under the torment of some grievous disease may very seasonably interrogate himself whether it have not bin contracted by his vice whether his bones be not in a more literal sense then Iob meant it full of the sins of his youth Job 20. 11. and his furfeting and drunkeness be not the cause that his soul as the Psalmist speaks abhors all manner of meat and is even hard at deaths door Psal. 107. 18. or at least whether the not imploying his health and strength to those purposes for which t was given is not the reason of its being withdrawn He also that is invaded in his reputation that lies under some great infamy is to consider whether it be not deserved whether some part if not the whole guilt of which he is accused stick not to him or if he be clear in that particular instance whether some conceled sin of his would not if it were known incur as great scandal for in that case he has in right forfeited his reputation and God may make the feizure as well by an unjust as a just accusation Or if his heart accuse him not here yet let him farther reflect whether his vain-glorious pursuits of praise and high conceits of himself have not made this an apt and necessary humiliation for him Or lastly let him recollect how he has behaved himself towards others in this kind whether he have had a just tenderness of his neighbors fame or have not rather exposed and prostituted it In these and many other instances such a particular scrutiny would in all probability discover the affinity and cognation between our guilts and our punishments and by marking out the spring and fountain head direct us how to stop or divert the current And he that would diligently imploy himself in this inquisition would find little leisure and less cause to condole his afflictions but would divert all his complaints upon himself accept of the punishment of his iniquity and thank the Lord for thus giving him warning Psal. 16. 8. 5. A second benefit which God designs us in our afflictions is the weaning us from the world to disentangle us from its fetters and charms and draw us to himself We read in the story of the Deluge that so long as the earth was covered with waters the very Raven was contented to take shelter in the Ark but when all was fair and dry even the Dove finally forsook it Gen. 8. 12. And t is much so with us the worst of men will commonly in distresses have recourse to God the very heathen mariners in a storm could rebuke Ionah for not calling upon his God Jon. 1. 6. when yet the very best of us are apt to forget him amidst the blandishments and insinuations of prosperity The kind aspects of the world are very enchanting apt to inveigle and besot us and therefore it is Gods care over us to let us sometimes see her more averting countenance in her frowns and storms that as children frighted by some ugly appearance we may run into the arms of our father Alas were all things exactly fitted to our humors here when should we think of a remove and had not death some harbingers to prepare us or him what a surprising guest would he be to us T is storied of Antigonus that seing a soldier in his camp of so dareing a courage that he alwaies courted the most hazardous attemts and observing him also of a very infirm sickly habit he took a particular care of him and by medicines and good attendance recovered him which no sooner he had don but the man grew more cautious and would no longer expose himself as formerly and gave this reason for it that now he was healthy his life was of some value to him and not to be hazarded at the same rate as when it was only a burden and should God cure all our complaints render us perfectly at ease I fear too many of us would be of the soldiers mind think our lives too good to resign to him much more to hazard for him as our Christianity in many cases obliges us The son of Syrach observes how dreadful death is to a man that is at rest in his possessions that hath abundance of all things and hath nothing to vex him nay he descends much lower and puts in him who is yet able to receive meat Ecclus. 14. 1. The truth is we do so passionately dote upon the world that like besotted lovers we can bear a great deal of ill usage before we quit our pursuit Any little slight favor atones us after multiplied affronts and we must be disciplined by repeted disappointments ere we can withdraw our confidence But how fatally secure should we be if God should permit this Siren alwaies to entertain us with her music and should not by some discordant grating notes interrupt our raptures and recal us to sober thoughts 6. INDEED t is one of the highest instances of Gods love and of his clemency also thus to project our reducement We were all in our Baptism affianced to him with a particular abrenunciation of the world so that we cannot without the greatest disloialty cast our selves into its embraces and yet when we have thus broken the covenant of our God Prov. 2. 17. he do's not pursue us with a jealous rage with the severity which an abused rival'd kindness would suggest doth not give us a bill of divorce and disclame his relation but contrives how he may reclame and bring us back to himself The transcendency of this lenity God excellently describes by the prophet in the case of Israel They say if a man put away his wife and she become another mans shall he return unto her again but thou hast plaied the harlot with many lovers yet return unto me saith the Lord Jer. 3. 