by Rev Wm Romaine
(continued from page 119)
While we are thus mourning for the wickedness of our people, let us never forget that we ourselves are part of the people, and that our sinfulness has made a large addition to the national guilt. Let us never lose sight of this consideration, lest we should find matter for censoriousness, where we only want matter of humiliation. The sight of our sins, as part of the sins of the nation, will serve to keep us in a proper frame to profit from the fourth humbling circumstance we have to mention.
God is now visiting us for our public sins.
This is the scope and design of His present judgments, and shall we not be humbled under His almighty Hand? He has shewn Himself offended at our sins, and has chastised us for them as a nation. Hereby He would teach us this useful lesson that we should turn to Him with a national repentance, if we hope to be pardoned and saved. If we now humble ourselves before Him, His former chastisements will be turned into blessings: But if after often being chastised, we refuse to glorify Him by our humiliation, He will certainly be glorified in our destruction. If the rod of His mercy does not humble us, the scourge of His justice shall destroy us. Humbled we have not been by any of God’s past judgments, therefore we have reason to fear greater: for if being chastised for sin we nevertheless will not leave it, what can we expect but to be cut off in our sins? This has been the constant method of God’s providence, in His dealings with private persons, as well as with public communities. Fearful is that sentence which is already gone out of the Lord’s mouth — O that it may strike fear into every careless sinner, who hears it, “He that being often repreoved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy” (Prov. xxix. 1). We have often been repreoved, and yet we have hardened our necks, what then should hinder sudden destruction from coming upon us, and that without remedy? Let this awful consideration stir us up to plead earnestly with God for the hardness of the people’s hearts. Let us be deeply humbled for these obstinate sinners, who refuse to be humbled for themselves, and let us beg of God to spare them. Spare Thy people, O Lord, spare them, and give not Thine heritage over to reproach.
Let us lay all these things together, and see whether there be not matter enough for the deepest humiliation. We are together sinful in nature, sinful in life, a country professing Christianity and yet abounding with sin, and hardened in it at this very time, when God is chastising and punishing us for our sins. He has given us during this unsuccessful war some severe chastisements, but they have not brought us to a right sense of ourselves, and therefore we may expect they will be more severe. God has shewn us plainly, that He is not on our side, and we have felt His displeasure, but we are not humbled under it. Without humiliation He will continue to fight against us and what calamity is there so great which we may not then justly apprehend? What success can we hope from our fleets and armies, if the Almighty go out against them? What is our security as an island, if He put it into the hearts of our enemies, and if He come with them to invade us? In this case how exceedingly should we be alarmed to think that our sins may provoke God to join with our enemies, and to give them success. Everything dear and valuable to Englishmen and Protestants would then be lost; heathenism and slavery would get possession of our religion and liberties. While God threatens us with these calamities, He gives us time to pray against them. While they are at a distance prayer is our weapon, and God seems now to put it into our hands. O that we may use it aright to His glory, and to the preservation of this Church and kingdom.
My Christian brother, after you have weighed these things attentively, judge whether it be not a seasonable and a safe measure, which we would persuade you to take. And you will take it, if you are indeed a friend to our present happy establishment in Church and State. Your love for them will put you upon doing every thing that lays in your power to serve them: and here you have a fair opportunity, which if you make use of it, cannot but do you service, and may be a blessing to them. Pray for them at the appointed hour. Determine, through God’s assistance that nothing shall hinder you from joining us. Break through all engagements, all hindrances to meet the Lord’s people at the Throne of Grace. And for your encouragement, remember that He who sitteth upon the Throne is the God who heareth prayer, and who has invited you to call upon Him in the day of trouble. “So will I hear thee, says He and thou shalt glorify Me.”
