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2. Nineveh's Repentance and Deliverance [1740]
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- 2 NINEVEH 'S REPENTANCE AND DELIVERANCE Joseph Sewall BOSTON I 7 4 0 JOSEPH SEWALL (I688-I769). A Harvard graduate of I707, Sewall spent a long and generally serene ministry at Old South Church in Boston, where he preached beyond his eightieth year. He was a strong Calvinist, yet he became a friend of George Whitefield, who preached in Sewall's pulpit during several visits to Boston. He was offered the presidency of Harvard in I724, but he declined it after a peevish attack by Cotton Mather. He preached the artillery sermon in I7I4 and the election sermon in I724, and he was awarded a D.D. by the University of Glasgow in I 73r. With his classmate Reverend Thomas Prince, he edited The Compleat Body ofDivinity from collected papers of Samuel Willard (I726). His own papers were not collected, but Sibley's Harvard Graduates (vol. 5), lists twenty-nine writings by him. Reprinted here is a fast-day sermon preached before the Massachusetts governor, the council, and the house of representatives on December 3, I740. Always ready to look for underlying causes and strongly attached to his province, Sewall readily supported the patriot cause and permitted his meeting house to become a shrine of the American cause. In Charles Chauncy's words, Sewall "was a strenuous asserter of our civil and ecclesiastical charter-rights and priviledges.... He knew they were the purchase of our forefathers at the expence of much labor, blood, and treasire [sic]. He could not bear the thought of their being wrested out of our hands. He esteemed it our duty, in all wise, reasonable, and legal ways, to endeavour the preservation of them..."(Chauncy, Discourse Occasioned by the Death of ... joseph Sewall [Boston, I769], p. 26). [3.230.76.153] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:51 GMT) ~And God saw their Works, that they turned from their evil Way, and God repented of the Evil that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not.~ Jonah III. 10. n this book we have a very memorable and instructive history. The prophet Jonah, whose name the book bears, was call'd of Goo to go to Nineveh, the capital . of the Assyrian monarchy, and cry against it: He ..--.-."--"-- criminally attempted to fly from the presence of the Lord, by going to Joppa, and from thence to Tarshish; but that Goo whom the winds and sea obey, raised such a storm as made the heathen mariners conclude there was something very extraordinary, and accordingly they propose to cast lots, that they might know for whose cause this evil was upon them. Jonah is taken, and cast into the sea; upon which it ceased from raging: And thus, by the wonderful Providence of Goo, he became a type of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who having appeased the wrath of Goo by his obedience unto death, lay buried in the earth three days, Matth. 1 2. 40. For as Jonas was three Days and three Nights in the Whale's Belly: So shall the Son of Man be three Days and three Nights in the Heart of the Earth. Jonah having cried to GoD, as out of the Belly of Hell, was delivered from his dreadful confinement. Chap. 2. v. 10. The Lord spake unto the Fish, and it vomited Jonah upon the dry Land. Thus the brute creation, even the mighty whales, obey the word of Goo's power, while men transgress his law. Jonah, being thus delivered from the depth of distress , obeys the second call of Goo to him, Ch. 3· v. 1. Happy is that rebuke, how sharp soever, which is sanctified to make us return to Goo and our duty. And here it is observ'd, in the third verse, that Nineveh was an exceeding great city, great to or of GoD,* "Things great and eminent have the name of GoD put upon them in scripture [,]" of three days journey. It is computed to have been sixty miles in compass, which may well be reckon'd three days journey for a footman , twenty miles a day, says Mr. Henry; or as the same author observeth, walking slowly and gravely, as Jonah must, when he went * Urbs magna Dei. Calvin. 30 JOSEPH SEWALL about preaching, it would take him up at least three days to go thro' all the principal streets and lanes of the city, to proclaim his message, that all might have notice of it...