our sins have made the Spirit that only can teach us how to pray to retire but there are some Considerations that may support us even in so sad a case as this 1. Our Distress teaches us the Folly of our Sin and causes us to hate that which has cost us so very dear and it is well for us that we see the odiousness of it tho it be smart and pain that opens our eyes 'T is better to be wounded in order to a cure than to dye at ease and so to perish for evermore 2. The Spirit is not so withdrawn but that he will return upon our-earnest addresses for his Grace He hovers still about us and tho we did ill to shut him out before yet this blessed Guest does but wait for a favourable opportunity to do us good again He is not quite gone that sense which we have of Sin is his own work 3. Our indisposition to the Duty of Prayer is no sign that we are void of Life A bed-rid Person lives as well as one that is in his firm and pleasant Health a groan is a sign of Life as well as laughter and a merry Song It is very undesirable indeed to have such a feeble and decaying life but the way to make it more strong is to keep our Souls in exercise and the weak and creeping motion wherewith we stirred at first being continued will enable us to tread with a more steady foot and we shall get several Paces further in a very little while By praying tho it be in a very poor manner we shall learn to pray Tho we do but sigh after God yet even a sigh may a little ease us and by frequent use be turned into a loud and prevailing Cry God is still your Creator and he that hears the Ravens and the young Lions when they roar for meat will not be deaf to you 4. 'T is a more excellent state of Soul to pray to God and to persevere in it when you have no Comfort than when you have Sensible Consolation is a very desirable thing 'T is as the Dew of Heaven as Manna coming thence like Honey or the Honey-Comb very pleasant to the taste But a Dependance and Trust in God when he is a withdrawing-God is one of the most glorious Acts of Faith and if it be not treated with Feasts and splendid Entertainments here I can assure you nay God himself has assur'd you That it shall fare very well in the next world Sensible Consolation may be in the inferior nature as the Mystical People call it it may be occasioned by the Temper of the Body by the Harmony of the Passions or the agreeable Dispositions of the Natural Spirits but those other less pleasant acts are seated in the highest Region of the Soul in the Understanding and the Will and upon that account are more truly Spiritual and more abiding 5. Those poor troubled people that complain of their deadness and incapacity to manage the Duty of Prayer ought to consider what an influence their fears have had upon their bodies fear does naturally contract and dull the heart the motions of it are weak and languid despairing thoughts and apprehensions about our Everlasting State dry up our moisture and by cutting off our hopes make every thing that was pleasant to us to wither away and 't is a very hard matter for the Soul to retain its heat and warmth when its dear Companion the body does not assist it as it used to do when the Spirits with which it serves it self in so many several actions are stagnated into a feeble and almost undiscerned motion Some great Saints there have been who by a sort of Holy Anteperistasis have glowed in their hearts with a quicker Flame to God when all has been cold and storm round about them Some there have been who have never had more inward Health than when their outward man decayed and whose souls seem'd manifestly to thrive when their bodies were mouldring away but generally speaking the Neighbourhood or the nearness of a sickly body proves a great clog and hindrance to the mind and there is no question but God will make allowances for our weakness and the groaning after him by one under the power of a Disease may be as grateful to him as a long continued Prayer by one in Heath Pray therefore to God tho it be with heaviness tho it be mingled with many a bitter sigh yet it will be a payment of that homage which you owe to God and you know not how soon you may meet with a gracious return You may kneel down in sorrow and he may lift you up with Joy and say Be of good comfort thy sins are forgiven thee And I know that would be very welcome and pleasant news to you the news of a Kingdom to be your own would not be half so refreshing Obj. 2. It is not for me to pray I am Sinner enough already God knows and would you have me aggravate my Guilt for I have wandring Thoughts and an unbelieving heart I am a wicked person and the prayer of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord Prov. 28.9 And therefore to what purpose should I pray If any man indeed break with contempt the Laws of God and then think to make satisfaction by his Prayers and an outward or a pompous Devotion he offers an affront to the All-knowing God and his holy Eye cannot look upon an Action so criminal without the greatest disdain and scorn If a man will Swear and Curse and Damn himself with one breath and then desire God to bless him with the next this would be a ridiculous Pretence to Religion and such are like to find severe Punishment from that God whom they abuse with so shameless a Confidence and of whom they speak with so little Reverence If a man should desire of God to help him to rob to plunder or to wrong his Neighbours this were as far as he could to make the Holy One of Israel a partner in his Crimes If a man should kill another unjustly and glut himself with Revenge and then as some have exprest it say Grace over his bloody Banquet this were to commit a double Wickedness It was an abominable thing when so many harmless Protestants were so barbarously Butcher'd in France to sing Te Deum at Rome for the Massacring so many poor Creatures as if the God of Mercy had been Cruel as well as they as if the Rage that came from Hell had descended from the God of Love As if a man that lives at the Prince's Charge and is maintained at his Table should break the most Venerable Laws of his Kingdom and then thank the Prince for giving him a power to do that which he knows he detests and hates There is no question but it is the Duty of a wicked man to pray to God I suppose there is none thinks Simon Magus a very good man and yet he was exhorted
the Spices to flow forth he excites and quickens our Graces when they begin to languish and when we are lukewarm and cold he makes us to be lively and fervent in the performance of our holy Duties for as one says what the Soul is to the Body to move it to natural things to breathe to eat to walk and the like the same is the Spirit of God in our Souls to move us to spiritual actions as the fear of God love to him and trust in him and all the works of Righteousness Charity Humility Patience and Sobriety that are the motions of the new creature so that we may say of this Spirit that he is the Soul of our Souls and take away this Spirit and the Soul resembles a dead Body it has no zeal for God no compunction no tenderness When we are disconsolate one kind look from God makes us to be of good chear When our hearts are benumb'd and our Eyes are dry he melts them into tears with his Love When we are unfruitful he sends his Dew upon our branches that makes us to flourish in his Courts and to look fresh and green and when we are under Spiritual decays he causes us to thrive when we backslide he heals our backslidings he brings us through the great Mediator into a nearness to and acquaintance with himself For as far as we are distant from him so far are we removed from true and real Life When we wander he recals us he sends us fresh influences and establishes our goings when our motions are like those of a wounded body very faint and tottering 3. Eternal Life is in his favour Hence it is said That Eternal life is the gift of God Rom. 6.23 Psal 16.11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life in thy presence it fulness of joy at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore It is there that they are said to see God for the sight of his face is that which makes it to be such a glorious and delightful place His Wrath is that which kindles Hell the withholding of his Favour makes it to be such a dark and gloomy Dungeon and the clear manifestation of it does make all the Glories of the Coelestial Paradise And therefore Jacob when he had a Vision of God's Favour to him said This place is no other than the gate of Heaven Gen. 29.17 Frame not to your selves a gross and a material Happiness 't is all in the Love and Favour of God To see him fills all the Souls above with ineffable delight to be deprived of this blessed privilege fills all the Souls in misery with Mourning and Lamentation To his Saints God will be all in all his Communications will be entire and full there Lettres de Monsieur Claude p. 10. †As the Creatures are of divers orders every one receives its portion of Divine Favour different from that of others He communicates himself otherwise to the Heavens than to the Earth otherwise to an Angel than to a Man The Earth hath an Image of his firmness the Sun hath an image of his beauty the Heaven an image of his immensity and so in others but there is no Creature that has assembled in it self all the beams of the Communications of God It shall be otherwise in Paradise God shall be all things in the Saints and they shall be filled with his Favour And as he further says God is not so all in all in the Faithful here the troubles of our Conscience the weakness of our Faith the languors of our Devotion the shadows of our Knowledge our Sins our Miseries our Sickness and our Death are the fruits of the Fall and of the Malice of the Devil But in that Felicity there shall be nothing of US in us nothing of the Impression of the Devil All shall be of God our Shadows shall be swallowed up by his Light and our Weakness by his power It is a state of Glory and Glory is a mixture of all the Blessings of God in a degree Sovereignly perfect That Country that is above is indeed the Land of the Living they Live and shall never Dye But this Earth is a Region and a place of Death For beside that which is Natural the most part of men are dead in Sin and truly even those that are alive have but a weak and a fainting Life There it is that that the Saints shall be admirers of the Grace and Favour of God That after various difficulties and innumerable temptations and overwhelming fears did at last bring them to that happy Place For the poor trembling Saint that thought himself cast off and forsaken of God to find himself in his Arms in his Presence in his Heaven how great will his joy and praise be How will he ascribe all his life there to the meer Favour and Grace of God that shall set him at liberty when by his many Sins he had deserved to be bound in Eternal Chains That shall cause him to sing Hallelujahs when others weep and wail for ever How will he admire that Grace that has placed him in Heaven when so many others are in Hell And the more admire when he shall consider that this distinction of States was freely made That that Crown which will adorn his Head was freely given How will every look on God fill his Soul with a wondring Joy because he freely gave his Son How will every view of Christ encrease his wonder When he shall consider that he freely undertook the kind work of his Redemption that he freely shed his Blood and paid the debt which the Sinner himself could never pay and that he freely gave the Spirit and offered that Salvation upon easy terms without money and without price which cost him very dear All the Saints above will continually adore the Riches of his Grace that admitted them to Glory when they deserved to be shut out as well as others That they were deformed till he put his comeliness upon them That they were liable to Death till he justified them and polluted in their Natures till he renewed them and dying till he made them to live That they learned nothing but what he taught them had nothing but what he gave them did nothing but what he enabled them to do So that all must be wonderful in their Eyes from the beginning of God's design for their Salvation to the conclusion of it And when it is all finished they must with loud Praises sing Grace Grace By Grace ye are saved through faith and that not of your selves it is the Gift of God Eph. 2.8 First No common Mercy yields any Comfort without the Favour and Love of God His loving-kindness is better than life Psal 63.3 If a man have all that he can wish every thing that is splendid and delightful every thing that may please his Eye or gratify his Appetite if he have not this with the Love of God he is a Miserable man For this will mingle
