and the Souls which he hath made Ezra 9.13 but he punisheth us less than our Iniquities deserve 2 Cor. 10.13 and hath promised to lay no more upon us than we are able to bear and that we shall not be tempted above our Strength If he chasten sore he will not destroy if he cause Grief Lam. 3.32 yet will he have Compassion according to the multitude of his Mercies Psal 102.13 Many times turned he his Anger away and did not suffer his whole Indignation to arise for he remembred that they were but Flesh God will either enlarge our Grace or abate our Trouble so that it shall not overwhelm us Who can lift up a Complaint against so compassionate a Father Who can rebel so much as in a hard thought of the Rigor of his Discipline Especially if we consider that he is altogether as much a Father when he corrects as when he cherisheth us and that he designs the same Good in a variety of Conditions He gives Riches to some that they may honour him with their Substance and keeps them from others lest they should abuse them to Avarice or Riot To some he gives Children to be the Staff and Solace of their Pilgrimage and takes them from others lest they should take them from himself and draw down their Affections from things above Eceius 37.28 Some he continues in this World to declare the Works of the Lord and others he takes out of it to rest from their own Labours All things saith the wise Man are not profitable for all Men. And the Wisdom of the Divine Providence is seen as well in sending Winter as Summer Autumn as Spring foul Weather as fair Adversity as Prosperity Sickness as Health and Death as Life It was a high Speech of Seneca's after the manner of the Stoicks Bona rerum secundarum optabilia adversarum mirabilia That the good things of Prosperity are to be wished and the good things of Adversity are to be admired But to speak the words not only of Truth but Soberness great and numerous are the Benefits of Adversity The Judicious Verulam magnifies and extols them in this Comparison Essays Prosperity is the Blessing of the Old Testament Adversity of the New which carrieth the greater Benediction and the clearer Revelation of God's Favour Solomon pronounces Sorrow more desirable than Laughter Eccles 7 3. because by the sadness of the Countenance the Heart is made better Our blessed Lord and Master who began and lived and died in Sorrows seeing his own Sufferings to succeed so well and that for suffering Death he was crowned with Immortality resolved to take all his Disciples and Servants to the Fellowship of the same Sufferings that they might have a Participation of his Glory No Affliction saith our Apostle a little after my Text is for the present joyous but grievous nevertheless it produceth the peaceable Fruits of Righteousness to those that are exercised therewith Those showers which wet the Husbandman multiply his Grain and a dripping Seeds time is usually followed with a more plentiful Harvest If the Servants of God sow in Tears and Blood those Tears and Blood will but water and manure their Graces and make them spring up and blow into a fuller and fairer Glory Thick Mists usher in a bright day and Clouds of Sorrows are usually the fore-runners of a more clear and constant Joy and Death it self is an inlet to immortal Life which would bring me to the Conclusion of my Text and Sermon the great and last end and benefit of all our Crosses or rather of our patient bearing of them everlasting Rest and Exemption from Trouble in the Life to come But it will not be amiss not only for the vindicating of God's Justice but also for the Exaltation of his Mercy to shew in several Instances what good Ends though subordinate to this great one he propounds to himself in his most severe Chastnings One good End is 1. To make us sensible of our Sins and thereby to lead us to Repentance In the warm Seasons of Health and Prosperity variety of delightful Objects call our Thoughts abroad and we heighten the Pleasure of our Enjoyments by the prospect of our Hopes and easily flatter our selves that when the Sun shines and the World smiles upon us God is well pleased with us too and that our Sins are little because his Mercies are so great but when stormy Clouds and Thunder are in the Air we keep within doors we retire into our selves and in the time of Adversity consider what and how great our Sins are which have overcast our Heaven darkned the Light of God's Countenance and made our Face foul with Weeping Job 10.16 as Job speaks The Goodness of God indeed should lead us to Repentance but such is the Disingenuity of our Natures that we too often despise his Goodness and force him either to leave us in our Sins or punish us for them which is the most merciful Cure that our Case will admit of If they be bound in Fetters Job 36.7 and holden in Cords of Affliction then he shews them their Work and their Transgressions as Elihu speaketh When God had taken away from Naomi her two Sons though by an ordinary and usual