1. And this tho a great height of indulgence is no more then he daily repetes to us After we have basely adulterated with the world converted our affections from God to it he do's not give us over abandon us to our leud course and consequent ruin but still invites our return and lest that may not serve he do's with a great deal of holy artifice essay to break that accured League into which we are enter'd pulls off the disguise in which the world courted us and makes us see it as it is it self a scene of vanity and vexation of spirit Eccles. 1. 14. 6. AND as he do's this in general so also with a particular application to those temporal satisfactions wherewith we were most transported the things to which we are more indifferent do not so much endanger us t is those upon which we have more vehemently set our hearts which become our snares and awake his jealousy and accordingly we frequently see that t is in those he chuses to cross us How often do's it happen that those which are enamoured of themselves dote upon their own features do meet with some disease or accident which
still retains a multitude he may say of it as the Disciples of the few Loaves what is this among so many Mat. 14. 17. Aristippus being bemoan'd for the losse of a Farm repli'd with some shaprness upon hsi Condoler you have but one field and I have yet three left why should I not rather grieve for you intimating that a man is not so much to estimate what he has lost as what he has left A piece of wisdom which if we would transcribe we might quickly convince our selves that even in our most adverse estate there are as Elijah speaks more with us then against us 2 King 6. 16. that our enjoiments are more then our sufferings and Gods acts of grace do far out-number those of his severity 5. AND as they do out-number so also do they out-weigh them The mercies we receive from God are as the last Section has shew'd of the greatest importance the most substantial solid goods and the greatest of all I mean those which concern our eternal state are so firmly fixt on us that unless we will voluntarily quit our clame t is not in the power of men or devils to defeat us Light bodies are easily blown away by every gust of wind but this weight of glory as the Apostle calls it 2 Cor. 4. 17. continues firm and stable is proof against all storms like the shadow of a great rock in a weary Land Isai. 32. 2. Those dark adumbrations we have of it might have served to refresh and deceive the tediousness of our pilgrimage and therefore the most formidable calamities of this life are below all mesures of comparison with this hope of our calling this riches of the glory of our inheritance Eph. 3. 16. The heaviest and most pressing of our afflictions are to that but like the small dust of the balance Esa. 40. 15. so that if we should here stop our inquisition we have a sufficient resolution of the present question and must conclude that God has given us an abundant counterpoise of all we either do or can suffer here 6. IF therefore there be any so forlorn as to temporals that he can fetch thence no evidence of Gods fatherly care of him yet this one consideration may solve his doubts and convince him that he is not abdicated by him We read of no gifts Abraham gave Isaac yet to the sons of the concubins t is said he did Gen. 25. 6. It had bin a very fallacious inference if Isaac should have concluded himself neglected because his far greater portion was but in reversions And it will be the same in any of us if we argue an unkindness from any temporal wants who have the entail of an eternal inheritance But surely God do's not leave himself without witness Act. 14. 17. even in secular things there is no man breathing but has some blessings of his left hand as well as his right as I have already mention'd and unless it be some few prodigies of Calamity in whose punishment or patience God designs signally to glorify himself there are none who enjoy not greater comforts of life then those they want I mean such as are really greater tho perhaps to their prejudicate fancies they do not appear so Thus in point of health if a man be disaffected in one part yet all the rest of his body may be and often is well or if he have a complication and have more then one disease yet there is no man that has all or half so many as are incident to human bodies so that he is comparatively more healthy then sick So again it is not very common for a man to loose a limb or sense the generality of men keep them to their last and they who do have in that an overbalance to most outward adversities and even they who are so unhappy to loose one yet commonly keep the rest at least the Major part or if at any time any man is left a mere breathing trunk yet it is by such stupifying diseases as dead the sense or such mortal ones as soon take them away and so the remedy overtakes the Malady Besides it pleases God very often to make compensation for the want of one member or faculty by improving the use of another We have seen feet supply all the necessary uses of hands to those who have had none and it is a thing of daily observation that men that are blind have the greater internal light have their intellects more vigorous and active by their abstractions from visible objects 7. THUS also it is in the matter of wealth he that is forced to get his bread by the swet of his browes t is true he cannot have those delicacies wherewith rich men abound yet his labor helps him to a more poignant more savory sauce then a whole College of Epicures can compound His hunger gives a higher gust to his dry crust then the surfeited stomach can find in the most costly most elaborate mixtures so verifying the observation of Solomon the full soul loatheth the hony comb but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet Prov. 27. 