Constitution but are so happy as to have a sound Mind and Body both at once 'T is not with relation to such that I write this Preface but for such as are under a deep and a rooted Melancholly And to the Friends of such I think it is very necessary to give the following Advices First Look upon your distressed Friends as under one of the worst Distempers to which this Miserable Life is obnoxious Melancholly seizes on the Brain and Spirits and incapacitates them for Thought or Action it confounds and disturbs all their thoughts and unavoidably fills them with anguish and vexation of which there is no resemblance in any other Distemper unless it be that of a Raging Fever I take it for granted and I verily believe I say nothing but what is true When this ugly Humour is deeply fixed and hath spread its Malignant Influence over every part 't is as vain a thing to strive against it as to strive against a Fever or a Plurisie the Gout or the Stone which are very grievous to Nature but which a man by resolution and the force of briskness and courage cannot help One would be glad to be rid of such oppressing things but all our striving will not make them go away And of all the Inconveniences of Melancholly The want of sleep which it usually brings along with it is one of the worst It is very reviving to a man that is in pain all the day to think that he shall sleep at night but when he has no prospect nor hope of that for several nights together oh what confusion does then seize upon him he is then like one upon a rack whose anguish will not suffer him to rest by this means the Faculties of the Soul are weakned and all its Operations disturbed and clouded and the poor Body languishes and pines away at the same time And this Disease is more formidable than any other because it commonly last very long It is a long time before it come to its height and usually as long ere it decline again and all this long season of its continuance is full of fear and torment of horror and amazement It is in every respect sad and overwhelming it is a state of darkness that has no discernable beams of Light 'T is as a Land of darkness on which no Sun at all seems to shine It does generally indeed first begin at the Body and then conveys its venom to the Mind and if any thing could be found that might keep the Blood and Spirits in their due temper and motion this would obstruct its further progress and in a great measure keep the Soul clear I pretend not to tell you what Medicines are proper to remove it and I know of none I leave you to advise with such as are learned in the Profession of Physick and especially to have recourse to such Doâ—tors as have themselves felt it for it is impossible fully to understand the nature of it any other way than by Experience and that Person is highly to be valued whose endeavours God will bless to the removal of this obstinate and violent Disease And as old Mr. Greenham says * In his Comfort for Afflicted Consciences p. 137. There is a great deal of wisdom requisite to consider both the state of the Body and of the Soul If a man saith he that is troubled in Conscience come to a Minister it may be he will look all to the Soul and nothing to the Body if he come to a Physician he considereth the Body and neglecteth the Soul for my part I would never have the Physician 's Counsel despised nor the Labour of the Minister negected because the Soul and Body dwelling together it is convenient that as the Soul should be cured by the Word by Prayer by Fasting or by Comforting so the Body must be brought into some temperature by Physick and Diet by harmless Diversions and such like ways providing always that it be so done in the fear of God as not to think by these ordinary means quite to smother or evade our Troubles but to use them as preparatives whereby our Souls may be made more capable of the spiritual Methods that are to follow afterwards Secondly Look upon those that are under this woful Disease of Melancholly with great pity and compassion And pity them the more by considering that you your selves are in the body and liable to the very same trouble for how brisk how sanguine and how chearful soever you be yet you may meet with those heavy Crosses those long and painful and sharp Afflictions which may sink your spirits Many that are far from being naturally inclined to Melancholly have been accidentally overwhelmed with it by the loss of Children by some sudden and unlooked for disappointment that ruines all their former Projects and Designs O let every groan that you hear from persons so afflicted deeply affect your hearts and never look upon them but with a compassionate and a concerned eye never look upon them but make this use to your selves Man at his best Estate is altogether vanity Let it wean you from the world when you see that by such a Disease as this a man is quickly taken off of all his business and unfit to manage his Affairs or to pursue his former most delightful work Melancholly is a complication of violent and sore Distresses t is full of miseries 't is it self a fierce Affliction and bring to our Thoughts and to our bodies one Evil fast upon another Any other Distemper may trouble us but this does astonish and amaze O look upon your Friends in this case with great tenderness for they alas are wounded both in Soul and Body and in all the world there are none for the time in so doleful a state as they They are usually walking as in the midst of Fire and Brimstone and most frequently under the very pangs of death and the pains of Hell in great bodily danger and in no less spiritual Calamity Their Burthen is very often heavier than their groaning their sighs are deep their hearts are sunk their minds are in a slame and they are fallen very low They are thinking on what is sad and frightful and they cannot banish those Idea's that are so terrible If you saw a person wounded and torn and mangled on the High-Way the sight of so deplorable an Object would fill you with compassion the sight of your Friends under this Disease which I am now speaking of ought much more to move you for it is every moment tearing them to pieces every moment it preys upon their Vitals and they are continually dying and yet cannot dye When you visit a Melancholly person make this Reflection This Friend of mine awhile ago rejoyced in the love of God as I do he met with me in Holy Assemblies and sung the Praises of the Most High with as pleasant a countenance with as chearful an heart as I and now he
of the World As also the Reason why good People are many times very willing to dye and of the inexcusableness and misery of those that are without God's Favour and whence it is that some grow in Grace more than others and are more earnest for a share in God's Love p. 207. CHAP. XIII Shewing that the Favour of God is diligently to be sought and what is to be done that we may obtain it p. 228. CHAP. IV. That we ought to take heed that we do not lose the Favour of God after we have once enjoyed it and what we are to do that we may not fall into a condition so miserable as this would be p. 241. CHAP. V. Of Assurance and of the false Grounds from which many are apt to conclude That they are God's Favourites when they are not so p. 263. CHAP. VI. Shewing by what means we may know whether we have God's favour or not And first by the Graces of his Spirit tho the acting of them is neither so strong nor so comfortable at one time as another And secondly by our hatred of sin and our being satisfied with all the Providences of God p. 275. CHAP. VII Of several other ways whereby a sense of God's favour may be preserved in our souls and how we may certainly know that we are in that happy state p. 294. CHAP. VIII Of the several Privileges that belong to those who have God's favour p. 309. The Contents of the Third Part. CHAP. I. OF the many miseries of this Mortal Life that are the usual occasions of sorrow to the sons of Men with respect both to their Bodies and their Souls p. 317. CHAP. II. Shewing that the Fall of Adam was the Cause of all our Miseries and in how excellent a condition the blessed Angels are and the folly of such as expect to meet with nothing in the World but what is easie and pleasant p. 331. CHAP. III. Of the Peculiar occasions of Weeping that good Christians have more than other Men. p. 338. CHAP. IV. Shewing what dreadful apprehensions a soul has that is under desertion and in several respects how very sad and doleful its Condition is from the Author 's own Experience p. 352. CHAP. V. Answering some Objections and of the further doleful state of a deserted soul and whence it is that God is pleased to suffer a very tempestuous and stormy night to come upon his Servants in this World p. 370. CHAP. VI. Shewing whence it is that Melancholly People love solitariness and whence it is that serious persons are not so light in their Conversations as others are with some Inferences deducible from the foregoing Doctrine as also some advices to those who have never been deserted and to such who are complaining that they are so p. 381. CHAP. VII Of the great joy that fills a soul when the sense of God's favour returns to it after having been long in darkness and that this is great in several respects as it was unexpected as it discovers God to be reconciled and gives the mourner an Interest in Christ by Faith through the Influence of the Holy Spirit It revives his Graces delivers him from the Insulting of the Devil and shews the soul irs right to the Promises p. 393. CHAP. VIII Of the further Properties of the Jâ—â—y that comes to a Soul after long desertion 'T is Irr sistible 't is usually Gradual it revives the Body and the Natural Spirits It fills the late Mourner with the hope of Glory and causes him to express his delight to others From all which we may justly admire the Wisdom of the Divine Providence p. 408. CHAP. IX Of the different ends that God hath in the Afflictions of the Good and the Wicked and what Reason we have to be reconciled to his Providence And that we must be satisfied that God carry us to Heaven in his oven Way and Method p. 421. CHAP. X. The Conclusion of the whole Treatise with Directions to such who have been formerly in the darkness of a sorrowful Night and now enjoy the Light of Day p. 427. A DISCOURSE Concerning TROUBLE of MIND AND THE DISEASE of MELANCHOLY PART I. PSAL. XXX 5. For his anger endureth but a moment in his favour is life weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning The INTRODUCTION THE Miseries under which the whole race of Men have now for a long time groaned and under which they still groan are owing to the Fall of Man The day on which our first Parents complied with the temptation of the Devil was a mournful day to them and in its effects no less sad to us It filled their once pure and quiet hearts with trouble and disorder and made them unable to think of their great Creator with delight It intercepted those chearful and comfortable beams of his Love which were more satisfying to them than all the glories of the lower Paradise For tho' it did after the Fall abound with all the same natural refreshments with the same Rivers Herbs Trees and Flowers yet it was to them no more a Paradise No Musick could delight their sense when they heard a terrible voice from God summoning them to answer for their Crime no objects could please their eyes when they saw the Clouds thickning over their heads and dreadful frowns in the face of their mighty-Judge All the Creatures could minister nothing to their ease or safety when the great Creator was against them From their Apostacy we may derive all our miseries both the pains and sicknesses that afflict our Bodies and the fears and terrors that overwhelm our Souls Our Bodies are liable to a Thousand calamities that may be both long and sharp but how long and how sharp soever they be they do not altogether give us such a sensible and such lively grief as we have when we are under distresses of Conscience and when we are under a sense of the Wrath of God that is due to us for Sin There are many persons who endeavour by all the Rules of Art to give relief and help against the mischiefs that attend our Bodies but which after all their Art will go into the Grave and there are as many that by the Duty of their Office and the Character they bear are obliged to imitate their Saviour To preach good tidings to the meek and to bind up the broken hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound Isa 61.1 But they are many times at a loss to know what Remedies to apply to these inward and spiritual Diseases and always unable to make their applications successful unless God himself by his Almighty Power Create Peace and turn that Chaos and those Confusions under which a poor troubled Soul is buried into the joy and light of day It pleases the Wife God that may make us serve to what uses he thinks most convenient for the good of the Universe and the welfare
