General Directions

SOME

GENERAL DIRECTIONS

FOR A

COMFORTABLE WALKING WITH GOD.

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BUT NOAH FOUND GRACE IN THE EYES OF THE LORD. THESE ARE THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH: NOAH WAS A JUST MAN AND PERFECT IN HIS GENERATIONS, AND NOAH WALKED WITH GOD.—Gen 6:8-9.

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In this dreadful and dismal story of the old world’s degeneracy and destruction, falling away, and final ruin, here stands in my text a right orient and illustrious star, shining full fair with singularity of heavenly light, spiritual goodness, and God’s sincere service, in the darkest midnight of Satan’s universal reign, and amidst the strangest confusions, idolatrous corruptions, cruelties, oppressions, and lust, that ever the earth bore. Noah, a very precious man, and preacher of righteousness, and his family, were alone excepted. The true worship of God was confined to them, when all the world besides lay drowned in idolatry and paganism, ready to be swallowed up in a universal grave of waters, which was already fashioned in the clouds by the angry, irresistible hand of the all-powerful God, who was now so implacably, but most justly, provoked by those rebellious and cruel generations, that he would not suffer his Spirit to strive any more with them; but inexorably resolved to open the windows or floodgates of heaven, giving extraordinary strength of influence above, and abundance to the fountains of the great deep, commanding them to cast out the whole treasure and heap of their waters; and taking away the retentive power from the clouds, that they might pour down immeasurably, for the burying of all living creatures which breathed in the air. From whence, by the way, before I break into my text, take this note.

Doctrine. The servants of God are men of singularity. I mean it not in respect of any fantasticalness of opinion, furiousness of zeal, or turbulency of faction, truly so called; but in respect of abstinence from sin,
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