Death she concludes Ruth 1.13 and so should we in the like Case that her Sins had deserved it and that the hand of the Lord was gone out against her David's Afflictions had this good Effect upon him Psal 35.5 When thy Hand was heavy upon me c. I acknowledged my Sin unto thee and mine Iniquity have I not hid We are all too apt to turn the Grace of God into Wantonness only impudent and hardned Sinners despise his Judgments 2. As our Afflictions do in general admonish us of our Transgressions so as hath been already intimated they point us to those particular Sins which provoke God's Displeasure Joseph's Brethren easily acknowledged their Guilt because they saw their Sin written upon their Punishment Their close Imprisonment taught them what it was to cast their Brother into a desolate Pit And the Wise-man observes that the turning of 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 as one speaks we might in most The Art of Contentment if not all our Sufferings see some such corresponding Circumstances as may lead us to the immediate provoking Cause of them God who does all things in number weight and measure does in his Punishments also observe a symmetry and proportion and adapts them not only to the Heinousness but even the very specifick kind of our Crimes which was observed by Quintus Curtius in the case of Bessus Quint. Curt. P. 203 204. who betrayed Darius Scelesti haud rarò supplicia luunt ejusdem generis cum illis quae patrârunt flagitiis Wicked Men are usually paid home in their own
Coin made to suffer in the same way they sinned in which we ought not only to take notice of the Justice but of the Mercy of God in giving such Instructive Corrections which like Jonathan's Rod that was dipped in Honey enlighten our eyes 1 Sam. 14.27 discover to us by a very affecting Evidence both the nature of our Sin and the necessity of our Repentance 3. God sends Afflictions to try us Behold I will melt them and try them Jer. 9.7 Now this fiery this melting Trial hath these two good Ends. 1. To refine our Natures to purge away our Dross and Corruption 2. To discover and illustrate our Virtues and Graces 1. To purify our Natures and purge away our Dross and Defilements Prov. 17 3. The fining Pot is for Silver and the Furnace for Gold but the Lord trieth the Hearts We are by Nature Massa corrupta Children of Wrath being at best but like Gold and Silver in the Oar till God puts us into his Fining-Pot and his Furnace yea after God's Grace hath renewed us in our first Conversion we have many gross and drossy Intermixtures which will not easily be cleansed off without a frequent Application of some searching Refiners the Word of God indeed is an excellent one Sanctify them by thy Truth thy Word is Truth The Word of the Lord tried him Psal 105.19 and so it doth many others But 2. Affliction is also a great Refiner I have refined thee Isa 48.10 but not with Silver I have chosen thee in the Furnace of Affliction The Furnace is not for the hurt of the Gold but for the Advantage and Improvement of it it loseth nothing there but its Dross and becomes more precious more fit for the Master's use to be made a Vessel of Service and Honour So are Troubles and Afflictions God's Instruments to cleanse and purify our Natures to work out the Pride and Vanity of our Minds This is that good end the Apostle refers to immediately after my Text He chastens us for our Profit How That we may be Partakers of his Holiness And we should endeavour to gather these Grapes and Figs even from our Thorns and Thistles these blessed Fruits of Humility Holiness and Righteousness I mean from the Tree of the Cross that so we may comply and close with God's Merciful Purpose in afflicting us saying with Elihu in all meekness and true contrition of spirit I have born Chastisements Job 34.31 32. I will not offend any more That which I see not teach thou me If I have done Iniquity I will do no more But 2dly Afflictions are sent for tryals of the Truth and sincerity of our Graces our Faith Patience and the like That the tryal of our Faith 1 Pet. 1.7 being much more precious than that of Gold which perisheth though it be tryed with Fire might be found unto praise and honour and glory saith St. Peter and Tribulation worketh Patience saith St. Paul To both these that of Minutius Felix seems to refer Vt Aurum ignibus sic nos discriminibus arguimur as Fire trieth Gold so Crosses and Perils discover the Truth and the strength of Virtue This is taught us in the Parable of the Stony Ground Every forward Hearer of the Word every specious Professor goes for a good Christian till he is like to suffer for his Profession and till Tribulation or Persecution arise because of the Word Mat. 13.20 21 God indeed sees through our hypocritical Coverings all our painted and guilt Out-sides and needs no Touchstone to find out our hidden Faults But because we are sometimes apt to mistake our selves our own Strength as St. Peter once did God in Mercy