7. He cannot indeed stretch himself upon his bed of Ivory Am. 6. 4. yet his sleeps are sounder then those that can The wiseman tells us and experience dos so too that the sleep of a laboring man is sweet Eccles. 5. 12. He is not clothed Gorgeously has not the splendor of glittering apparel so neither has he the care of contriving it the fears of being forestal'd in a new invention or any of those unmanly solicitudes which attend that vanity He has the proper genuine use of clothing the preventing shame and cold and is happily determin'd to that which the wiser men of the world have voluntarily chosen To conclude he has one advantage beyond all these his necessities rescue him from idleness and all its consequent temtations which is so great a benefit that if rich men be not their own taskmasters as his wants are his if they do not provide themselves of business that one want of theirs is infinitly more deplorable then all his and he is not only happy comparatively with himself in having better things then he wants but with them also 8. IF we come now to reputation and fame the account will be much the same he that is eminent in the world for some great atchievement is set up as an object of every mans remark when as his excellencies on the one hand are visible so his faults and blemishes are on the other And as human frailty makes it too probable these later will be really more so human envy makes it sure that they shall be more precisely more curiously observed and more loudly blazon'd So that upon the whole a good quiet security tho it be not the road to glory yet is the likliest fence against infamy And indeed he that can keep up the repute of a sober integrity within his own private sphere need not envy the triumphant
also our patience owes all its opportunities of exercise to our afflictions and consequently owes also a great part of its being to them for we know desuetude will loose habits What imaginable use is there of patience where there is nothing to suffer In our prosperous state we may indeed imploy our temperance our humility our caution but patience seems then a useless vertue nay indeed for ought we know may be counterfeit till adversity bring it to the test And yet this is the most glorious accomplishment of a Christian that which most eminently conforms him to the Image of his Savior whose whole life was a perpetual exercise of this grace and therefore we love our ease too well if we are unwilling to buy this pearl at any price 12. LASTLY our thankfulness is at least ought to be increa'st by our distresses T is very natural for us to reflect with value and esteem upon those blessings we have lost and we too often do it to aggravate our discontent but sure the more rational use of it is to raise our thankfulness for the time wherein we enjoied them Nay not only our former enjoiments but even our present deprivations deserves our gratitude if we consider the happy advantages we may reap from them If we will perversly cast them away that unworthy contemt paies no scores for we still stand answerable in Gods account for the good he design'd and we might have had by it and we become liable to a new charge for our ingratitude in thus despising the chastisement of the Lord Heb. 12. 5. 13. AND now if all these benefits of afflictions which are yet but imperfectly recited may be thought worth considering it cannot but reconcile us to the sharpest of Gods methods unless we will own our selves such mere animals as to have no other apprehensions then what our bodily senses convey to us for sure he that has reason enough to understand that he has an immortal soul cannot but assent that its interests should be served tho with the displacency of his flesh Yet even in regard of that our murmurings are oft very unjust for we do many times ignorantly prejudg Gods designs towards us even in temporals who frequently makes a little transient uneasiness the passage to secular felicities Moses when he fled out of Egypt probably little thought that he should return thither a God unto Pharoah Exod. 4. 16. and as little did Ioseph when he was brought thither a slave that he was to be a ruler there yet as distant as those states were the divine providence had so connected them that the one depends upon the other And certainly we may often observe the like over-ruling hand in our own distresses that those events which we have entertained with the greatest regret have in the consequences bin very beneficial to us 14. To conclude we have certainly both from speculation experience abundant matter to clam all our disquiets to satisfy our distrusts and to fix in us an entire resignation to Gods disposals who has designs which we cannot penetrate but none which we need fear unless we our selves pervert them We have our Saviors word for it that he will not give us a stone when we ask bread nor a scorpion when we ask a fish Mat. 7. 9. Nay his love secures us yet farther from the errors of our own wild choice and do's not give us those stones and scorpions which we importune for Let us then leave our concerns to him who best knows them and make it our sole care to entertain his dispensations with as much submission and duty as he dispences them with love and wisdom And if we can but do so we may dare all the power of earth and hell too to make us miserable for be our afflictions what they can we are sure they are but what we in some respect or other need be they privative or positive the want of what we wish or the suffering of what we wish not they are the disposals of him who cannot err and we shall finally have cause to say with the Psalmist It is good for me that I have bin afflicted Psal. 119. 