according to his own promise it will shew us by a delightful manifestation the period and conclusion of God's Design and cause us not to judg of his works by the first rough and less amiable draught Faith will shew us That Anger and Love may very well consist together and that the ruder blows that make us groan and sigh may be to polish and to fit us for his Heavenly Temple This will hold us up when our sense is puzzled and our feet are like to slide it sets before our eyes not only the first corrections that are painful to the flesh but the end of the Lord and that he is Jam. 5.11 very pitiful and of tender mercy It shews us the Justice and Equity of God's proceedings that there is nothing in them but what is highly reasonable and necessary even when they seem to be severe That they are needful to keep us from wandring and to prevent our sleeping the sleep of Death And that those heavy Crosses that tire and weary our Spirits may be sent to promote our Eternal Rest And that the deepness of our Groans here may cause us hereafter to sing louder Hallelujahs 3. Faith will greatly help us as it both discovers and fortifies us against the Power of Satan and his Wiles tho these designs of his are invisible and so very little known and yet the more dangerous for being so In those doleful Troubles that I my self have experienced in all those terrible Reflections and overwhelming Fears I was not sensible of any Agency of Evil Spirits but that all my Thoughts and my Fears were the product of my own mind though I am now apt to believe That some of those strange Thoughts that I now and then had of God and those sudden Terrors that pierced my Soul must have had in them something of the Cruelty and Malice of Satan they were so very terrible I do verily believe That people do very much wrong both the Devil and melancholly people in calling the unavoidable effects of their disease the temptations of Satan and the Language of that disease a compliance with them They do both ascribe to the Devil a greater power than he hath and vex the diseased person more than they need to do For tho' I do not question but that Evil Spirit through the permission of God is the Cause of many painful sicknesses that come upon our Bodies yet there are also many such that are the result of a disordered motion of the natural Spirits and in which he hath nothing at all to do But as 't is the Common Custom of Cruel and Barbarous persons to set upon the weak and to trample on those that are already thrown down so 't is very frequent for the Devil to take occasion from our bodily indispositions to attack and molest our Spirits which are bereaved even of that force which they used to have when the House in which they dwelt was at ease and free from those disabilities that they are always under at such seasons For 't is then night with us and in the night those Beasts of prey do range abroad which kept their dens during the brightness of the day but however it be whatsoever agency there is of Evil Spirits in our troubles either upon our understandings our passions or our imaginations this Grace of Faith will unveil their designs and baffle all their Stratagems Ephes 6.16 Above all take the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of Satan And that this is so very necessary appears by Luke 22.31 32. Satan hath desired to winnow you as wheat but I have prayed that thy faith fail not There is nothing against which that Engineer of Hell levels his Batteries with a greater fury there is nothing can lay us open to greater danger than either downright unbelief or the weakness of our Faith And Faith not exercised is like Weapons of War lying by us they rust and are no way serviceable For whilest this remains in exercise we persevere in our Watch and the God whom it shews us looking on comes to our assistance in every time of need as also does that Redeemer who has Conquered the Devil by his Death and Resurrection and at whose glorious name those Evil Spirits tremble and are afraid IV. Faith will greatly help us under the apprehensions of God's displeasure as it leads us to the consideration of Christ as Crucified See Dr. Owen on Psal 130. p. 279. It is easie indeed to learn the notion of Faith but a thing of more difficulty to experience the efficacy and the power of it For a Man to have a sight of that within him which would condemn him and for which he is troubled and at the same time to have a discovery of that without which will justify him and to rejoyce therein is that which he is not led unto but by Faith in the mystery of the Gospel If we pore upon our own Qualifications Duties Evidences and the like we shall by a continued circulation of uneasie thoughts but increase our own trouble the imperfection and the faultiness of all that we have done or are able to do will fill our minds with perplexity and distress the Holiness and the Spirituality of the Law of God will kill our most forward hopes Our best way therefore is not to fit still where we are bewailing our miseries and the sadness of our Case but to arise and to run to the City of Refuge that is before us when we are wounded with the sense of Sin with our weeping eyes and with our grieved hearts to look up to Christ of whom the Brazen Serpent was a Type When the burthen of our iniquities finks us down and makes us groan we must go to him in whom the weary and the heavy-laden find rest To that Gospel which as it reveals and manifests abundance of Sin in us does at the same time manifest Righteousness in Christ while the one terrifies us with the fear of Hell the other will refresh us with the hope of Heaven The Blood of Jesus does extinguish the Wrath of God and as it does make us safe it does also make us holy for it cleanses from all iniquity This is the shelter and the healing of a Soul that is in danger and diseased How many Souls have cast their Anchor in the dark when all comfort has fail'd them for many days and have obtained support and relief by saying That if they perish'd they would perish at the feet of Christ And he that is the Lamb of God so full of meekness and of pity is too gracious to let any perish there As a Priest he died for his Enemies He is a meek King tho' he be upon a Throne of Majesty and a place of Joy and Glory yet he will admit mourners into his presence He is a King of poor and afflicted persons and a Prince of Peace and as he hath Beams of Majesty
humble saying 1 Cor. 15.10 By the grace of God I am what I am I laboured more abundantly than they all yet not I but the grace of God that was with me He calls himself the chief of Sinners and admires the grace of our Lord that towards him was exceeding abundant 1 Tim. 1.14 And elsewhere he styles the mercies of the Gospel the exceeding riches of the grace of Christ Eph. 2.7 As ever you would have the favour of God continued strive against all pride A man is then proud 1. When he attributes that to himself to his own Industry Wisdom or Prudence which he hath received from God 2. When he attributes to or expects that by merit which is a free gift Or 3. When he thinks he hath that which he hath not Or 4. When he despises others and affects preheminence It is usual with us to take the measures of Pride from the garb or attire from the outward behaviour gesture or the use of some less grave or decent Fashions and indeed there may be an excess in these things that may be very justly blameable But my Friends there is a Pride worse than all this even spiritual Pride that hath in it the very Image of the Apostate Spirit and is truly Diabolical when a man is proud of the Graces or the Gifts of God it alienates from him the Divine Favour for which we are more prepared when we are covered with shame and sorrow And when we are poor in spirit then we may hope that he will enrich us with his Love When we are emptied of all Self-conceit or a flattering opinion of our own Actions then we may hope that he will fill us both with grace and glory VVhat a sorry unbecoming thing is it for a man even the best of men to be proud Alas How soon can the Great God cause all his glory to wither and to fade away What a vain thing is it for a man to pride himself in things that relate to the Body when it is liable to Agues Fevers Consumptions Convulsions and many tedious days and years of pining sickness and must at last be the prey of death and moulder in the Grave And it is no less evil and foolish for a man to pride himself in any thing that relates to his Soul in his knowledge in his faith in his serviceableness for upon his sin an hour of temptation may come upon him that will be an hour of darkness that will cause the light of all these to vanish and what is man when his Conscience is awakened with a sense of guilt when his Sins are set in order before him when the Devil is permitted to sift and vex him to ruffle him with amazing Terrors and the constant view of Hell If God depart from us that Envious raging Spirit who is of great power and malice does with ease insult over us and tread us under his feet Oh! how vain is it for us to be proud that live a miserable life and may dye a very painful death All the Designs of God are to exalt himself and abase the Creature The Consciousness that the Saints have of their own Unworthiness will produce an eternal admiration of his Love and they will all cast down their Crowns before the Throne 1 Cor. 4.7 Who maketh thee to differ from another And what hast thou that thou didst not receive 1 Pet. 5.5 6. 3. That you may not lose the Favour of God you must beware of formality and all slightness of spirit in the performance of holy duties It will be also very prejudicial to us when we can omit them and have no great trouble or regret for so great a Sin Whereas if we were duly tender of the welfare of our Souls we should refresh them with frequent thoughts and meditations as we do our Bodies with two or three meals a day When we bring dead Sacrifices to the Altar of God we need not wonder that we have so little spiritual and heavenly life we need not wonder that we have no more sense of his Favour when we often pray for it as if we prayed not the coldness and indifference of our Petitions shews that we do not much care whether they be granted or denyed and God will not thrust his Mercies upon us whether we will or not none shall enjoy his gracious comfortable Presence but those that strive and wrestle and such as have the zeal of Jacob that will not let him go till he bless them Heaven and Salvation we would all have but God knows we beg it after a very poor fashion and he may justly expel us from the sight of himself because we draw near to him with so little fervour and give him cause to complain of us as of those in Isa 29.13 We are guilty of slightness and formality in duty in these following Instances 1. When we perform them as a task and not with delight and love 2. When we do not excite and stir up our selves to call upon the Lord. 3. When we are satisfied in the bare outward performance and have not those inward exercises of contrition faith and holy sorrow and vigorous desires which are as the life and the soul of Prayer 4. When we suffer our Thoughts to wander or when we run to such Duties from a hurry and a croud of worldly business not considering the greatness of our wants and of that Majesty that fills the Throne before which we pray and how he will be sanctified of all that draw nigh to him 5. When we look not for the answer of our Prayers and when having done our duty we are unsollicitous whether it produce any good effect or no. 6. When we are more studious to approve our selves to the eyes of Men than to the eye of God I might add That if we would not lose the Favour of God we must duly improve all his other Ordinances we must hear as for our lives and take heed that his word do not at any time slip out of our minds We must receive the glad tidings of Salvation with obedient and joyful hearts and upon all fit occasions in the Celebration of the Lord's Supper with holy Affections and a melting zeal keep up the remembrance of the Love of Christ till he come again and with great constancy and seriousness read the Scriptures that direct us how to obtain this Favour of God that is our life but if any person has so little value for the Favour of God that he will not earnestly pray for it he must go without it and smart for his refusal of so excellent a Blessing when it shall be too late to repent 4. That you may not lose the Favour of God that is your life you must avoid all sloth What pains hath God taken what Exhortations what Promises has he used to bring you near to himself what hardships and sufferings did Christ undergo to gain your love and will you do nothing in answer to
or some particular thing that is most precious which Expression calls us to meditate on the infinite tenderness of God's Love to men For a man does not love any thing so much as that which is his own he looks upon other things in which he has no propriety with an indifferent and unconcerned eye even the stately Glories of a Palace do not affect him with so great a joy as the Little Conveniences of his own unobserved Cottage because it is his own And further a Seal often carries the Arms of him whose Seal it is or the Image of some great Person so the work of the Spirit is to engrave in our hearts Faith Hope and Love these are the Ensigns of the New Covenant and form in us the Image of God which consists in Righteousness and Peace and Holiness God does not set this mark but upon those that are indeed his Favourites that by the tenderness and softness of their hearts are prepared to receive Impressions * Claude sur Eph. 4.30 p. 20. But in this matter we are in a great measure passive as the Wax receives the same marks that the Seal stamps upon it these are saving-works of the Spirit which I have mentioned whereas a great many common Gifts are bestowed upon those whom God abhors many a man may have Light enough to shew others the way to Heaven and yet never walk therein himself and he that was a Star in the Firmament of the Church on Earth may sit in darkness 1 Cor. 13.1 2 Thongh I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity I am nothing You must under this Head observe these two things 1. Not to expect to be alike strong in every Grace 2. Not to have at all times the same Comforts 1. You must not expect to be a like strong in every Grace We ought to strive to be compleat to have all the pieces of our Christian Armour polish'd and fit for action and well fitted and put upon us but those parts where is the most danger of a Wound those parts where is the seat of Life we are principally to secure and guard So those Graces we are first of all to look after and to cherish which produce and keep the rest in vigour such as Faith and Repentance and Humility Tho' most certain it is that all Men even of those that are God's Favourites are not of the same stature nor the same strength nor have they as much skill in every Duty as it may be they have in one or two it is so ordered by the Holy Providence of God that all in Christ shall have Tribulations but very different many times from one another that so the different Grace that they are to exercise under their several Tryals may shine with a brighter Glory Thus of old