tries us to give us a right understanding of our selves of the true Habit of our Minds Seneca reports it as the saying of his admired Demetrius Lib. de providentia Nihil mihi videtur infoelicius eo cui nihil evenit adversi I think no Person so unhappy as he who enjoys an uninterrupted Felicity And he shews his Approbation of it by giving this Reason for it Non licuit enim illi se experiri for he could never prove and know himself what he was and what he was able to do or suffer Agreeable hereunto is that of St. Austin Tentat Deus non ut ipse hominem inveniat sed ut homo se inveniat God therefore thus tries not that he may find out a Man but that Man may find out himself and be sensible of his own condition 4. Hos 5.15 Afflictions make us more frequent and fervent in Prayer Most Men too much forget the God of their Mercies but in their Affliction they will seek me early Lord Isa 26.16 in trouble have they visited thee they poured out a Prayer when thy Chastisement was upon them The Sun of Prosperity puts out the Fire of Devotion which is kindled and enflamed by the Antiperistasis of a Winter Blast a bleak Season of Adversity Israel learnt not to mourn until they were sent to Bahel Jonas sleeps in the Ship but wakes and prays in the Whale's Belly 5. God in Mercy exerciseth good Men with Crosses and Sufferings to wean them from the World to discover the Indifferency if not the Worthlesness of those Persons or Things which they promise themselves most Satisfaction and Comfort from In our Friends and Relations it is usually seen God soonest takes those from us for whom we have the greatest and most immoderate Passion lest they should alienate our Affections from himself or abate the degrees of them and cool our pursuit of a Heavenly Happiness Yea when he takes away our Children the dear Parts of our selves the Off-sets of our Stock he doth not only design the better Growth and Fruitfulness of our own Spiritual Life by removing the Suckers of Piety and Virtue but he designs also their Improvement and unspeakable Advantage by transplanting them into his own Paradise Pliny the eldest though he could not see into the Glories of another Life for want of our Revelation yet had studied the World very much and for his parts of Nature Wit and Curiosity and other great Advantages of Fortune might be supposed to know as much as any mere Philosopher made this Observation that no Wish was more frequent among Men than the Wish of Death and thereupon his Conclusion is that Natura nihil brevitate vitae praestitit melius that Nature hath not done us so great a Kindness in any thing as in shortning our stay in this Life that we may not contract too great an Intimacy with the World And that we may not too much lament the Condition of those that leave the World before it leaves them who are blasted in the Beauty and Flower of their Youth have their Evening before Noon and die in their first Enjoments of the Pleasures of Life He elsewhere calls Death Praecipuum Naturae bonum the chief Blessing of Nature which cannot come out of Season because
there is no Good in this Life which is not either tempered with some present Evil or followed with some evil Effects and Inconveniencies according to that of Pliny the younger in his incomparable Panegyrick Habet has vices conditio mortalium ut adversa ex secundis ex secundis adversa nascantur Such is the changeable State of us Sejourners upon Earth that our Comforts breed Crosses and what we reap in Joy was first sowed in Tears This is another good End of God's chastning us to wean our Affections from this World while we live in it and to reconcile us to Death our last Enemy and to make us willing to follow our Friends into another World who could not stay with us here and from whom we cannot there be separated I say me-thinks we should not be very fond of such a Life either for our selves or those we love best which is not only so short that it cannot be kept long but withal so full of Trouble that it is hardly worth the keeping nor by consequence to dote on a flattering World which is so little to be enjoyed and its Enjoyments so very full of vexatious Mixtures 6. Lib. de providentiâ Besides that particular and personal Good which God designeth us in our Chastisements he reacheth the Benefit of our Example to others and teacheth them Patience and Constancy by our Subjection to his Fatherly Discipline Seneca speaks it of good Men in their Sufferings Nati sunt in Exemplar they are born to be Patterns to others And we are advised in this Chapter to consider our Saviour's Endurance for the fortifying of our selves the Confirmation of our Courage and Patience lest we be wearied and faint in our Minds Christ suffered for us 1 Pet 2.21 saith St. Peter leaving us an Example that we should follow his Steps 7. God designs a future Good in our present Chastisements and the Prevention of a greater Evil than that which now oppresseth us The Father of Spirits regardeth principally