71. SECT IX Of our Misfortunes compared with other mens 1. WE come now to impress an equally just and useful consideration the comparing our misfortunes with those of other mens he that do's that will certainly see so little cause to think himself singular that he will not find himself superlative in calamity for there is no man living that can with reason affirm himself to be the very unhappiest man there being innumerable distresses of others which he knows not of and consequently cannot bring them in balance with his own A multitude of men there are whose persons he knows not and even of those he do's he may be much a stranger to their distresses many sorrows may lie at the heart of him who carries a smiling face and many a man has bin an object of envy to those who look but on the surface of his state who yet to those who know his private griefs appears more worthy of compassion And sure this confused uncertain estimate of other mens afflictions may divert us from all loud out-cries of our own Solon seeing a friend much opprest with grief carried him up to a town that over-lookt the City of Athens and shewing him all the buildings said to him consider how many sorrows have do and shall in future ages inhabit under all those roofs and doe not vex thy self with those inconveniencies which are common to mortality as if they were only yours And sure t was good advice for suffering is almost as inseparable an adjunct of our nature as dying is yet we do not see men very apt to imbitter their whole lives by the fore-sight that they must die but seeing it a thing as universal as inevitable they are more forward to take up the Epicures resolution Let us eat and drink for to morrow we die 1 Cor. 15. 32. And why should we not look upon afflictions also as the common lot of humanity and as we take the advantages so be content to bear the incumbrances of that state 2. BUT besides that implicite allowance that is thus to be made for the unknown calamities of others if we survey but those that lie open and visible to us the most of us shall find enough to discountenance our complaints Who is there that when he has most studiously recollected his miseries may not find some or other that apparently equals if not exceeds him He that stomacs his own being contemn'd and slighted may see another persecuted and opprest He that groans under some sharp pain may see another afflicted with sharper and even he that has the most acute torments in his body may see another more sadly cruciated by the agonies of his mind So that if we would but look about us we should see so many forreign occasions of our pity that we should be
to lay his head Luk. 9. 58. Is any opprest with infamy and reproch he may see his Savior accus'd as a glutton and a wine-bibber Luke 7. 34. a Blasphemer Joh. 10. 33. a sorcerer Mat. 12. 24. a perverter of the nation Luk. 23. 2. yea to such a sordid lowness had they sunk his repute that a seditious thief and murderer was thought the more eligible person not this man but Barabbas Joh. 18. 40. And finally all this scene of indignities clos'd with the spightful pageantry of mockery acted by the soldiers Mat. 27. 28. and the yet more barbarous insultings of Priests and Scribes verse 41. Is any man despised or deserted by his friends he was contemned by his country-men thought frantic by his friends betraied by one of his disciples abandon'd by all unless that one who followed him longest to renounce him the most shamefully by a threefold abjuration Nay what is infinitly more then all this he seem'd deserted by God also as is witnessed by that doleful exclamation My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Mar. 27. 64. Is any dissatisfied with the hard-ships or laboriousness of his life let him remember his Saviors was not a life of delicacy or ease he was never enter'd in those Academies of luxury where men are gorgeously apparel'd and live delicately Luk. 7. 25. but he was brought under the mean roof of a Carpenter and consequently subjected to all the lowness of such an education His initiation to his Prophetic office was with the miraculous severity of a 40. daies fast and in his discharge of it we find him in perpetual labors going about doing good Act. 10. 38. and that not in triumph like a prince bestowing his largesses but in weary peregrinations never riding but once and that only upon a borrow'd beast and to fulfil a prophecy Mat. 24. Do's any man groan under sharp and acute pains let him consider what his redeemer endur'd how in his infancy at his circumcision he offer'd the first fruits as an earnest of that bloody vintage when he trod the wine-press alone Isai. 63. 3. Let him attend him through all the stages of his direful passion and behold his arms pinion'd with rough cords his head smote with a reed and torn with his crown of thorns his back ploughed with those long furrows Psal. 120. 3. the scourges had made his macerated feeble body opprest with the weight of his cross and at last rackt and extended on it his hands and feet those nervous and consequently most sensible parts transfixt with nailes his whole body fastned to that accursed tree and exposed naked to the air in a cold season his throat parched with thirst and yet more afflicted with that vinegar and gall wherewith they pretended to relieve him and finally his life expiring amidst the full sense of these accurate torments Lastly do's any man labor under the bitterest of all sorrows importunate temtations to or a wounded spirit for sin even here also he may find that he has an high Priest who hath bin touched with the sense of his infirmities Heb. 4. 