things in their true shapes and if we did thus what a strange turn would there be in the common estimates of the world How many of the gilded troubles of greatness which men at a distance look on with so much admiration and desire would then be as much contemned as now they are courted A competency would then get the better of abundance and the now envied pomp of princes when balanced with the cares and hazards annext would be so far from a bait that men like Saul 1 Sam 10. 22. would hide themselves from the preferment and he that understood the weight would rather choose to weild a Flayle then a Scepter yet so childishly are we besotted with the glittering appearance of things that we conclude felicity must needs dwell where there is a magnificent Portico and being possest with this fancy we over-look her in our own humbler Cottages where she would more constantly reside if she could but find us at home but we are commonly engag'd in a rambling pursuit of her where she is seldomest to be found and in the interim misse of her at our own doors 9. INDEED there is scarce a greater folly or unhappiness incident to mans nature then this fond admiration of other mens enjoiments and contemt of our own And whilst we have that humour it will supplant not only our present but all possibilities of our future content for tho we could draw to our selves all those things for which we envy others we should have no sooner made them our own then they will grow despicable and nauseous to us This is a speculation which has bin attested by innumerable experiments there being nothing more frequent then to see men with impatient eagerness nay often with extreme hazards pursue those acquests which when they have them they are immediatly sick of There is scarce any man that may not give himself instances of this in his own particular and yet so fatally stupid are we that no defeats will discipline us or take us off from these false estimates of other mens happinesses And truly while we state our comparisons so unequally they are as mischievous as the common proverb speaks them odious but if we would begin at the right end and look with as much compassion on the adversities of our brethren as we do with envy on their prosperities every man would find cause to sit down contentedly with his own burden and confess that he bears but the proportionable share of his common nature unless perhaps it be where some extraordinary demerits of his own have added to the weight and in that case he has more reason to admire his afflictions are so few then so many And certainly every man knows so many more ills by himself then it is possible for him to do by another that he that really sees himself exceed others in his sufferings will find cause enough to think he do's in sins also 10. BUT if we stretch the comparison beyond our contemporaries and look back to the generations of old we shall have yet farther cause to acknowledge Gods great indulgence to us Abraham tho the friend of God was not exemted from severe trials he was first made to wander from his Country and betake himself to a kind of vagrant life was a long time suspended from the blessing of his desired off-spring and when at last his beloved Isaac was obtained it caused a domestic jarre which he was fain to compose by the expulsion of Ishmael tho his son also But what a contest may we think there was in his own bowels when that rigorous task was imposed on him of sacrificing his Isaac and tho his faith gloriously triumpht over it yet sure there could not be a greater pressure upon human nature David the man after Gods own heart is no less signal for his afflictions then for his piety he was for a great while an exile from his Countrey and which he most bewailed from the Sanctuary by the persecutions of Saul and after he was setled in that throne to which Gods immediate assignation had intitled him what a succession of calamities had he in his own family the incestuous rape of his Daughter the retaliation of that by the as unnatural murder of Amnon and that seconded by another no less barbarous conspiracy of Absolom against himself his expulsion from Ierusalem the base revilings of Shimei and finally the losse of that dearling son in the act of his sin A cluster of afflictions in comparison whereof the most of ours are but like the gleanings as the Prophet speaks after the vintage is don It were indeed endless to instance in all the several Fore-fathers of our Faith before Christs incarnation the Apostle gives us a brief but very comprehensive compendium of their sufferings They had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings yea moreover of bonds and imprisonments they were stoned were sawn asunder were temted were slain with the sword they wandred about in sheep-skins and goat-skins being destitute afflicted tormented they wandred in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth Heb. 11. 36. 37. 38. And if we look on the Primitive Christians we shall see them perfectly the counrerpart to them their privileges consisted not in any immunities from calamities for their whole lives were scenes of sufferings St. Paul gives us an account of his own in labors more abundant in stripes above mesure in prisons more frequent in deaths oft of the Iews five times received I fourty stripes save one Thrice was I beaten with rods once was I stoned thrice I suffer'd shipwrack a night and a day have I bin in the deep in journying often c. 2 Cor. 11. 