Abraham was peculiarly eminent for his Faith Moses for his Meekness Job for his Patience All Believers by the Privileges with which they are invested are Stars but yet even here one Star differs from another Star in Glory As there are several gifts of the same Spirit that are all useful to the whole so the Graces that are wrought by him do according to his Soveraign pleasure produce several effects according to the subjects in which they are and many times are very much advanced or obstructed by a good or ill temper of the body Hence those that have a cholerick temper the fieriness of their natural spirits that upon every small occasion are apt to be enflamed does very much hinder that meekness and calmness which is one of the Graces of the holy Spirit and so others that are naturally tenacious and close and narrow-soul'd do many times smell too much even of these ill qualities when they are converted but it ought not to be so for if there be any particular sin to which we are more enclined by our constitution than to another we ought more industriously to set our selves against that sin 2. You must not expect a continuance of the same comforts at all times for the Spirit blows where he listeth and when he will Joh 3.8 Tho' the new Creature be formed in you by the Grace of God yet you cannot perceive its motions with so distinct a sense at one time as at another tho' by the intercession of Christ his Favourites are secured from a total and final Apostacy yet they may fall now and then and their Life seem to decline and a spiritual faintness come upon it and a very deep sorrow may cover and as it were bury your hopes and your joys but yet there is that vital Principle that shall not see corruption that seed of Grace that will now and then flourish with acceptable fruit Your Faith may in violent temptations be like the weak and undiscernable stirring of the soul when the body is in a Swoon the soul does seem for a while to be departed but after the spirits are refreshed it animates the whole body and exercises all the functions and offices of Life as it used to do When the Ship was most violently tost with a Tempest yet our Lord was there tho' the poor trembling Disciples thought he did not care whether they were lost or saved Thus Mary was drowned with Tears after his Resurrection and not finding him where she expected nor as soon she gave way to sorrow They have taken away the Lord says she Joh. 20.13 and I know not where they have laid him when the very person that she had then in view was the same dear Saviour and Friend that she long'd to see And when with great tenderness and familiarity he discovered himself and called her Mary then she full well knew that it was her Master and her poor drooping heart was filled with joy and transport She fell at his feet and kissed them God does not equally manifest his favour no not even to the same person who sometimes triumphs and sometimes is very desolate as the same vessel that is sometimes lifted up even as to Heaven it self by the rising and the swelling Waves is the next minute sinking to the bottom of the Sea and ready to be swallowed in the formidable depths tho' if we were duly prepared the face of our God would appear with as amiable an aspect at one time as at another for if any frowns be there our sins are the cause and because we are sinful 't is necessary for us now and then to weep as well as always to rejoice The Clouds and the Showers are as needful to the Earth as is the constant shine and the fairer weather Our Graces yield no delight to us till the Spirit actuate and enliven them till he blow upon the garden Cant. 4.16 the spices
order to Eternal Riches I am very well satisfied if I must be very low and contemptible and despised before I come to thee that lowness and that contempt shall be my real glory If during all the days of my Pilgrimage I must sow in Tears I will go on however for I know that I shall reap in joy If my corruptible Body must languish away in pain and my sinful Soul have its troubles too I will wait in hope and not repine or fret at thy Decree If I must be friendless here I will still prize thee as my best and Eternal Friend even when I am sorely opprest I will keep close to thee I will lay hold on thy Perfections on thy Covenant and on thy Promises and I will not let thee go till I be blessed This Favour of God causes a person to rejoice in him tho the Fig-tree do not blossom and when any dear Comfort any Relation is taken away by Death will make him say My God is better to me than Ten of these Comforts nay than many Thousands of them put together And tho he snatch from my Embraces what I most valued in this World yet he shall have my best affections my desire my love my delight as much as ever A Soul thus prepared to be quiet under the severest dispensations has Life in the Favour of God he has that Life that shall never expire but end in Eterâ—â—â— Life CHAP. VII Of several other ways whereby a sense of Gods favour may be preserved in our souls and how we may certainly know that we are in that Happy state V. IF you have this Favour of God you will desire the continuance of it above all other things and this will be both an evidence of your present sincerity and a means to convey to you a more pleasant sense of this favour In all outward actions as Prayer Hearing Giving to the Poor and the like there may be a very great resemblance between a true Christian and an Hypocrite but spiritual desires being the immediate off-spring of the soul are not liable to so many cheats and your desires after God will be very strong and earnest and produce powerful and sensible effects for they will be the fruit of a lively Faith and of an enlightned Understanding that sees the value of a God And this will render more strong the motions of your Souls for ignorance of him is the Mother of all feeble and languishing Desires Your breathings after him will be like Hunger and Thirst which are very uneasy to Nature and give us the most raging and eager Appetites and make us not well satisfied till they meet with their proper Gratifications Psal 42.1 2. As the heart panteth after the water-brooks so panteth my soul after thee O God My soul thirsteth for God for the living God when shall I come and appear before him Even as that poor Creature when 't is pursued with Hunters and greatly heated with its flight longs to be refresht with the cool Streams of Water so will you when harassed with the Temptations of the Devil and his malicious and most cruel Suggestions fly with haste to the Embraces and Arms of God longing and panting after him nay the warmth of your desires may be so great as that you will even as it were melt away in flaming Zeal Psalm 84.2 My soul longeth yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God And Psal 119.20 My soul breaketh for the longing it hath to thy commandments Hope deferred makes the heart sick Prov. 13.12 An eager desire of absent amiable Good raises an agreeable Sensation and somewhat of Disorder in the Natural Spirits they are heated and stirred up with more vigour through the vehemence with which they move tho this does very much abate their strength and occasion that which we call fainting Such is the Sympathy that the Soul hath with its dearest Body that when the Soul meets with an Object suitable it is filled with warm Affections and fills the Body either with sadder or more chearful Spirits as it finds reasons of Sadness or of Joy Tho these desires of holy Men after God do not always burn with an equal Flame for in Desertions in some very perplexing Difficulty or in great bodily Indisposition and Sickness they are damped and cannot usually be so quick so chearful and so sensible as at other times tho even then they may be very sincere and acceptable for in so gloomy a time one Groan that comes from an humble heart may go up to God in as grateful a manner as many long Prayers at another season And in your desires after his Favour you will have regard to these two things 1. You will remember what it was that once heightned your desires and endeavour by the same means to quicken them when they begin to languish You will often consider what perfection in God it was whether his Goodness his Mercy his Truth his unchangeable Faithfulness or the like or what promise in the Scripture or what Act of Providence towards you it was that warmed your hearts And apply your selves again to the same profitable methods you will often recollect what passages they were in Sermons that you heard or in the good Books that you read that gave you the first amiable Sense of God 2. You will carefully observe what it is that cools and damps your desires What Passion what worldly Pleasure what vain Company what foolish Hopes what tormenting Cares what enslaving Fears and avoid all these as much as in you lies You will avoid those Snares that intangled you those Tentations that have clipt your Wings and made you when you were soaring aloft to fall to this Earth again Whatever secret Sin it was that weakned your holy Breathing after God or what omission of Duty it was that estranged him from you and immediately begin to mortifie that Sin and to set upon that Duty tho when we have done all we can there will be a vast difference between what we are and what we ought to be between our longing and the most Glorious Object after which we are to long But do we find no more any pleasure in our old Lusts Do we find our Hearts dead to this deceitful World and to those Objects that once we called Amiable and to which we sacrificed our time our endeavours our morning and our evening Thoughts Do the things that heretofore we most admired now seem less elegible Does all that we called beautiful seem deformed when compared with God himself Can every one of us sincerely say to our most beloved Sins and to the enjoyments of this World I once indeed over-admired you but I will never do so again for ever I bid you all farwell never pretend to a share in my Affections for I have now found a better good I have long pursued you to no purpose now in finding God I have found a
of it and if they be imployed they are hurried and disturb'd and grieved and vexed they meet with many people that are false and treacherous with many businesses that are intricate and perplexed and thus their plodding Heads are stung with Cares and their Breasts with sorrow all groaning under the Curse and proving the punishment to be true That in the sweat of his Brows Man must eat his Bread Gen. 3. Eccles 2.23 All his days are sorrows and his travel grief yea his heart taketh not rest in the night This is also vanity All his drudgery and his toyl is to small purpose it is indeed vanity when a Man deprives himself of sleep the sweet repose of Nature and next to the Grace of God the greatest blessing in the World The Poor are almost every where shedding Tears of Impatience and Discontent for the straitness of their Circumstances they are mourning because they are like to want what would bear their Charges to the Grave and the Rich are troubled how to secure the Riches they enjoy and fear to lose them as many have done before for they cannot live long but they shall see many whom a few days and some unforeseen Accidents have brought from the greaest heights to the lowest poverty whom the Rising-Sun found rejoicing and whom he left for their sudden miseries plunged in Tears How many Foreheads do you see covered with a Cloud of grief for their Losses and their Disappointments Look into the Country-fields there you see toyling at the Plow and Sythe * Bp. Hall Vol. 1. p. 451. Look into the Waters there you see tugging at Oars and Cables Look into the City there you see a throng of Cares and hear sorrowful complaints of bad times and the decay of Trade Look into Studies and there you see paleness and infirmities and fixed Eyes Look unto the Court and there are defeated Hopes Envyings Underminings and tedious attendance all things are full of Labour and Labour is full of Sorrow and these two are inseparably joyned with the miserable Life of Man 3. In the next place consider the miseries of the Body of Man that make him to weep and mourn Persons of weak constitutions are liable to tedious and languishing pains that afflict them for many months together and those that are of a stronger temper to such that are so sharp and so violent that they dispatch them it may be in a week or two Man is seldom without pain and always near to sickness to sickness that will make him groan and sigh whether he will or not and some sickness which is all sorrow throughout such as Melancholly which is all sad and has not one bright or clear side all disconsolate and grievous stagnating the Blood changing the brisk and chearful motion of the Spirits and fixing the Mind unavoidably upon amazing and dreadful objects So is that of Job verified His flesh upon him shall have pain and his soul within him shall mourn Job 14. last The several Seasons of the year have their inconveniencies which annoy poor mortal men not only the Winter-quarter as one expresses it is full of storms and cold and darkness but the beauteous Spring hath Storms and sharp Frosts the fruitful teeming Summer is melted with heat and choaked with dust and the Autumn is full of sickness And how can the Eyes but shed innumerable Tears when they consider the doleful pains to which they themselves and all the other parts of the body are exposed How can the Man but groan to find himself present in such a Body from which he cannot for many painful years be dislodged and in which he has no delight or ease What grief is it to him to have no help or relief when his spirits