4. Divisions in the church. One would think this of all other things
known where they are: Hosea 2:14, the time of God's speaking kindly to her should be in the wilderness, and then 'I will give her the valley of Achor for a door of hope.' No question but God hath performed his promise, and brought many of the posterity of the ten tribes into the church among the mass of the Gentiles, among whom they were dispersed.
Curses sometimes, as God orders them, prove blessings. The curse of inspired Jacob upon Levi,—Gen. 49:7, 'Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel,'—was the advantage both of Levi and the Israelites; that they were dispersed among the several tribes without any universal cohabitation as the rest, was a curse; but that they should be the instructors of the people in the matters of the law, was an honour God put upon the head of that tribe, and a public blessing to the people.
4. Divisions in the church. One would think this of all other things should shake the foundation of it; yet God orders even these to the good of the church. Paul and Barnabas, two great apostles, fell out,
Acts 15:36–39, &c.; the contention comes to be very sharp, a thing naturally of very ill consequence in two of the prime guides of Christianity, and at the laying the first foundation of it; but the gospel gains ground, one sails to Cyprus, and the other travels into Syria. Perhaps had not this quarrel been between them, and they thus disjointed from one another, some of those poor souls had never, or at least not so soon, have heard of the gospel mercy.
5. Persecutions. These naturally tend to the dissolution and utter extirpation of it, but God orders them otherwise. God doth often lay the scene of his amazing providences in very dismal afflictions; as the limner first puts on the dusky colours on which he intends to draw the portraiture of some illustrious beauty. The oppression of Israel immediately before their deliverance was the dusky colour whereupon God drew those gracious lines of their salvation from Egypt, the pattern of all the after deliverances of the church in all