23. and if his single hardships rose thus high what may we think the whole sum of all his fellow-laborers amounted to together with that noble Army of martyrs who sealed their faith with their blood of whose sufferings Ecclesiastic history gives us such astonishing relations 11. AND now being compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses the Apostles inference is very irrefragable let us run with patience the race which is set before us Heb. 12. 1 2. But yet it is more so if we proceed on to that consideration he adjoins Looking unto Iesus the Author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endur'd the cross despising the shame verse 3. Indeed if we contemplate him in the whole course of his life we shall find him rightly stiled by the Prophet a man of sorrows Isai. 51. And as if he had charged himself with all our griefs as well as our sins there is scarce any human calamity which we may not find exemplified in him Do's any complain of the lowness and poverty of his condition Alas his whole life was a state of indigence he was forc'd to be an inmate with the beasts be laid in a stable at his birth and after himself professes that he had not where
either by Elies fond indulgence or by a remiss and careless education or which is worst of all by his most impious example If any or all of these be found the cause he is not so much to seek for allaies to his grief as for pardon of his sin and when he has penitently retracted his own faults he may then have better ground of hope that God may reform those of his children In the mean time he may look on his own affliction in them as Gods discipline on him and gather at least this comfort from it that his heavenly Father has more care of him then he had of his and do's not leave him uncorrected 12. THUS we see in all the concerns which are the most common and important of human life and wherein the justest of our complaints are usually founded there is such a temperature and mixture that the good do's more then equal the ill and that not only in the grosser bulk when our whole state is weighed together but in every single branch of it God having herein dealt with this little world Man as he has don with the greater wherein he is observ'd to have furnished every country with Specific remedies for their peculiar diseases I have only given these short hints by way of essay and pattern for the Readers contemplation which when he shall have extended to all those more minute particulars wherein he is especially concern'd more curiously compar'd his sufferings with his allaies and comforts I cannot doubt but he will own himself an instance of the truth of the present Thesis and confess that he has much more cause of thankfulness then complaint 13. THIS I say supposing his afflictions to be of those more solid and considerable sorts I have before mention'd But how many are there who have few or none of such who seem to be seated in the land of Goshen in a place exemt from all the plagues that infest their Neighbors And those one would think should give a ready suffrage to this conclusion as having no temtation to oppugn it yet I doubt t is far otherwise and that such men are of all the most unsatisfied For tho they have no crosses of Gods imposing they usually create a multitude to themselves And here we may say with David it is better to fall into the hand of God then into the hand of man 2 Sam. 24. 14 tis easier to bear the afflictions God sends then those we make to our selves His are limited both for quantity and quality but our own are as boundless as those extravagant desires from which they spring 14. AND this is the true cause why contentment is so much a stranger to those who have all the outward causes of it they have no definite mesure of their desires t is not the supply of all their real wants will serve their turn their appetites are precarious and depend upon contingencies They hunger not because they are emty but because others are full Many a man could have liked his own portion well enough had he not seen another have somthing he liked better Nay even the most inconsiderable things acquire a value by being anothers when we despise much greater of our own Ahab might well have satisfied himself with the Kingdom of Israel had not Naboths poor plot lain in his eie but so raving were his desires after it that he disrelishes all the pomps of a Crown yea the ordinary refreshments of Nature can eat no bread till he have that to furnish him with Sallads 1 King 21. 2. And how many are there now adaies whose cloths sit uneasy if they see another have had but the luck to be a little more ingenuously vain whose meat is unsavory if they have seen but a greater rarity a newer cookery at anothers Table in a word who make other peoples excesses the standard of their own felicities 15. NOR are our appetites only excited thus by our outward objects but precipitated and hurried on by our inward lusts The proud man so longs for homage and adoration that nothing can please him if that be wanting Haman can find no gust in all the sensualities of the Persian Court because a poor despicable Jew denies his abaisance Est. 5. 13. The lustful so impatiently pursues his impure designs that any difficulty he meets in them makes him pine and languish like Amnon who could no way recover his own health but by violating his sisters honor 2 Sam. 13. 