their Interest and if he grieve them here it is that he may spare them the better hereafter When we are judged 1 Cor. 11.32 we are chastned of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the World And indeed what can afford us so firm and solid a Support under all our Losses and Crosses all our Disappointments and Calamities of this Life as the comfortable Assurance and Expectation of a blessed Immortality You have heard that the Father of Spirits projects many Benefits and Advantages to us in those Afflictions which seem most to express his Displeasure and that we ought to receive them chearfully at his hand as the Medicines of our Soul and the Seasonings of our Fortune as the Incentives of our Devotion and the Instruments Polishers and Discoverers of our Vertue but that which will enable us not only to bear the Cross with Patience but with Triumph and to glory in Tribulations as the Apostle speaks is the Presage of future Joy and that well-grounded Hope of Glory which they excite in our Souls So that in regard of this great and last Benefit of our Sufferings I may forbear any further Perswasions to Patience and leave you under the Command and Compulsion of so prevailing a Motive as your own Eternal Life and Happiness If there are other very good Reasons as you have heard derived from the Power and Goodness of God this may supersede them all How much rather shall we be in Subjection to the Father of Spirits and live Live longer and more comfortably in this World live for ever in an Eternity of Health and Happiness in the next Now the God of all Grace who hath called us to his Eternal Glory by Christ Jesus after that ye have suffered a while make you perfect stablish strengthen settle you To him be Glory and Dominion for ever and ever Amen FINIS
The Duty and Benefit of SUBMISSION to the Will of GOD in AFFLICTIONS Discovered in Two SERMONS Upon a special Occasion At Stapleford in LEICESTER-SHIRE By JOHN CAVE Rector of COLDORTON in the same County And Chaplain to the LORD-BISHOP of DURHAM Iis qui erudiuntur Tolerantia succurrit objâ—ctis molestiis generose resistens atque efficiens ne animus concidat sed pugnet propulset Doloris ictus Simpl. in Epicteâ—um Quà m pulchâ—um spectaculum Deo cùm Christianus cum dolore congreditur cùm adversùm Minas Supplicia Tormenta componitur Minut. Fel. LONDON Printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCLXXXII TO The Right Honourable and Truly Noble THE LORD and LADY SHERARD OF STAPLEFORD Right Honourable THese two plain Sermons were composed and suited to serve a great and sad Occasion of your Honours reached at your Desires heard with your good liking and most effectually commended by your diligent Observation and Christian Practice of their Doctrine and therefore in these Respects were justly your own without the formality of a Dedication and truly I designed them so intirely for the Service of your Honourable Family that their Preachingh had been their only Publication and they had continued Yours still in the strictest Sence of Propriety if an intimation of your Honour's Desires which to me carry the force of a Command had not only allowed but obliged me to make them more common and seeing the Cross is not only the Badg but the Burthen of our Christianity and you have so many Fellow-Sufferers in the World I have reason to hope that others may find the same Support and Comfort by these seasonable Discourses which through God's Blessing they have happily afforded you And there being so many afflicting Circumstances as it is generally known in your Case your Patience and Submission will want no Advantage of Example but be able to speak more perswasively and make more Converts than these weak Sermons of mine or the Oratory of more powerful Preachers Indeed when Death comes so near us and makes so deep a Wound in Nature we need an extrordinary Assistance of Grace the Benefit of Precept and Example both all the Helps which Philosophy and Religion can furnish lest we be wearied and faint in our Minds St. Hierom writes of one Paulina a Lady of a steady and well-governed Temper in other Trials who yet could not bear her Childrens Death without an immoderate and unseemly Resentment but some allowance may be fairly made to the Tenderness of her Sex when we see Men who have naturally a greater Constancy and Courage wise Men religious Men ready to fall by the same Stroke Synesius the Bishop of Cyrene was so affected with the Death of his Children Epist 16. that in one of his Epistles he complains that the Remembrance of it like a lingring Consumption wasted him daily that all the Pleasure of his Life died with them and at last breaks out into this impatient Wailing Let me live no longer or else forget that they are dead Yea how doth the Heart of King David a Saint and a Souldier melt into a more than a Womanish Softness and bewray its Weakness and Instability in a Torrent of Tears and impotent unmanly Plaints at the Death of one