are broken and his heart is overwhelmed To have many cutting afflictions upon him and the fear of more to come Eccles 8.6 7. To every purpose there is time and judgment and therefore the misery of man is great upon him For he knoweth not that which shall be for who can tell him when it shall be To be daily dying in anguish and vexation and not to be able to die To be surrounded with Troops of Diseases of Agues Fevers Consumptions Cholick Gout Stone and not to be able to keep any of these off nor to run away from them when they come 4. Add to all these natural sorrows such as are distributed by God in Judgment Such are the Tyrants that God suffers long to Flourish and to Triumph in the World that tread upon the necks of others to advance themselves and glut themselves with the Blood of the Innocent daring to do what is most unjust to gratify their Lawless Ambition and their Lustful desire of Empire and from them and their arbitrary designs flow innumerable injuries and wrongs and robberies and mischief Eccl. 4.1 Then the other Judgments Plagues and Famine spreading Contagions or Bloody Wars Plagues that at the same time seize and kill that Conquer whereever they come and send Thousands of miserable mortals to the Grave on a sudden that tear the Children from their Mothers Breasts that separate one part of the Family from another and make them afraid of each others Company or else send them together to the House prepared for all Living that turn flourishing Cities into solitudes and put a stop to all Commerce and Trade Or Famine that kills by as sure but by flower methods That makes them to know they are dying before they die That causes them to walk to and fro with pale and meagre and drooping looks and turns a fruitful Land into barrenness where the poor starving Children come begging to their Mothers for Bread and they have none to give but are forced to see them die before their Eyes as Lam. 4. Or War where many Children are deprived of their Fathers many Wives of their Husbands many that lived plentifully bereaved of all their dear and pleasant things War which fills every place with Blood and Violence with Noise and Clamour and Oppression and Woe That lays Countries waste and desolate and sacrifices multitudes of harmless people to its cruel rage and fury These are the terrible Voice of God which will cause us to weep and to be afraid 5. Consider Men as associated together in their several Relations and so their sorrows and their cause of weeping is increased The Courts of Princes have their occasions of grief and trouble they grieve tho their grief be more pompous and clad in a more solemn dress Those that that have a numerous and great Kindred and Alliance are oftner in Mourning than others for Death does oftner visit their greater Friends and Acquaintance Few Families there are without sorrow that House that now rejoyces is quickly turn'd into a House of mourning and where this day there is nothing but the sound of the Timbrel the Harp and the Viol it may be the next day there is the voice of Crying and Lamentation How many
cannot remedy and which to behold is very sad and by knowing a great deal is liable to abundance of contradiction and opposition from the more peevish and self-willed and ignorant part of mankind that are vex'd because he will not think and say as they do and they are very prone to censure and condemn the things they do not understand for it is most easie so to do whereas to pierce into the Reasons of things requires a mighty labour and a succession of deliberate and serious thoughts to which the nature of Man is averse And lazily and hastily to judge requires no trouble and were it not that it is a man's duty to know and that his soul if it have any thing of greatness and amplitude in its faculties cannot be satisfied without it it were a much safer and quiet course to be ignorant Study and painful enquiries after knowledg do oftentimes exhaust and break our spirits and prejudice our health and brings upon us those Diseases to which the careless and thinking seldom are obnoxious Eccles 1.13 14 15. I have seen all the works that are done under the Sun and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit that which is crooked cannot be made straight and that which is wanting cannot be numbred CHAP. II. Shewing that the fall of Adam was the cause of all our miseries and in how excellent a condition the blessed Angels are and the folly of such as expect to meet with nothing in the world but what is easie and pleasant Inf. 1. SEeing the life of man is a state of weeping what sin there must needs be in the fall of Adam that has provoked God so much as to send so many miseries upon his own Creatures Had mot he fallen we had always rejoyced and never mourned we had always sung the praises of God with delight and never have hang'd our harps upon the willows We should have always lived upon the food of Angels pure and Coelestial joys and not have had that bread of sorrows which we now have to feed upon We may justly cry out O Adam what was it that you did when you rafted the forbidden fruit Why did you ruin your self and us your helpless posterity in one day and by one Act you turned the pleasant world into a place of wo and made your self and us of free men to become prisoners of this Earth It was a sad day indeed that opened a Sluce to that vast Inundation of miseries that have from that time overwhelmed the lower world thence came storms and tempests wars and desolations and all the burdens under which we groan and which we cannot escape 'T is to this Spring that we may trace all our troubles Oh how happily how pleasantly might we have lived had we not Apostatiz'd And now we can only say Wo unto us for we have sinned and when any Plagues molest us can only say this is the fruit of our own choice this is the product of our own Iniquity Tho thanks be to God through the blood of Jesus Christ we have a way to escape at length from all those Plagues and Sins Inf. 2. Seeing this life is full of weeping how much more happy are the blessed Angels than we At the view of the Harmony and order of the Worlds Creation those Sons of the morning sang together it pleased them to see their Creator's glory so appear and they still continue to sing and praise him not a sad look has from that time to this clouded their faces not a troubled thought has possest their minds those holy Spirits are always joyful serene and undistutb'd they are not linkt to such bodies as we are and consequently not liable to so many thousand miseries A soul in flesh is forced to sympathize with its neighbour and companion the body and is altered or changed as to its joys and griefs according to the several objects that are suitable or disagreeable to that and yet our imbodied condition gives us some privileges of which the Angels being Spirits are not capable for by this means we can glorifie God by sufffering for him and by our patience in our several trials convert many to the faith of Christ which their Spiritual nature gives them no opportunity to do As long as we are united to the body so long must we expect to be afflicted and when this union is happily dissolved then does the time of our freedom and our pleasure come In the Resurrection we shall be as the Angels of God we shall not be busied in those perplexing and intricate affairs that now molest us We shall be like to them in vigor and activity and joy We shall have bodies indeed even then but such as will be spiritualized such as will not be capable of mourning and lamentation nor by their heaviness their pains and indispositions be any more an hindrance to the nimbler operations of our Souls and it should comfort us to think that one day we shall have such excellent Companions so knowing and so kind and loving as Angels are and that then we shall rejoice as well as they and with our common praise give our Great Creator an Eternal Hymn of Thanks Inf. 3. They have a wrong notion of the life of man that expect to find nothing in it but what is pleasant And who because now their mountain stands strong say with David That they shall never be moved Psal 30.6 7. How clearly soever their Sun now shines yet sooner or later storms and darkness will overtake them The day is coming that will cast a vail upon all their smiling glory and turn their laughter into mourning and lamentation For man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards Job 5.7 This world is as an Hospital or Lazaretto full of various miseries and calamities and therefore those that promise nothing to themselves but diversion and mirth and soft and easie pleasures labour under manifold mistakes which arise from these two Causes 1. VVant of Experience and Consideration Hence it is that young people and such as have lived but a little while are mightily taken with the sweetness and delight of life whereas those that have tried it some years longer find several crosses and disappointments and vexations in it and tho the morning of their day was clear yet they see many thick Clouds gather as the shadows of the Evening are drawing on It is nothing else but gross ignorance that occasions the loud and mad Triumphs of so great a part of the world for if they did but a little survey the condition of their suffering-neighbours and the weakness of their own bodies the uncertainty of their hopes and the vanity of their desires they would sit down and bewail their miseries and they would find their biggest joys to be confin'd with grief Or 2. It arises from this That they resolve not to disturb their present ease and pleasure with any mâ—urnful meditations They 'l shut their ears
how great an height have I fallen How fair was I once for Heaven and for Salvation and now am like to come short of it I was once flourishing in the Courts of the Lord and now all my Fruit is blasted and withered away his dew laid all night upon my branches but now I am like the Mountains of Gilboa no Rain falls upon me Had I never heard of Heaven I could not have been so miserable as I now am Had I never known God the loss of him had not been so terrible as now it is like to be Job 29.2 3. Oh! that I were as in months past as in the days when God preserved me When his Candle shined upon my head and when by his light I walked through darkness These are some of the sorrows that deserted Souls often meet withal and indeed but a small part of what they feel in this dark and stormy night Before I proceed any further I will answer two Objections for I foresee that against what I have said some may object CHAP. V. Answering some Objections and of the further doleful state of a deserted Soul and whence it is that God is pleased to suffer a very Tempestuous and Stormy Night to come upon his Servants in this World Obj. 1. YOV make a great deal of noise and pother about desertions and God's forsaking of the soul and it is nothing in the world but Fancy or Imagination and the whimsies and the fumes of Melancholly Answ It is no new thing for us to hear such Language from Atheistical and Prophane People from men that are covered with ignorance and sloth With ignorance because they know not the ways of God and his dispensations and sloth because they will not search into the Methods of his Government To grant them for once that it is Imagination it is not the less tormenting because it is so for a Man that strongly imagines himself to be miscrable is truly miserable if a man think himself unhappy he is so whilest that thought remains But then they would do well could they but once obtain of themselves leave to consider a little they would find reason to suspect their own foolish Objections Who was a Man as appears by what we read of him more distressed with the sense of God's Anger than David yet he was of a Musical and a pleasant Temper of a Ruddy and a Sanguine Constitution Do they think that such a great Prince as Job was was led meerly by humour and by fancy when he complains so much of the Arrows of the Almighty Or that Heman Asaph and many others were men of no clear understandings It is their ignorant Pride that makes them to talk so boldly of the Judgments of God which they do not understand but if ever their Consciences be awakened with a sense of guilt they 'll find in what I have now discoursed something more terrible than Fancy or Imagination Obj. 2. You take a way to discourage men from all Religion If it be such a mournful business it is better to let it alone and to rejoyce and to be merry and to take our ease and our pleasure Go by your selves to Heaven if you will we 'll joyn our selves to more chearful Companions we see those that are gay and brisk that know no sorrow while they live and that dye in peace and to their Assembly we will unite our selves In Answer to this I desire such to consider That it is not our Religion that is the Cause of our sorrows but our wandrings and our deviation from it If we were always obedient we should have an Eternal day our heavenly Father chastises us because we are undutiful and he does not delight to grieve the Children of Men and even in these necessary Corrections he carries on a profitable design for our future and final good 'T is true this is nothing but anguish of Conscience that draws up a process against it self that presents it self as before the Tribunal of God without hope of pardon or escape and the weight of Mountains would not be a load so heavy as this it is a night wherein we are kept waking with our danger whether we will or not Wicked men tho they have as great a burden yet are not sensible they feel not the bitterness of sin they are like fishes bred in the Sea that tast not the saltness of the water they are like swine that find something agreeable to their meaner appetites even in that which is most nauseous to other Creatures When they sin they feel not the weight of it for it is their nature to do amiss their iniquities are like waters that are not heavy in their own Element as Intellectual joy is most refin'd pure and durable so is the trouble of the mind of all others most troublesome Job 6.2 3. Oh that my grief were throughly weighed and my calamity laid in the balance together for now it would be heavier than the sand of the Sea therefore my words are swallowed up 2. 