14. The revengeful labors under an Hydropic thirst till he have the blood of his enemy all the liquor of Absaloms sheep-sheering could not quench his without the slaughter of his brother 2 Sam. 1â— 29. And thus every one of our passions keeps us upon the rack till they have obtained their designs Nay when they have the very emtiness of those acquisitions is a new torment and puts us upon fresh pursuits Thus between the impetuousness of our desires and the emtiness of our enjoiments we still disquiet our selves in vain Psa. 39. 7. And whil'st we have such cruel task-masters t is not strange to find us groaning under our burdens If we will indulge to all our vicious or foolish appetites think our lives bound up with them and solicite the satisfaction of them with as impatient a vehemence as Rachel did for children Gen. 30. 1. give me them or I die no wonder that we are alwaies complaining of disappointments since in these the very success is a defeat and is but the exchanging the pain of a craving ravenous stomach for that of a cloi'd and nauseated Indeed men of this temper condemn themselves to a perpetual restlessness they are like phantastic mutineers who when their superiors send them blanks to write their own conditions know not what will please them and even Omnipotence it self cannot satisfy these till it have new moulded them and reduced their desires to a certainty 16. BUT in the mean time how unjustly do they accuse God of illiberality because every thing answers not their humor He has made them reasonable creatures and has provided them satisfactions proportionable to their nature but if they will have wild irrational expectations neither his wisdom nor his goodness is concern'd to satisfy those His supplies are real and solid and therefore have no correspondence to imaginary wants If we will create such to our selves why do we not create an imaginary satisfaction to them T were the merrier frenzy of the two to be like the mad Athenian that thought all the ships that came into the harbor his own and t were better Ixion like to have our Arms fil'd with a cloud then to have them perpetually beating our own breasts and be still tormenting our selves with unsatisfiable desires Yet this is the state to which men voluntarily subject themselves and then quarrel at God because they will not let themselves be happy But sure their very complaints justify God and argue that he has dealt very kindly with them
admirable then that infinit patience of God who notwithstanding the miserable infirmities of the pious and the leud contemt of the impious still goes on resolutly in his bounty and continues to all mankind some and to some all his temporal blessings He has no obligation of justice to do so for it is no part of his compact he has none of gratitude for he is perpetually affronted and disobliged Surely we may well say with David Is this after the manner of men O Lord 1 Chro. 17. 17. Can the highest human indulgence bear any proportion with this divine Clemency no certainly no finite patience but would be exhausted with the thousandth part of our provocations 5. BUT is not our dealing too as little after the manner of men I mean of reasonable creatures for us who have forfeited our right to all and yet by mere favor are still kept in the possession of many great blessings for us to grow mutinous because there is perhaps somthing more trifling which is deni'd us is such a stupid ingratitude as one would think impossible to human nature Should a Tenant with us have at once forfeited his lease and maliciously affronted his Landlord he would sure think himself very gently dealt with if he were suffer'd to enjoy but a part of his first estate but we should think him not only insolent but mad who when the whole were left him should quarrel and clamor if he might not have his Cottage adorn'd with marble floors and gilded roofs Yet at this wild rate we behave our selves to our great Landlord grow pettish and angry if we have not every thing we can fancy tho we enjoy many more useful merely by his indulgence And can there be any thing imagin'd more unreasonable Let us therefore if not for piety yet at least to justify our clame to rationality be more ingenuous let us not consult only with our fond appetites and be thus perpetually solliciting their satisfaction but rather reflect on what tenure we hold what we already have even that of superabundant mercy and fear least like insolent beggers by the impudence of our demands we divert even that charity which was design'd us In short let every man when he computes what he wants of his desires reckon as exactly how much he is short of his duty and when he has duly ponder'd both he will think it a very gentle composition to have the one unsupplied so he may have the other remitted and will see cause contentedly to sit down and say with honest Mephibosheth What right have I to cry any more unto the King 2 Sam. 19. 