If it has pleased God to put it into the heart of any person who reads these few lines to make part of this praying congregation, and he is at a loss to know particularly what he should ask of God let him first beg of the Father of mercies to give him the spirit of prayer and supplication, that he may offer up his petitions acceptably through Jesus Christ our Lord. And then let him request the grace of humiliation, that he may be truly and deeply affected with the four particulars before mentioned. Let him pray to God to give him still more humbling views of his sinful nature, and to bring to his remembrance his sinful life, with the sinfulness of his sins, that seeing himself to be nothing but vile and sinful dust and ashes, he may be disposed to mourn for his own sins; and then for the crying sins of this guilty land, and for the hardness and impenitency of our people’s hearts, upon which the heavy judgments of God have as yet made no impression. And then let him implore mercy first for himself, and afterwards for the nation, through the atoning blood of the Lamb of God. Earnestly let him plead with the Father that for the sake of His dear Son He would give us grace to turn from our sins by true repentance, that iniquity may not be our ruin. And although the past judgments have not reclaimed us, yet let him pray the more fervently for the gift of the Holy Spirit, that His grace may be poured out abundantly upon us to shew us the error of our ways, and revive the spirit and power of Christianity, that we may receive Christ Jesus the Lord as our Saviour, by the merits of whose most precious blood we may be saved from the guilt and punishment of sin; and by whose almighty grace we may also be saved from the dominion of sin; that being thus delivered by Him from the hands of our enemies, we may serve God without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.
In these our requests, let us never forget to pray for the preservation of the Protestant Church, and all its members throughout Europe, and especially for the peace of our established Church, and for all orders and degrees of its ministers, beseeching God to give them His grace and heavenly benediction, that both by their life and doctrine they may set forth His glory, and set forward the salvation of men. And to the end there may never be wanting such persons in the Church, let us pray for all seminaries of Christian education, especially for the Universities. May the spirit of wisdom preside over them, and water them with the dew of His heavenly grace, that the youth educated in them may come forth to the work of the Lord fitted with all proper graces as well as gifts. And since the harvest is now great, may the Lord of the harvest send forth more of His own labourers.
May the God of love dispose us also to pray fervently for all the Protestant dissenting congregations, which love the Lord Jesus in sincerity. May He shed that love abroad in all our souls which alone can effectually free us from party spirit. And may He thus reconcile our hearts to them, and theirs to us. Oh that we may see an end of those bitter disputes which have so long disturbed the peace, and hindered the union of Protestants. And may there be only this one holy contention between us, whether the ministers out of the establishment or we in it, shall labour most for the glory of our common Lord and for the salvation of those souls for whom He shed His blood.
And as the hearts of kings are in the hand of God, we must pray Him to direct the heart of our gracious sovereign, to do what will be for the glory of God and for the good of his people, beseeching the Almighty to enrich him with every temporal, and with every spiritual blessing, until He place upon his head a crown of eternal glory.
Let us also pray for the queen, for the prince of Wales, and for all the royal family, that God would endue them with His Holy Spirit and enrich them with His heavenly grace, that He would prosper them with all happiness, and bring them to His everlasting kingdom.
And let us desire the Spirit of wisdom to direct both Houses of parliament, all the king’s counsellors, and judges, and all the magistrates throughout the kingdom, and to enable them faithfully to discharge the great trust reposed in them, for the punishment of wickedness and vice, and for the maintenance of God’s true religion and virtue.
Let us beg of God now to go forth with our fleets and armies, and to give them success against our enemies. And let us pray Him to bless our officers, and soldiers, and sailors, and to protect them in all dangers, and to cover their heads in the day of battle. And let us earnestly and heartily pray for their reformation, and also for reformation at home, without which we cannot expect success from our arms abroad. May the Spirit of the living God work upon the hardened hearts of our people, and soften them by His grace, that they may see the error of their ways and cry for mercy before it be too late, and may they find it through the atoning blood of the Lamb of God. O that there may be a general turning to the Lord, and may our eyes live to see it. Amen, So be it, Lord Jesus.
These short hints may be enlarged and improved, as time and occasion shall offer. My Christian brother, may the Spirit of the living God direct thee how to enlarge and to improve them. And after thou hast once begun, and hast spent some evenings of the Lord’s day in this devout exercise, be upon thy guard, lest thou shouldst be tempted to leave it off.
Never be tired of such a good work. Pray for the spirit of grace and supplication, and carry the prayers into practice. The more thou prayest, the more will God make thee joyful in the exercise of prayer. Go on in His strength, and persevere. Hold on thy suit, and wait upon the Lord our God, until He have mercy upon us. Be not weary of joining with us, and in God’s due time thou hast His promise, “thou shalt reap, if thou faint not.” Lord, grant none of us who set out well may faint, until we who sow our prayers, and they who reap the fruit of them, may rejoice together here, in the peace and reformation of our land, and hereafter, through Jesus Christ our Lord in eternal glory. Amen.