'T is attended usually with great pain of body too and so a man is wounded and distrest in every part There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger says David The arrows of the Almighty are within me the poyson whereof drinketh up my spirit Job 6.4 Sorrow of heart contracts the natural spirits makes all their motions slow and feeble and the poor afflicted body does usually decline and wast away and therefore saith Heman My soul is full of troubles and my life draweth nigh unto the grave In this inward distress we find our strength decay and melt even as wax before the fire for sorrow that is an ingrateful languor of the soul * Natural History of the Passions p. 152. darkneth the spirits obscures the judgment blinds the memory as to all pleasant things and beclouds the lucid part of the mind causes the lamp of life to burn weakly In this troubled condition the person cannot be without a countenance that is pale and wan and dejected like one that is seized with strong fear and consternation all his motions are sluggish and no sprightliness nor activity remains Prov. 17.22 A merry heart doth good like a Medicine but a broken spirit drieth the bones Hence come those frequent complaints in Scripture My moisture is turned into the drought of Summer I am like a bottle in the smoke wy soul cleaveth unto the dust my face is foul with weeping and on my eye-lids is the shadow of death Job 16.16 Job 30.17 18 19. My bones are pierced in me in the night season and my sinews take no rest by the great force of my disease is my garments changed He hath cast me into the mire and I am become like dust and ashes Many times indeed the trouble of the soul does begin from the weakness and indisposition of the body Long affliction without any prospect of remedy does in process of time begin to distress the soul
enough Enter into thy rest O my soul for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee When it can reflect and think of him as its own portion then the sorrows and darkness of the Night are gone for it has God that is all light and with him is no darkness at all and to see the light and to possess it is the same thing There is as one observes a reflected and a direct Light I see Palaces and Mountains and Towns and Fields and Trees with a reflected Light and hence it is that I see them without possessing them but I see the light of the Sun and of the Stars by direct rays and in seeing them I possess for to rejoice in the light of the Sun and to possess it is the same thing We now see God indeed by a reflected light which comes to us from the Creatures and hence it is that all those that see him do not possess him but in Heaven God will be seen without Vails and Reflexions His light will be a direct light which will fill us throughout it was a comfort to the Patriarchs and holy men of old to have the hope of Christ's appearance they saw his day afar off and they rejoyced but how much more is it to that soul that has actually seen him come and not only spreading his beams to remove the general darkness of the world but shining with a peculiar light and heat into its self It is peculiarity that endears the most of things to us our own Friends our own Relations our own Joys are the most pleasant It is not from Christ's being singly considered as a Mediator that we derive this comfort but from the reflexion that we are able to make of our happiness in him it is that which creates the sweetest motions in our hearts Before this propriety there may be a calmness of spirit and lesser degrees of Complacency expressing themselves in love and hope and desire but 't is the actual possession of a good as our own that is the Parent of a real joy the Christian may find some comfort in beholding the Incarnation the Sufferings and the Promise of his second Coming but when the soul can say He died and rose again for me this touches it with a very lively satisfaction and makes it say as in Hab. 3.17 CHAP. VIII Of the further Properties of the Joy that comes to a Soul after long desertion 'T is Irresistible tho usually Gradual it revives the body and the natural spirits It fills the late mourner with the hope of Glory and causes him to express his delight to others From all which we may justly admire the Wisdom of the Divine Providence 7. THis Joy is Irresistible As all the darkness of the Night cannot hinder the approach of the welcome day so neither can all our doubts nor our fears nor all the horrors of the Night hinder the beams of God's favour when he is pleased to shine upon us Job 34.29 When he giveth quietness who then can make trouble Notwithstanding all the directions and the helps that our Ministers or our friends give us in our trouble we refuse to be comforted but when he speaks the word we must obey He creates the fruit of the lips peace peace and we can no more resist his Almighty power than the first Chaos could withstand his Command when in the Language of a God he spoke and said Let there be Light Our escape from our Spiritual troubles bears some proportion with the Resurrection of our Lord from the Dead as that was owing not to a power ordinary or created so neither is ours but to a power that is Coelestial and Divine It was not as * Claude Traite de Jesus Christ Liv. v. 12. one observes the effect of the Power of God in the ways of nature such as is the Rising of the Sun the Return of Seasons the Fruitfulness of the Earth but the effect of a power altogether Infinite and Supernatural it is not according to the usual Laws of Nature or the course of Ordinary Providence 8. This Joy is usually Gradual and not all at once I say usually for sometimes persons in great distress and agonies of soul have been suddenly relieved in their darkest Night and in the deepest Dungeon a great Light has shined upon them so that those that have one hour cried out they were damned and lost have the next triumphed in the hope of glory and from the fear of Hell have come to a glorious view of Heaven to their own exceeding comfort and the comfort of all that heard them But tho God may do what he pleases this is not his ordinary way as the Night comes and the Sun goes down by degrees so does the morning come and the Sun arise by the same degrees as it rarely happens that any fall into great distress of Conscience on a sudden some lesser afflictions make way for greater strokes so seldom are any comforted immediately but their comfort comes like the break of day there are some faint streaks of light some little supports and quiet hopes before the Sun arise And God in this accommodates himself to the weakness of our nature for a sudden passage from a great Affliction to a great Joy is a thing which our tender nature is hardly capable to bear and usually the Consciences of those that have been very long terrified and afflicted begin to be calm as the humours of the body that have been disordered return to their Ancient course for so long as the Spirits and the Blood are disordered so long the Soul will unavoidably be in some unpleasant agitation 9. This joy has a pleasant influence on the Body and revives that with the reviving mind they fall sick and droop and they recover and rejoyce together When God is our God it causes health in our Countenances as well as pleasure in our Hearts and though I know that abundance of poor people that have been long amazed with the fear of God's Wrath have very feeble sickly Bodies to the day of death yet this calmness and peace of mind does greatly mitigate their pains and pour Honey and Sweetness into the most bitter Cup For what is it that makes affliction in trouble of mind to be so intollerable but that the afflicted person looks upon it as the beginning of sorrows as a few drops before a more dreadful storm and as the introduction to hell and woe But when the sting of guilt is removed and sin is pardoned the yoak sits very easie on their shoulders that used to gall them before Prov. 15.13 A merry bea rt maketh a chearful countenance Joy as well as grief cannot be dissembled if it be real and very strong Joy in the Heart is like the Rain at the Root of the Grass it will after being moistned to the bottom appear much more green and flourishing Prov. 17.22 A merry heart doth good like a medicine Even that chearfulness which arises
others do to you suppose when you have the Toothach or Headach and people when you complain should tell you 't is nothing but Fancy would not you think their carriage to be full of cruelty and would it not vex you to find that you cannot be believed Fifthly Do not urge your Friends under the Disease of Melancholly to things which they cannot do They are as persons whose bones are broken and that are in great pain and anguish and consequently under an incapacity for action their Disease is full of perplexed tormenting thoughts if it were possible by any means innocently to divert them you would do them a great kindness but by no means press them to any thing that requires more intense thinking or that by fixing their minds will force them to muse and pore more by the doing of which they are already very miserable it puts them into a more anxious ferment when you are continually fretting them with the doing of this or that to which it may be they have no more power than a man that hath broke his Leg hath to run Be not noisy or clamorous with them but know that silence and quietness are most favourable to their desolate Condition You know that they are overwhelmed with sorrows and grief is a very unactive sluggish thing the vehemence of this weakens the natural spirits and blunts the Soul and renders its conceptions very languishing and confused But perhaps you will say Must we not urge them to hear the Word of God I answer If they are so far gone in the Disease as to be in continual unintermitting anguish they are not capable of hearing because of the many great pains which they most frequently have at the same time but if their Distemper is not yet come to such a terrible height you may indeed press them to hear but at the same time you must use a great of prudence and not persuade them with too much peremptoriness or vehemence strive to convince them of their duty by love and by good words In which case Jacob's pace with his Flocks with such is the best and safest way to drive them gently especially seeing they are big with fear and perplexity You may win much upon them by a mild a sweet and affable carriage and if you imitate the Friends of Mrs. Drake you will not do amiss and therefore I will mention their practise as I find it in her Life * See Mrs. Drake Revived p. 82. The burthen with which she had overloaded her self was so great that we never durst add any thereunto but fed her will all incouragements she being too apt to overcharge her self and to despair upon any addition of fewel unto that Fire which already was kindled in her And so wheresoever she went to hear notice was still given so to manage the business that the Minister might know that he had an Hearer thus qualified and by this means she received no discouragement in hearing of the Word Sixthly Do not attribute the effects of meer Disease to the Devil thought I deny not that the Devil has an hand in the causing of several Diseases The Envy and rage that he is filled with prompts him to disturb the health and peace of men and by God's permission no doubt he brings a great many sicknesses upon them As we know in the Case of Job he filled him all over with tormenting Sores which brought the poor man into a very great Melancholly and wofully by that means perplexed him with spiritual terror and amazement But notwithstanding all this it is a very overwhelming thing to attribute every action almost of a Melancholly man to the Devil when there are some unavoidable Expressions of sorrow which are purely natural and which he cannot help no more than any other sick man can forbear to groan and sigh Many persons will say to such Why do you so pore and muse and gratify the Devil whereas it is the very nature of the Disease to cause suck fixed Musings and they may as well say Why are you diseased why will you not be well Their so musing proceeds from a violent pressure on their spirits which they are not able to remove some think that Melancholly persons are pleased with their Distemper but I verily believe as little as a man that lies on thorns or bryars or as one that is thrown into a fiery Furnace It is vastly painful to them to be in this condition and they cannot be supposed so far to hate themselves as to be fond of pain The Devil is indeed very busie to work during the darkness of a Soul he throws in his Bombs and his fiery Darts to amaze us more when we are compassed with the Terrors of a dismal Night he is bold and undaunted in his Assaults and injects with a quick and sudden malice a thousand monstrous and abominable thoughts of God and which at the same time seem to be the motions of our own minds and so do most terribly grieve and trouble us And alas we too too often comply with his Designs we are usually then under great unbelief and too often we think of God and of our selves as he would have us think But yet if you be speaking in every Action of Melancholly Persons that it is from this Evil Spirit you will as it is easie to fix any sort of direful Impressions on such as are overcome with fear persuade them it may be at length that they are possest and that all that they do is from him when at the same time they are pained in every part and then finding themselves unable to get out of their distress your Discourses plunge them very low in misery I would not have you to bring a Railing Accusation against the Devil so as to attribute to him a thousand things wherein he has no hand at all neither must you falsly accuse your friends by saying that they gratify him when they do not so Consider how ill you would take it to be so used if you were in their Case or consider That to be without Temptation is the greatest Temptation Seventhly Do not much wonder at any thing that they say or do What will not people do that are in Despair What will they not say that think themselves lost for ever What strange extravagant Actions do you see those do that are under the power of fear And none are so much afraid as these poor people are they are afraid of God of Hell and of their own sorrows You need not much wonder at them when you know that even so great a Man as Job cursed his day and talked of God with much more freedom and boldness than he ought to have done and the Lord himself said that he darkned Counsel by words without knowledg Do not think it strange if they very much complain for their grief causes them to speak you know the Tongue will always be speaking of the Aking Tooth Their soul is