28. But if it be thus with us upon the mere score of our imperfectionsor omissions what an obnoxious state do our innumerable actual sins put us in If the spots of our sacrifices are provoking what are our sacrileges and bold profanations If those who neglect or forget God are listed among his enemies what are those who avowedly defy him Indeed he that soberly considers the world and sees how daringly the divine Majesty is daily affronted cannot but wonder that the perversions of our manners those prodigies in morality should not be answer'd with as great prodigies in calamity too that we should ever have other ruin then that of Sodom or the earth serve us for any other purpose then to be as it was to Korah Num. 16. our living sepulcher 6. NOR is this longanimity of God observable only towards the mass and collective body of mankind but to every man in particular Who is there that if he ransack his conscience shall not find guilts enow to justify God in the utmost severities towards him so that how much soever his punishments are short of that so much he evidently owes to the lenity and compassion of God And who is there that suffers in this world the utmost that God can inflict We have a great many suffering capacities and if those were all fill'd up to the height our condition would scarce differ from that of the damned in any thing but duration But God is more merciful and never inflicts at that rate on us here Every mans experience can tell him that God discharges not his whole quiver at once upon him but exemts him in many more particulars then he afflicts him and yet the same experience will probably tell most of us that we are not so modest in our assaults upon God we attacque him in all his concerns as far as our feeble malice can reach in his Sovereignty in his honor in his relatives nay somtimes in his very essence and being And as they are universal in respect of him so also in regard of our selves we engage all our powers in this war do not only yield as the Apostle speaks our members instruments of unrighteousness Rom. 6. 18. but we press them upon the service of sensual and vile lusts even beyond our native propensions Nor are only the members of our body but the faculties of our souls also thus emploied our understandings are busied first in contriving sins and then excuses and disguises for them our wills are yet more sturdy rebels and when the understanding is beat out of all its out-works yet sullenly keep their hold in spight of all conviction and our affections madly rush on like the horse into the battel Jer. 8. 6. deterred by nothing of danger so there be but sin enough in the attemt 7. AND now with what face can people that thus pursue an hostility expect that it should not be return'd to them do's any man denounce war and yet expect from his adversary all the caresses the obligements of friendship self-defence will promt even the meekest nature to despoile his enemy at least of those things which he uses to his annoiance aud if God should give way even to that lowest degree of anger where or what were we for since we imploy our whole selves against him nothing but destruction can avert our injuries But t is happy for us we have to do with one who cannot fear us who knows the impotence of our wild attemts and so allai's his resentment of our insolence with his pity of our follies Were it not for this we should not be left in a possiblity so oft to iterate our provocations every wicked imagination and black design would be at once defeated and punisht by infatuation and frenzy every blasphemous Atheistical speech would wither the tongue like that arm of Ieroboam which he stretcht against the Prophet 2 King 13. 4. and every impious act would like the prohibited retrospect of Lots Wife fix us perpetual monuments of divine vengeance 8. AND then how much do we owe to the mercy and commiseration of our God that he suffers not his whole displesure to arise Psa. 78. 39. that he abates any thing of that just severity he might use toward us He that is condemned to the Gallowes would think it a mercy to scape with any inferior penalty why
have we then such mean thoughts of Gods Clemency when he descends to such low compositions with us corrects us so lightly as if t were only matter of ceremony and punctilioe the regard of his honor rather then the execution of his wrath For alas let him among us that is the most innocent and undeservedly afflicted muster up his sins and sufferings and he will see a vast inequality and had he not other grounds of assurance would be almost temted to think those were not the provoking cause they are so unproportionably answered He sins in innumerable instances and is punisht in few he sins habitually and perpetually and suffers rarely and seldom nay perhaps he has somtimes sin'd with greediness and yet God has punisht with regret and reluctancy How shall I give thee up O Ephraim Hos. 11. 8. And when all these disparities are consider'd we must certainly join heartily in Ezras confession Thou O God has punisht us less then our iniquities deserve Ezra 9. 13. 9. NAY besides all our antecedent we have after guilts no less provoking I mean our ungracious repinings at the light chastisements of our former sins our out-cries upon every little uneasiness which may justly cause God to turn our whips into scorpions and according as he threatned Israel Lev. 26. 18. to punish us yet seven times more And yet even this do's not immediately exasperate him The Jews were an instance how long he could bear with a murmuring generation but certainly we of this nation are a greater yet let us not be high-minded but fear Rom. 11. 20. for we see at last the doom fell heavy tho it was protracted a succession of miraculous judgments pursued those murmurers so that not one of them enter'd Canaan And t is very observable that whereas to other sins Gods denunciations are in scripture conditional and reversible this was absolute and bound with an oath He sware in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest Psa. 95. 