jerusalem, the high streets. The mourners would be found there, by their carriage among others, testifying their dislike of the God-provoking abominations abounding among them. They were not ashamed to bear witness for God, and God will not be ashamed to own them.

[2.] To set a mark upon them. It is vain to inquire particularly into the nature of this mark; for all here was visionary. It is to be a direction to the destroyers whom to pass by and not to meddle with. And this is to be done before the destroying angels get the word to fall on, to shew the special care that God has of his own in the time of the greatest confusion. The Babylonians would not notice this mark, but over-ruling Providence would carry them by the persons so marked.

[3.] To set it in their foreheads. In the Egyptian destruction the mark was set on their door-posts, because their whole families were to be saved; but here it was to be set on their foreheads, because it was only designed for particular persons. Servants in the east had their master's name in their foreheads: and those who are sealed in their foreheads, God owns for his servants, while he treats the rest as enemies: compare Rev. vii. 3. The forehead is open to the view of all, which speaks the greater security of the marked ones, and that neither is God ashamed of them, nor ought they to be of him, even in the midst of dangers. The words afford the two following doctrines, viz.

DOCTRINE I. Times of abounding sin are heavy times, times of sighing and groaning to the serious godly, Zion's mourners.

DOCTRINE II. Those to whom sinning times are heavy times, making them sigh and groan, shall be marked for safety (by Jesus Christ) in suffering times.

I shall endeavour to explain and apply each of these doctrines in order.

DOCTRINE I. Times of abounding sin are heavy times, times of sighing and groaning to the serious godly, Zion's mourners.

In handling this doctrine, I shall,

I. Give the import of this exercise, and therein the character of Zion's mourners, to whom times of abounding sin are heavy times, times of sighing and groaning.

II. Show why such times are heavy times, times of sighing and groaning to them.

III. Conclude with some improvement.

I. I am to give the import of this exercise, and therein the character of Zion's mourners, to whom times of abounding sin are heavy times, times of sighing and groaning.

1. Zion's mourners are godly persons, who in respect of their state have come out from the world lying in wickedness, and joined themselves to Jesus Christ, 1 John v. 19. It is not to be expected, that while men lie still there, they will be mourners for the wickedness done among them. They that never truly repented for their own sin to this day, may indeed talk and inveigh against the sins of others, but cannot be kindly mourners with Christ's mark. In a time of abounding sin, they may bite and sting the sinners like serpents, as Satan reproving sin: but they can never mourn like doves over their abominations, Ezek. vii. 16.

2. Waking godly persons, not sleeping with the foolish virgins. Lot in Sodom was a mourner, and the ways of his neighbours were like thorns in his side, that kept him waking, 2 Pet. ii. 8. One may have the root of the matter in him, and yet being asleep he neither sees nor hears as he ought: and therefore cannot sigh and groan. And hence it comes to pass, that they may, with others, get a terrible wakening in the day of wrath; as sleeping Jonah did, when the storm arose.

3. Mourners for their own sins, Ezek. vii. 16. mourning every one for his iniquity. Mourning for sin begins at home, if of the right stamp. The man first mourns for and groans under the weight of the body of sin, Rom. vii. 24. and then under the weight of the sins of others; first over the sins of his own heart and life, and then over the sins of the land. This makes kindly mourning for the sins of the land: otherwise a man may be filled with anger and rage against them, as Jonah was against Nineveh, but not with Christian mourning.

4. Public-spirited persons, who are concerned to know how mat