Sickness and Recovery I trust that God that hath given you as it were a resurrection from the dead hath designed you for more than ordinary work in your Generation Your Deliverance and Salvation has been extraordinary and t is more than probable that so must your After-work be God who gives to his Servants the Talents of Gifts or Graces will find imployment for them answerable unto the same I long to see something you hint in your Epistle before your Book about your spiritual Conflict under your bodily Affliction It will be I hope of use to all tender afflicted Consciences I have blessed the Lord on your behalf for his signal favour shown you in your wonderful recovery And shall pray to God for you That he will please to continue your life health and opportunities to you that you may be eminently useful in your Ministerial Capacity for his Name Your dear Parents would have rejoyced if they had been alive to have heard and seen the fruits of your Labours Dear Sir though I am a little straitned for time at present yet my heart is inlarged towards you wishing you all health and happiness in this World and in the next Eternal Felicity I am Dear Sir Your unfeigned Well-wisher and Servant GEO. NICHOLSON From Hudleskeugh in Cumberland Apr. 17. 1691. LETTER VI. Dear Sir IT was your signal happiness to be deeply writ upon the hearts of many of God's praying Servants when in your own apprehension you seemed as if you had been cast out of God's heart And I heard some when you were at your lowest ebb express their saith and hope That God was but preparing you by those afflictive Methods for more eminent Service And now it cannot but greatly rejoice me to see such blooming appearances of the Issue answering both their Prayers and Hopes Ministers of all Persons had need to set up upon a good stock of Experience spiritual and useful Experience And no School more proper to improve us in that kind than the School of Affliction which made Luther sometimes say That Affliction Temptation and Prayer were the three Things that made a Minister And hence it is that God in his wise and holy Providence many times puts his Servants to School under the preparatory Pedagogy of Affliction whom he designs for more than ordinary usefulness When we enter upon the service of Souls we know not what Cases may occur to require our wise and tender management And a Scribe cannot be better instructed for the Kingdom of God than when he has felt in himself what he meets with in others When we have been brought to the mouth of the Pit our selves and there have been conscious to the thoughts and fears and workings of our own hearts we can better tell how to minister proper applications to others in the like condition When we have our selves been toss'd upon the tumultuous waves of temptation and one deep has call'd to another to put the greatest discouragement upon our condition we are the better furnish'd to speak a word in season to others under the like circumstances Every Storm weathered furnishes the Pilot with more dextrous skill not only to work his own Vessel in succeeding Tempests but to be singularly helpful to others when they fall into the like depths and Straits Our Blessed Lord himself learned experience by the things which he suffered And if he must be put to School to lead him into a practical experience of what he was to pity and help in others How much more is it requisite in such poor unskilful Creatures as we A Wise and Holy God has been hewing you upon the dark Mountains and I hope it has been to make you a more expert and polite Pillar in his Sanctuary And the more workmanship he has bestowed upon you the more eminent Station probably he designs for you God works his greatest works many times in the dark and forms his most curious Pieces in the gloomy shades of Adversity so that neither our selves nor others can tell what he is a-doing till he hath accomplish'd his Work He throws us into the Furnace Lead or Iron and for a long time no body can tell what he will make of us Sometimes he looks as if he would consume and make an utter end of us And yet at last he brings us forth as Gold We go into the Fire light and foolish and frothy and when he has melted and tried us what time he sees meet he brings us forth serious holy and gracious Souls When we thought we should have lost Life and Soul and All we have lost nothing but our dross and feculency to make us more refined for Temple-service When you seriously reflect upon your by-past days of trouble whatever thoughts you had then yet I hope now you can say through grace that God has made you no loser but a blessed gainer by that gloomy dispensation And what wisdom and grace and experience you have obtained I pray God you may be helped humbly to imploy in his Holy Sanctuary We should labour to diffuse a more shining and burning Light when God has been trimming us from our dross and filth and has set us up again in his Temple-Candlestick God has been dressing and trimming you a long time and after a long and dismal time of complicated afflicton he has restored you to your station in the Assemblies of his People Now the good Lord make both your gifts and graces so much the more resplendent not only for your own sake but also that you may minister the more light and warmth to others in their way to glory You promise a Second Volume of Discourses giving account of the spiritual part of your Affliction which I shall be very glad to see as soon as your leisure will permit you to make it publick In the mean time I commend you to God and to the riches of his Grace in hopes that what God has done for you is but a pledge of what he designs to do by you To which I shall only add my earnest Prayers and tell you That it is in all sincerity SIR Your affectionate Fellow-labourer in the Work of the Gospel THO. WHITAKER Leeds Nov. 25. 1690. LETTER VII SIR I Do now at last return you my hearty thanks for your Book ........................ I should not have been thus far behind in expressing my gratitude but that I have been hindred by weakness ........................ It was a Book to me both seasonable and suitable I pray God it may be as well improv'd as 't is generally liked by Christians If I were to give an account of my Visitation it would in very many things correspond with yours I have been for some years past under an Hypochondraical evil habit of body which has had many grievous Symptons attending it viz. Vertigo's Convulsions Paralytick Effects with a Fever thought to be Hectical and with it I have had an universal languor and decay of Spirits together with
the last day but he will come to you in the Spirit and judge for your Soul against your Enemies to deliver you from all even Sin which is such a burthen to you As also from Satan the great Troubler of your peace who does either accuse you falsly or aggravates all your Infirmities and Miscarriages though such as he has tempted you to above all reason I shall be glad to have some account from you how it is with your Soul .......... I shall endeavour what lies in me as enabled by the Spirit of Christ to be a helper to your faith and joy ............ I shall add no more at this time but only to let you know That I have you and others in your condition daily in my prayers so I commend you to the mercy of God in our dear Redeemer I am Your very affectionate Friend and Brother in Christ GEORGE PORTER Febr. 21. 1688 9. LETTER II. Written to a Relation of the Author 's by one that had been under Melancholly Mrs. Rogers IF you dare believe one that hath been in your Case which I confess is very sad and much to be pitied you have very much of a Bodily distemper and tho by reason of your Clouds you cannot hope for relief either by spiritual or natural means yet know that nothing is too hard for God to do use both and look up to God as well as you can for a Blessing The Lord's arm is not shortned that he cannot save nor his ear heavy that he cannot hear And tho your Sins and sad Apprehensions keep you in sadness that you cannot see the Lord Jesus nor call him yours yet he sees you bemoaning your Misery and Disability to love and serve him I know you would give all the World were it at your disposal for a glimpse of this favour Do not side with your Enemy so far as to believe that you would not accept of the Lord Jesus to be your King as willingly as to be your Saviour If you can get so much ground of your self then judge you are not alone in this for those that have been in deep Melancholly have not only had hard thoughts of themselves but hard and sinful thoughts of God as if he delighted in the death of a Sinner although he hath sworn the contrary In that dismal condition they could not see the loveliness of Christ nor hardly discern desires after him unless only to be saved from Hell they could plead against themselves That their Day of Grace was past and that they had sinned the unpardonable sin and that for several years Much more I could say but I know it is to no purpose none can speak to the heart but God alone only I beg of you to cherish that hope you have which the Devil would have you disown but had you none you would not ask any to pray for you I knew one that was in so despairing a Condition that did not that nor believed it more possible to be saved than the Devil At length was persuaded to use a Steel Course and Drink the Waters and other means which by God's Blessing did good and as the bodily distemper wore off more clearness came into the Mind and hope returned which before seemed to be quite dead and tho the Party still hath Clouds ........... and Satan is apt to put in that all is naught still through God's Mercy the poor creature can reply I am changeable in my frame God is unchangeable in his Covenants Tho I cannot find the sensible joy nor love nor delight that I would yet blessed be God that he inables me to wait on him in the use of the means by which he hath promised to renew my strength and tho I want that sweet sensible Communion with God which is the Life of Heaven Is it not a Mercy that I can hope in his Mercy Have I deserved such high favours that I must be always full of Joy This is what I would but if the Lord will keep me a poor Beggar 't is infinite Mercy that I am not in Hell and that the desire of my heart is after him I chuse to love him I cast my self on him I neither expect nor desire any other Saviour if I perish it shall be in serving him as well as I can and let him do his will There is forgiveness with him that he should be feared This poor Creature often thinks of that Scripture when Christ spoke to Thomas Thou seest and believest blessed are they that do not see yet believe You say this is no Comfort to you it is not your Case true but you know not how soon it may be This Party that I speak of was in your Case and I verily believe in worse therefore pray cast not off your confidence the Lord I verily hope will shew you Mercy But you must wait be not impatient Is not Redemption from Hell and hope of Heaven-worth waiting for .... The Lord shine in upon your Soul and let you see that whatever he doth is in love and faithfulness Pray for me that I may not forget how it hath been with nor be insensible of your Condition or others in your case ................ I am in some small manner sensible of your trouble I wish I were abundantly more so for then I should hope to be hereafter a partaker with you in your Joys July 24. 89. LETTER III. To a Relation of the Author 's MY very kind and dear Friend whom I much respect and love in the Lord even as I have Cause having found you to be one who I am persuaded Love the Lord Jesus in sincerity which you have fully manifested by your longings after him and your great inward sorrow when you could not enjoy him as you would And now he is returned unto you your soul is at rest rejoycing in him as the Lord your Righteousness Peace and Life in whom you have all your soul needs and desires And the Lord manifest himself to you more and more and fill you with abundance of Peace and Joy in Believing which I doubt not you desire for this end That his Joy being your Strength and your Heart enlarged by it you may be able to run the ways of his Commandments and to serve him not only in sincerity but with all gladness in all love and thankfulness for all his loving-kindness and all the great things he has done for your soul in bringing it out of that horrible pit of darkness and the shadow of death wherein you saw neither Sun nor Moon nor Stars but were afflicted tossed with tempest and not comforted without all light comfort and joy tho the Father of Lights and the God of all Consolation were with you when you perceived him not and could discover no tokens of his Gracious Presence as neither could I in the like gloomy Condition But I now find as you also do blessed be the Father of Mercies That he was ready at hand to