11. And yet if we compare the hardships of the Israelites in the wilderness with most of our sufferings we shall be forced to confess our mutinies have less temtation and consequently less excuse from whence t is very reasonable to infer as the greatness of our danger if we persist so the greatness of Gods long suffering towards us who yet allows us space to reform and sure new complaints sound very ill from us who are liable to so severe an account for our old ones I fear the most resign'd persons of us will upon recollection find they have upon one occasion or other out-vied the number of the Israelites murmurs therefore unless we will emulate them in their plagues let us fear to add one more lest that make up the fatal sum and render our destruction irrevocable 10. UPON all these considerations it appears how little reason any of us have to repine at our heaviest pressures but there is yet a farther circumstance to be adverted to and is too applicable to many of us that is that our sins are not only the constant meritorious cause of our sufferings but they are also very often the instrumental cause also and produce them not only by way of retaliation from God but by a natural efficacy Solomon tells us he that loves plesure shall be a poor man and that a whorish woman will bring a man to a piece of bread Prov. 6. 26. that he that sits long at the wine shall have redness of eies Chap. 23. 29. 30. that the slothful soul shall suffer hunger 19. 15. and all these not by immediate supernatural infliction from God but as the proper genuine effects of those respective vices Indeed God in his original establishment of things has made so close a connexion between sin and punishment that he is not often put to exert his power in any extraordinary way but may trust us to be our own Lictors our own backslidings reprove us Jer. 2. 19. and our iniquities are of themselves enough to become our ruine Exod. 18. 38. 11. It may therefore be a seasonable question for every man to put to himself whether the troubles he labors under be not of this sort whether the poverty he complains of be not the effect of his riot and profusion his sloth and negligence whether when he cries out that his comeliness is turn'd into corruption Dan. 10. 8. he may not answer himself that they are his visits to the harlots houses which have thus made rottenness enter into his bones Hab. 3. 16. whether when he is beset with contentions and has wounds without cause he have not tarried long at the wine when he has lost his friend whether he have not by some trecherous wound Eccle. 22. 22. forced him to depart or when he lies under infamy whether it be not only the Echo of his own scandalous crimes If he find it thus with him certainly his mouth is stopt and he cannot without the most disingenuous impudence complain of any but himself He could not be ignorant that such effects did naturally attend such causes and therefore if he would take the one he must take the other also No man sure can be so mad as to think God should work miracles disunite those things which nature hath conjoin'd only that he may sin at ease have all the bestial plesures he can project and none of the consequent smart We read in deed God divided the sea but it was to make the way for the Ransomed of the Lord to pass over Isa. 51. 10. those who were his own people and went in at his command but when they were secured we find the waters immediatly return'd to their chanel and overwhelmed the Egyptians who ventured without the same warrant And sure the case is alike here when any man can produce Gods mandate for him to run into all excess of riot to desecrate the temple of the holy Ghost and make his body the member of an harlot 1 Cor. 6. 15. In a word when God bids him do any of those things which God and good men abhor then and not before he may hope he may sever such acts from their native penal effects for till then how profuse soever some Legendary stories represent him he will certainly never so bestow his miracles 12. But I fear upon scrutiny there will appear a yet farther circumstance upon which to arraign our mutinies for tho it be unreasonable enough to charge God with the ill effects of our own leudness yet t is a higher step to murmur because we have not materials to be wicked enough And this I fear is the case with too many of us who tho they are not so dispoil'd by their sins but that they can keep up their round of vicious plesures yet are discontented because they think some others have them more exquisite think their vices are not Gentile enough unless they be very expensive and are covetous only that they may be more Luxurious These are such
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
and try our waies and turn again to the Lord Lam. 3. 39. diligently seek out that accursed thing which has caused our discomfeiture Jos 6. 18. and by the removal of that prepare the way for the access of mercy But alas how preposterous a method do we take in our afflictions We accuse every thing but what we ought furiously fly at all the second causes of our calamity nay too often at the first by impious disputes of providence and in the mean time as Iob speaks the root of the matter is found in us Job 19. 28. We shelter and protect in our bosoms the real Author of our miseries The true way then to allay the sense of our sufferings is to sharpen that of our sins The prodigal thought the meanest condition in his fathers family a preferment Make me one of thy hired servants Luk. 15. 19. And if we have his penitence we shall have his submission also and calmly attend Gods disposals of us 6ly As every man in his affliction is to look inward on his own heart so also upward and consider by whose providence all events are order'd Is there any evil i. e. of punishment in the city and the Lord hath not don it Am. 3. 