15. He was violently assaulted with a succession of temtations Mat. 4. and we cannot doubt but Satan would on him imploy the utmost of his skill Nor was he less opprest with the burden of sin ours I mean tho not his own What may we think were his apprehensions in the Garden when he so earnestly deprecated that which was his whole errand into the world What a dreadful pressure was that which wrung from him that bloody sweat and cast him into that inexplicable agony the horror whereof was beyond the comprehensions of any but his who felt it and finally how amazing was the sense of divine wrath which extorted that stupendious complaint that strong cry on the cross Heb. 5. 7. the sharp accent whereof if it do aright sound in our hearts must certainly quite overwhelm our loudest groans And now certainly I may say with Pilate Ecce homo behold the man or rather with a more divine Author Behold if ever there were sorrows like unto his sorrows Lam. 1. 12. 12. AND sure it were but a reasonable inference that which we find made by Christ himself if these things be don in a green tree what shall be don in the dry Luk. 23. 31. If an imputative guilt could nurish so scorching a flame pull down so severe a wrath what can we expect who are merely made up of combustible matter whose proper personal sins cry for vengeance Sure were we to judg by human mesures we should reckon to have more then a double portion of our Saviors sufferings entail'd upon us yet such is the efficacy of his that they have commuted for ours and have left us only such a share as may evidence our relation to our crucified Lord such as may serve only for badges and cognizances to whom we retain For alas let the most afflicted of us weigh our sorrows with his how absurdly unequal will the comparison appear And therefore as the best expedient to baffle our mutinies to shame us out of our repinings let us often draw this uneven parallel confront our petty uneasinesses with his unspeakable torments and sure t is impossible but our admiration and gratitude must supplant our impatiencies 13. THIS is indeed the method to which the Apostle directs us Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself lest ye be weary and faint in your minds ye have not yet resisted unto blood Heb. 12. 34. Was he contradicted and shall we expect to be humor'd and compli'd with Did he resist to blood and shall we think those pressures intolerable which force only a few tears from us This is such an unmanly niceness as utterly makes us unfit to follow the Captain of our Salvation What a soldier is he like to make that will take no share of the hazards and hardships of His General Honest Uriah would not take the lawful solaces of his own house upon the consideration that his Lord Ioab tho but his fellow subject lay incamped in the open fields 2 Sam. 11. 11. yea tho he was sent by him from the Camp And shall we basely forsake ours in pursuit of our ease He is of a degenerous spirit whom the example of his superior will not animate Plutarch tells us that Cato marching thro the desarts was so distrest for water that a small quantity was brought to him in a helmet as a great prize which he refusing because he could not help his soldiers to the like they were so transported with that generosity that it extinguisht the sense of their thirst and they were ashamed to complain of what their Leader voluntarily endured for their sakes And surely we extremely discredit our institution if we cannot equal their ingenuity and follow ours with as great alacrity thro all the difficulties he has traced before us and for us 14. NOR let us think to excuse our selves upon the impotency of
yet grasp it as fast as if their life were bound up in it will not deposite it no not for the smalest breathing time A strange fascination sure and yet so frequent that it ought to be the fundamental care of him that would cure men of their discontents to bring them to a hearty willingness of being cured 5. IT may be this will look like paradox and every man will be apt to say he wishes nothing more in earnest then to be cured of his present discontent He that is poor would be cured by wealth he that is low and obscure by honor and greatness but so an Hydropic person may say he desires to have his thirst cur'd by a perpetual supply of drink yet all sober people know that that is the way only to increase it but let the whole habit of the body be rectified and then the thirst will cease of it self And certainly t is the very same in the present case no outward accessions will ever satisfy our cravings our appetites must be tam'd and reduc'd and then they will never be able to raise tumults or put us into mutiny and discontent and he and none but he that submits to this method can truly be said to desire a cure 6. BUT he that thus attests the reality of his desires and seeks contentment in its proper sphere may surely arrive to some considerable degrees of it We find in all ages men that only by the direction of natural light have calmed their disquiets and reason'd themselves into contentment even under great and sensible pressures men who amidst the acutest torments have still preserv'd a serenity of mind and have frustrated contemts and reproches by disregarding them and sure we give a very ill account of our Christianity if we cannot do as much with it as they did without it 7. I do not here propose such a Stoical insensibility as makes no distinction of events which tho it has bin vainly pretended to by many yet sure was never attain'd by any