Absolom Absolom a Traitor and a Rebel to his King and Father yet because a Son still must be lamented in the highest Strain of Passion My good Lord and Lady you bewail a Son who had nothing of Absolom in him but his Beauty who had all the Grace and sweetness of Courtesy of a most obliging Mind Speech and Deportment without any of the Guilt or Blemish of Flattery Affectation or Design who wanted no Accomplishment beseeming his Noble Birth and Quality but excelled in Piety to his God and Reverence to his Parents and a towardly Compliance with the other Instructors and Governours of his Youth whereby he soon became the Delight and Ornament of a learned and vertuous Society Exeter Colledg Oâ—on dear to them as a Child and honoured by them as a Patron and therefore wept over as both with a mixt Affection but not so fond as rational And indeed his obliging Qualifications procured him such a general Interest and Esteem that every one who knew him seemed to mourn all along for him as if the Loss had been only his without any Partner to share his Grief But I design not in this In Mr. Laxton's Sermon preached on the day of his Interment so much a Character of his Worth which hath been drawn already in better Colours and with more graceful Strokes than my poor Stock or Skill can supply as a just Commendation of your Honours singular Piety and Patience your deep sence of the Displeasure and yet your meek and humble Submission to the Will of the Father of Spirits in taking from you a Son of so much Delight and Hope and that in the Prime and the Blosom of his Years when he seemed to be all Life and Vigor a very severe and searching Trial. Yet I who had the unhappy Honour to be admitted into the darkest Scene of your Sorrow and to see your Vertue surprized with a most dreadful Assault soon perceived it happily succoured with such forces of Reason and Religion as assured an equal Conflict if not a Victory And I know you have often blessed God who by a wonderful Supply of his Grace hath maintained your Patience and Fortitude and with the Temptation given a way to escape and secure your Innocence And I shall earnestly pray that the God of all Consolation would be pleased still to suggest to you such Religious Considerations as may establish and encrease your present Comfort and lead you through all the obscure Passages of this Veil of Tears into the brightest Glories of Everlasting Light and Joy that the Belief of your dear Son 's happy Translation and the well-grounded Expectation of your own may mortify all your earthly Affections make you every day less concerned for what you enjoy or suffer in this World and that the Felicities of Eternity may render the good or evil things of Time very indifferent to you To these my Prayers I shall upon all Occasions add my best Endeavours to serve your Honours in promoting your highest your heavenly Interest and Benefit as becomes my Office and Obligations there being no one more truly sensible of your Honour 's Great Favours than is My Noble Lord and Lady Your Honours most Faithful Affectionate and Obedient Servant JOHN CAVE Of Submission to the Will of God HEB. xii ix We have had Fathers of our Flesh which corrected us and we gave them Reverence shall we not much rather be in Subjection to the Father of Spirits and live OUR Blessed Saviour who was himself a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with Grief bequeathed a Legacy of Sufferings unto the Heirs of his Glory and it is through manifold Tribulations that we are
them at last if they prove incorrigible but the Father of Spirits hath Potestatem vitae necis the Power of Life and Death over all his Children He bringeth to the Gates of Hell VVisd 16.13 and he bringeth back again And this further obligeth us to a patient bearing of his Will in our own Sickness our own darkest Walks in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and also in the last departure of our dearest Friends and Relatives because God is the Father of Spirits and takes no more from us than what he first gave us And hereby we do but attain to some degrees of Abraham's Faith and Patience who was not more joyful at the Birth and Growth of his only Son than ready to give him again to God in his best Age. 4. He hath the Power of the second as well as of the first Death Luke 12.15 or as our blessed Saviour expresseth it when he hath killed hath Power to cast into Hell Men after they have killed the Body have no more that they can do and our Christian Faith and Hope will bear us up under all the Threatnings and Strokes of their Cruelty and enable us to say with Comfort what the poor Lepers spake in dispair If they kill us we shall but die but who knows the Power of thine Anger 2 Kings 7.4 saith David who knows what degrees of Torment the Wrath of an incensed God can kindle after Death Temporal Judgments are to the wicked but the beginning of Sorrows or in St. Gregory Nazianzen's Expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Smoak