6. and what are we worms that we should dispute with him Shall a man contend with his Maker Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth Isa. 45. 9. And as his power is not to be control'd so neither is his justice to be impeach'd Shall not the judg of all the earth do right Gen. 18. 25. And where we can neither resist nor appeal what have we to do but humbly to submit Nor are we only compell'd to it by necessity but induced and invited by interest since his dispensations are directed not barely to assert his dominion but to evidence his paternal care over us He discerns our needs and accordingly applies to us The benignity of his nature permits him not to take delight in our distresses he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men Lam. 3. 33. and therefore when ever he administers to us a bitter cup we may be sure the ingredients are medicinal and such as our infirmities require He dares not trust our intemperate appetites with unmixt prosperities the lushiousness whereof tho it may please our palats yet like St. Johns book Rev. 10. 9. that hony in the mouth may prove gall in the bowels ingender the most fatal diseases Let us therefore in our calamities not consult with flesh and blood Gal. 1. 16. which the more it is bemoan'd the more it complains but look to the hand that strikes and assure our selves that the stripes are not more severe then he sees necessary in order to our good and since they are so they ought in reason to be our choices as well as his and not only religion but self love will promt us to say with old Ely it is the Lord let him do what seemeth him good 1 Sam. 3. 11. But alas we do not understand what is our interest because we do not rightly understand what we are ourselves We consider our selves merely in our animal being our bodies and those sensitive faculties vested in them and when we are invaded there we think we are undon tho that breach be made only to relieve that diviner part within us besieged and opprest with the flesh about it for so God knows it too often is or if we do not consider it in that notion of an enemy yet at the utmost estimate the body is to the soul but as the garment to the body a decent case or cover now what man not stark frantic would not rather have his clothes cut then his flesh and then by the rate of proportion we may well question our own sobriety when we repine that our souls are secur'd at the cost of our bodies and that is certainly the worst the unkindest design that God has upon us and our impatient resistances serve only to frustrate the kind the medicinal part of afflictions but will not at all rescue us from the severe Our murmurings may ruine our souls but will never avert any of our outward calamities 7. A seventh help to contentment is to have a right estimate of the world and the common state of humanity to consider the world but as a stage and our selves but as actors and to resolve that it is very little material what part we play so we do it well A Comedian may get as much applause by acting the slave as the conqueror and he that acts the one to day may to morrow reverse the part and personate the other So great are the vicissitudes of the world that there is no building any firm hopes upon it All the certainty we have of it is that in every condition it has its uneasinesses so that when we court a change we rather seek to vary then end our miseries And certainly he that has well imprest upon his mind the vanity and vexation of the world cannot be much surprised at any thing that befalls him in it We expect no more of any thing but to do its kind and we may as well be angry that we cannot bring the lions to our cribes or fix the wind to a certain point as that we cannot secure our selves from dangers and disappointments in this rough and mutable world We are therefore to lay it as an infallible maxim that in this vale of tears every man must meet with sorrows and disasters and then sure we may take our peculiar with evenness of temper as being but the natural consequent of our being men And tho possibly we may every one think himself to have double portion yet that is usually from the deceitful comparisons we make of our selves with others We take the magnifying glasses of discontent and envy when we view our own miseries and others felicities but look on our enjoiments and their sufferings thro the contracting optics of ingratitude and incompassion and whilst we do thus t is impossible but we must foment our own dissatisfactions He that will compare to good purpose must do it honestly and sincerely and view his neighbors calamities with the same attention he do's his own and his own comforts with the same he do's his neighbors and then many of the great seeming inequalities would come pretty neer a level 8. BUT even where they do not it in the 8th place deserves however to be consider'd how ill natur'd a thing it is for any man to think himself more miserable because another is happy and yet this is the very thing by which alone many men have made themselves wretched for many have created wants merely from the envious contemplation of other mens abundance And indeed there is nothing more disingenuous or to go higher more Diabolical Lucifer was happy enough in his original state yet could not think himself so because he was not like the most high Isa. 14. 14. And