upon the strength of discourse Some natural dulnesse or casual stupefaction must concur to that and perhaps by doing so has had the luck to be canoniz'd for vertue I mean only such a superiority of mind as raises us above our sufferings tho it exemt us not from the sense of them We cannot propose to our selves a higher patern in any vertue then our blessed Lord yet we see he not only felt that load under which he lay but had the most pungent and quick sense of it such as promted those earnest deprecations father if it be possible let this cup pass yet all those displacencies of his flesh were surmounted by the resignation of his spirit nevertheless not what I will but what thou wilt Luk. 22. And certainly he that in imitation of this pattern do's in spight of all the reluctancies of his sense thus entirely submit his will however he may be sad yet he is not impatient nor is he like to be sad long for to him that is thus resign'd light will spring up Psal. 97. 11. some good Angel will be sent like that to our Savior to relieve his disconsolation God will send either some outward allaies or give such interior comforts and supports as shall counterpoise those afflictions he takes not off 8. INDEED the grand design of God in correcting us is the same with that of a prudent parent towards his child to break our wills That stubborn faculty will scarce bend with easy touches and therefore do's require some force and when by that rougher handling he has brought it to a pliantness the work is don T is therefore our interest to cooperate with this design to assist as much as we are able towards the subjugating this unruly part of our selves This is that Sheba 2 Sam. 20. the surrendring of whom is Gods expectation in all the close sieges he laies to us Let us then be so wise as by an early resigning it to divert his farther hostilities and buy our peace with him 9. AND truly this is the way not only to gain peace with him but our selves too t is the usurpation of our will over our reason which breeds all the confusion and tumults within our own breasts and there is no possibility of curbing its insolence but by putting it into safe custody committing it to him who as our Church teaches us alone can order the unruly wills of sinful men Indeed nothing but experience can fully inform us of the serenity and calm of that soul who has resign'd his will to God All care of chusing for himself is happily superseded he is temted to no anxious forecasts for future events for he knows nothing can happen in contradiction of that supreme will in which he hath sanctuary which will certainly chuse for him with that tenderness and regard that a faithful-Guardian would for his pupil an indulgent father for his child that casts its self into his arms Certainly there is not in the world such a holy sort of artifice so Divine a charm to tie our God to us as this of resigning our selves to him We find the Gibeonites by yielding themselves vassals to the Israelites had their whole army at their beck to rescue them in their danger Jos. 10. 6. and can we think God is less considerate of his homagers and dependents No certainly his honor as well as his compassion is concern'd in the relief of those who have surrendred themselves to him 10. FARTHER yet when by resignation we have united our wills to God we have quite changed the scene and we who when our wills stood single were liable to perpetual defeats in this blessed combination can never be crost When our will is twisted and involved with Gods the same omnipotenee which backs his will do's also attend ours Gods will we are sure admits of no controle can never be resisted and we have the same security for ours so long as it concurs with it By this means all calamities are unsting'd and even those things which are most repugnant to our sensitive natures are yet very agreable to our spirits when we consider they are implicitly our own choice since they are certainly his whom we have deputed to elect for us Indeed there can be no face of adversity so averting and formidable which set in this light will not look amiable We see daily how many uneasinessess and prejudices men will contentedly suffer in pursuit of their wills and if we have really espoused Gods made his will ours we shall with as great nay far greater alacrity embrace its distributions how uneasy soever to our sense our souls will more acquiesce in the accomplishment of the Divine will then our flesh can reluct to any severe effects of it 11. HERE then is that footing of firm ground on which whosoever can stand may indeed do that which Archimedes boasted move the whole world He may as to himself subvert the whole course of sublunary
mean those which repine at the ills we suffer And not only our privative but our positive afflictions may by it have their bitterness taken off for the same goodness and wisdom which denies those things we like because they are hurtful for us do's upon the very same reason give us those distastful things which he sees profitable A wise Physician do's not only diet but if occasion be purge his patient also And surely there is not such a purifier such a cleanser of the soul as are afflictions if we do not like disorderly patients frustrate their efficacy by the irregular managery of our selves under them SECT VIII Of the Advantage of Afflictions 1. IT were the work of a volume to give an exact and minute account of the benefit of afflictions I shall only point at some of the more general and obvious And first it is one of the most awakening calls to repentance and to this end it is that God most usually designs it We see the whole scene of it Hos. 5. 