of the Lord 's Anger in Hell are the Flames and the unquenchable Fire of it Take the Ashes of the Furnace Exod. 9.8 saith God to Moses and cast them into the Air and they shall be Sores and Plagues upon them such are all temporal Punishments saith the excellent Bishop Brownrig they are but the Ashes of the Furnace of Hell Fire not to be compared to those everlasting Torments A patient bearing of those Afflictions with which God chastens his Children and Servants in this Life is one good way to escape that Wrath which he reserves for his Enemies in the next Thus have I shewed you briefly what good reason we have to be subject to the Father of Spirits rather than to the Fathers of our Flesh our natural or civil Parents in regard of the greater Absoluteness and Latitude of his Dominion 4. There is one thing more which advanceth God's Scepter and awes us into a lower Submission and that is the duration and continuance of his Dominion This seems to be implied in our Apostle's present Argument in the very next Verse to my Text They verily that is the Fathers of our Flesh for a few days chastned us Their's if a severe is but a short-liv'd Empire But God who shews Mercy to thousands punisheth also to the third and fourth Generation yea His Kingdom as the Psalmist speaks is an everlasting Kingdom Psal 145.13 and his Dominion endureth throughout all Generations I might say much more of God's Soveraignty and right of Rule over us a right to give Laws and to inflict Punishments to exact Obedience and enforce Subjection But I shall proceed to shew you in The Second Sermon SEcondly That as is his Majesty such is his Mercy as he hath a more compleat and absolute Right of Dominion over us so he hath an infinitely more tender Love and Kindness for us than the Fathers of our Flesh have This is implied in their proper Characters and distinctions Fathers of our Flesh and Father of Spirits This bespeaks place by his very Name and Title which bears Signatures of Goodness altogether as illustrious as those of Power which you have seen displayed Where Flesh in Scripture is not used to describe Sin either original or actual it for the most part denotes Weakness if not the Corruption the Frailty of our Nature And Spirit is a word of a quite contrary Import and carries in the notion of it high degrees of Purity Knowledg Power and Goodness But 2. The Preheminence of God's Paternal Affection and the Advantage of his Discipline is more plainly represented in the last word of my Text Live and in the Explication of it by those following words They indeed for a few days chastned us after their Pleasure but he for our Profit If they design their Childrens Good they may either through want of Knowledg or excess of Passion mistake the measures of their Discipline but there are none of these Imperfections in the Father of Spirits His Anger which is the Product of Love is also the Subject of Wisdom and managed by both for a singular Benefit He that is the Father of Spirits knows their frame and their Frailties what Medicines they need and what they will bear and as his Wisdom prescribes and directs his Love administers and makes Application 1. He knows what Medicines they need what will prejudice their Health and what will purge their Distempers and therefore accordingly orders them pro jucundis aptissima quaeque See the Art of Contentment p. 123 130. profitable instead of pleasant things sometimes wholsom Wormwood instead of luscious Honey The same Wisdom and Goodness which denies us those things we like because they are hurtful for us doth upon the very same reason give us those distastful things which he sees profitable A wise Physician doth 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 God afflicts no further than the Necessities of his Patients require and what is short of this is though under the shew of Compassion a real Cruelty He doth not punish willingly Lam. 3.33 1 Pet. 1.6 nor grieve the Children of Men. Now for a season if need be you are in heaviness through manifold Temptations If our Affliction be sharp and painful certainly God seeth that we have need of it otherwise he would handle us more gently The Husbandman plows not but to sow and he plows and harrows no longer than till the Clods are broken and God suffers wicked Men whom the Psalmist compares to Plowers or any other Harassers of our Ease and Content no longer to make Furrows upon the Backs or rather upon the Hearts of his Servants than till they are softned and broken and become a fit soil for his Graces to grow in For 2. He that knows our frame understands our Frailties too not only what we need but what we can bear and remembers not only that our Bodies are Dust but that our Souls also partake of the Infirmities of their Companions or rather of the Discomposures of their Instruments and therefore resolves that he will not contend for ever neither be always wrath Isa 57.16 lest the Spirit should fail before him