ravailing in pain, as it were, and is delivered of some one
birth or another, and no creature can open its womb sooner, or shut it
longer, than the appointed and prefixed season. There is no miscarrying as
to him whose decrees do properly conceive them though to us they seem
often abortive. Now, join unto this, to make the allusion full, as long as
they are carried in the womb of time, they are hid from all the world. The
womb is a dark lodging and no understanding nor eye can pierce into it, to
tell what is in it, till it break forth, and therefore, children born are
said to come to the light, for till then, they are to us in a cloud of
darkness, that we cannot tell what they are. So then, every day, every
hour, every moment is about to bring forth that which all the world is
ignorant of, till they see it, and oh! that then they understood it. We
know not whether the morrow's or next hour's birth may be a proportioned
child, or a monster, whether it will answer the figure and mould that is
in our mind, or be misshapen and deformed to our sense. Men's desires and
designs may be said to conceive, for they form an inward image and idea
within themselves, to which they labour to make the product and birth of
time conformable, and when it answers our preconceived form, then we
rejoice as for a man child. But for the most part it is a monster as to
our conception, it is an aberration from our rule, it is either mutilated
and defective of what we desire, or superfluous or deformed, which turns
our expectation into vexation, and our boasting into lamentation. But the
truth is, time brings forth no monsters as to the Lord's decrees, which
are the only just measures of all things. It may be said of every thing
under the sun, as David speaks of himself in the womb, "My substance was
not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously formed in the
lowest parts of the earth," &c. Psal. cxxxix. 15. His eyes see all their
substance, yet being unperfect, and in his everlasting book all their
members are written, the portraiture of every thing is drawn there to the
life, and these in continuance are fashioned just as they were written and
drawn, and so they exactly correspond to his preconception of them,
whatever deformity they may have as to us, yet they are perfect works, and
beautiful to him.

Sermon VIII.

Isaiah i. 10, 11, &c.--"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of
Sodom, give ear unto the law of our G