15. I will go and return to my place till they acknowledg their offence and seek my face in their affliction they will seek me early and in the very next verse we find this voice of God echoed forth by a penitential note Come and let us return unto the Lord for he hath torn and he will heal us he hath smitten and he will bind us up Thus we find the Brethren of Ioseph tho there had a long interval passed betwixt their barbarous usage of him and his feigned rigor to them yet when they saw themselves distrest by the one then they begin to recollect the other saying We are verily guilty concerning our brother Gen. 42. 21. Prosperity is an intoxicating thing and there are few brains strong enough to bear it it laies us a sleep and amuses us with pleasant dreams whil'st in the mean time Satan rifles our tresures and spoiles us by the deceitful charms of sin of our innocency and real happiness And can there be a more friendly office don for a man in this condition then to rouze him and bring him to apprehend the designs that are laid against him And this is the errand on which afflictions are sent so that we have reason to look on them as our friends and confederates that intend our rescue and to take the alarm they give us and diligently seek out those intestine enemies of which they warn us And he that instead of this quarrels at their interposing thinks them his enemies because they tell him the truth Gal. 4. 16. do's miserably pervert the counsel of God against himself Luk. 7. 30. and may at last verify his own jealousies and by so provoking an ingratitude convert those into the wounds of an enemy which were originally meant as the corrections of a Father 2. AND as afflictions do thus in general admonish us of sins so it pleases God most frequently so to model and frame them that they bear the very image and impress of those particular guilts they are to chastise and are the dark shadows that attend our gay delights or flagrant insolencies The wise man observes that the turning the Egyptian waters into blood was a manifest reproof of that cruel commandment for the murdering of the Hebrew infants Wisd. 12. 5. And surely we might in most if not all our sufferings see some such corresponding circumstances as may lead us to the immediate provoking cause of it God who do's all things in number weight and mesure do's in punishments also observe a symmetry and proportion and adapts them not only to the heinousness but even the very specific kind of our crimes The only fixt immutable rule he has given for his Vice-gerents on earth to punish by is that in the case of murder which is we see grounded on this rule of proportion He that sheddeth mans blood by man shall his blood be shed Gen. 9. 6. And tho he have now rescinded the inferior retaliations of the eie for the eie the tooth for the tooth Exod. 21. 24. probably for the hardness of our hearts because he saw our revengeful natures would be too much pleased with it yet he has not precluded himself from acting by those mesures but we see it do's very often signally make men feel the smart of those violencies or injustices they have used to others Of this the Sacred story affords several examples as Adonibezek Jud. 1. 6. and Ahab 1 King 21. 19. and profane many more and daily experience and observation most of all And tho this method of retaliation is not alwaies so evident and apparent to the world because mens sins are not alwaies so yet I believe if men would duly recollect it would be for the most part discernable to their own consciences and they would apparently see that their calamities did but trace the footsteps of their sins 3. NOW if we rightly weigh this we cannot but think it a very advantageous circumstance We are naturally blind when we look inward and if we have not some adventitious light to clear the object will be very apt to overlook it Therefore since the end of all our afflictions is our repentance it is a wise and gracious disposal that they do thus point to us those particular sins of which we are to repent The body of sin will not be destroied in the whole entire bulk but must be dismembred pull'd to pieces limb by limb He that attaques it otherwise will be like Sertorius's soldier who ineffectively tugg'd at the horses tail to get it off at once when he that pull'd it hair by hair quickly did it Therefore as it is a great part of our spiritual Wisdom to know in what especial parts the Sampson-like strength of our corruptions lie so is it a great instance of Gods care of us thus by his corrections to discipline and instruct us in it 4. In all our afflictions therefore it is our concern nicely and critically to observe them I mean not to enhance our murmurs and complaints but to learn by them what is Gods peculiar controversy against us This is indeed to hear the rod and who hath appointed it Mic. 6. 9. Let him therefore that suffers in any of his concerns examin whether he have not some corresponding guilt which answers to it as face answers face Prov. 27. 19. He that is impoverished in his estate let him consider first how he acquired it whether there were not somthing of fraud or injustice which like a cancrous humor mixt in its very elements and constitution and eat out its bowels or whether some sacrilegious prize some coal from the altar have not fired his nest Or if nothing can be charged upon the acquest let him consider how he has used it whether he have not made it the fuel of his lusts in riot and excesses or the object of his adoration in an inordinate value of it In like manner he who is afflicted in his body groans