give forth Light and Joy when his own set time came which tho we did not wait for in a due manner by Faith Patience and Humility yet he passed by all our unbelief impatience and peevishness and visited our sinful Souls in his tender Mercy notwithstanding all whereby we had provoked him to turn his short withdrawing from us into an everlasting departure from us and have left us wholly to the unbelief and frowardness of our own evil hearts Wherefore let us magnify his Name together and let his high praises be in our hearts and mouths as long as we live and unto all Eternity for he is most worthy to be praised And blessed be his Name for ever and ever Amen And let us walk circumspectly and humbly with him all our days that we grieve not his good Spirit any more and provoke him to withdraw from us and to take his blessed influences and comforts from us as he has done He is the life of our souls and the joy of our hearts without him we are but a sink of all filth and a hell of sorrow and confusion ............ I hope you will give me the contentment to let me see you as oft as you can I shall be glad to be a means to help forward your Faith and Joy unto a more full settlement of Spirit and more abundant rejoycing in the Lord Jesus Thus with my constant Prayers for you I commend you to the Grace of God in Christ and Rest London Febr. 8. 1689. Your most Affectionate Friend and Brother in the Lord GEORGE PORTER LETTER IV. To a Relation of the Authors Mrs. Rogers I Have read your doleful Letter wherein you express your distress of mind under which you lately labour'd 't was indeed a very sad misapprehension of God and of your own condition but yet this is no more than what hath befaln many a dear Servant of God who have managed the same Objection against themselves and have labour'd under the same afrightments This you counterballance with the comfortable account you give of God's great Mercy to you in commanding down these waves and storms I rejoice with you in this and pray that God would please to confirm and settle you in the sense of his Love And that you may go forward in your present peaceable Estate I would advise you to take a due care of your Body and to reduce it into order I know well you are naturally melancholly and you may be assured the Devil took no small advantage from thence to raise up your distressing fears and if you take not heed to take away this advantage he may except God wonderfully prevent raise up trouble to you a second time 'T is not possible for me at so great a distance to direct you in this matter Physicians upon the place that see you and can occasionally fit or change their prescriptions are only fit to advise you This being cared for I shall only put you in mind of a few things which I would have you to establish upon your mind and these are such as a review of your apprehensions in your former trouble will help you to understand First then Call to mind that such dreadful Terrors as you have had are not to be understood as certain evidences of God's rejecting those that are so afflicted tho you so concluded against your self yet the present peace which God in great mercy hath given you is enough to tell you that you were mistaken when you thought so Heman's Case and the instances of many others of your own Acquaintance may abundantly satisfy you that these things may befall the precious Servants of God Secondly Note also That a true converted Person may be brought to that pass as to deny all the Evidences of Grace which he formerly had and may condemn himself for an Hypocrite when at the same time these Evidences appear to By-standers and shine through the black Cloud of their terror Thirdly 'T is further to be noted that the sad Speeches such Men utter and the desperate conclusions that such do make are little else than the Discourses of those that are distracted nor will God rigidly press them upon us as sins of that nature which we would take them to be God in Mercy considers our distress and will more gently pass by such extravagancies than we can readily believe 4. You should also call to mind that you and others in this Case boldly venture to determine that which neither you nor no Man else can know as that you were cut off reprobated made to be destroyed no time of Mercy left c. This was a conclusion which you had no warrant to make nor could you prove it If you concluded your present state to be bad you should not have taken upon you to pronounce God's purpose to have been against you for the future Who knows the Mind of God 5. I also think that you might possibly have some disadvantage by some darkness of mind about the nature of Faith some expressions in your Letter where you complain you could not believe look as if you thought Faith must be a believing that our sins are pardoned I will not much insist on this because I may mistake But if you had such a mistake in your mind 't is no wonder to say you could not believe These things you may do well to consider as mistakes which the disordered Reason you had run upon to the increase of your trouble and now while you are in the calm fix the contrary upon your mind and come up as fully as you can to these following conclusions 1. Let the amiable lovely and compassionate Nature of God be deeply impressed upon your mind think often seriously meditate That God is Love That he delights not in the death of sinners That he is willing to save 2. Make much of the probability or even possibility of Salvation even when the assurance of Faith is wanting 't is a great stay to be able to nourish hope concerning this thing 3. Persuade your self for certain That God's Decree is no rule for you to go by and that you must interpret his Decree by his Promises for it 's certain his Decree doth not contradict his Promise 4. Assure your self that if God sincerely incline your heart to accept of Christ as your Righteousness and Lawgiver and endeavour faithfully to live accordingly he will undoubtedly fulfil his Promise of Peace and Pardon to you and that it is a comfortable evidence of his special Grace 5. Do not think you want Faith because you have not assurance Faith is such a belief of the proffer of Salvation by Christ in the Gospel as makes us willing to accept it upon God's terms 6. Listen not to severe and malignant suggestions of Satan against the Mercifulness and Goodness of God if any such thoughts come into your mind cast them out presently and raise up your mind unto a detestation of them 7. Be thankfully content with that
of the Church to suffer some of his Servants to feel the bitterness of Sin and the terrors of his amazing-wrath to be overwhelm'd with the fear of Hell and to be for a long season even as in Hell it self that so when they are delivered they may warn those that are at ease that they beware of Sin lest it bring them also into a state so dreadful and so terrible and that from their own experience they may with tenderness and compassion strive more earnestly to assist and help those whose Consciences are in a flame and who are full of anguish and tribulation That when they are escaped out of the snare of the Fowler they may strive to disintangle those who are yet in trouble and being themselves cured of their horror and amazement they may lead their yet wounded brethren to that kind Physician to that laving Jesus with whose Blood their Wounds were cleansed and healed As to my self having been in Long affliction and great distress of Conscience for many Months and under a continued fear and apprehension of God's displeasure and being now through his inexpressible Grace not without some hope of his acceptance being delivered from violent and overwhelming sorrows I would most readily give all the advice and help I can to those that are yet mourning under desertions and complaining that God is departed from them and that he remembers them no more After the many waves and billows that went over me through the great goodness of God I now enjoy a calm and I pity and would fain help those who are yet labouring in the deep and for them peculiarly I write this Treatise in which tho' there be many things less exact than a Critical Reader may expect yet there are some in which I hope a distressed Soul may find relief The Method I intend to follow is this In this First Part 1. To shew what is meant by the Anger of God and whence it is that he is angry with his own Servants 2. What obligations we are under to Patience and Humility and several other Graces when we are under a sense of his displeasure 3. Whence it is that his Anger towards his own People is but for a short space CHAP. I. Of the Anger of God and whence it is that he is sometimes angry with his own Servants I. WE must know that the Infinite Majesty of Heaven is not subject to those unquiet passions to which our weak and frail nature is obnoxious he is not sometimes what he was not before he is always in himself the very same his Essence is unchangeable but he is pleased to stoop to our weakness and clothes his Intentions in words that may most suitably convey to our minds the knowledg of what he designs In his most pure and blessed nature there is a perpetual calm and tranquility nor does he suffer any of those commotions and disorders that are in angry men His Anger is his Resolution or his Will to punish his sinning-Creatures or sometimes it relates to the evils themselves which sinners endure as Pain and Fear and Sorrow and Wars and Famine and Pestilence and the like Calamities He is said to be pleased with us when we are obedient and when his face shines upon us in a comfortable and a gracious manner when he accepts our persons and our duties and refreshes our hearts with the reviving-hopes of Glory through Jesus Christ But he is then angry when he withdraws the chearful influences and quickning motions of his Holy Spirit also when we pray and he shuts out our Prayer and leaves our poor Souls to languish under despair or unbelief and when we find in our selves no spiritual and heavenly Life He may also be said to be Angry when he sends long and sore afflictions and distresses on our Bodies and our Souls and withholds his blessing from all the methods that are used with a design to give us help and when he proceeds to a terrible execution of his threats this Act of his is called Vengeance as in Psal 99.8 Thou wast a God that forgavest them though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions II. God is sometimes angry with his own people it is indeed Paternal castigatory wrath that he sends upon them but not destroying fury Thus he is said to be angry with Moses Aaron and Miriam and Psal 74.1 O God why hast thou cast us off for ever Why doth thine Anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture Thus Heman complains Psal 88.7 Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves And so the Church complains Lam. 1.12 ch 2.1 ch 3.1 The Reasons of this are such as these 1. Because their Sins are of a greater aggravation than the sins of others They sin against him when they have tasted of his Goodness when he has offered to them more clear Light more experience of his Love than to the rest of Men when he is wounded in the house of his Friends he will resent such Injuries and Affronts and they usually sin against more frequent Motions of his Holy Spirit and after they have engaged to be his they break their Vows and forget their Covenants they loyter in his Service when they have by the peace of their Souls and the hope of Heaven that he hath given them found his Work to be a reward and that he is a very good Master and shall he not visit for these things What fitter methods can he take than to lash them for their ingratitude and unbecoming Behaviour to so kind a Friend as he has been to them all along He is at more cost and charge with the Children of his Family than with others and if they disobey him they must feel his Displeasure and the smart of the Rod. You only have I known of all the Families of the earth therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities Amos 3.2 2. To warn others and to wipe off all Aspersions that might be cast upon his Holiness He is angry with his own to let the profane World see that he is no respecter of Persons and that Sin wherever it is shall not go unpunished He puts some into the fiery Furnace to let those that are at ease know what they have also deserved and what they may expect if they do not speedily Repent and turn Some Ages feel the weightier Blows of his Hand and are visited with severe Judgments to teach future Generations to be more careful to observe his Laws and to do his Will Deut. 29.22 24. The generation to come of the children that shall rise up after you and the stranger that shall come from a far land shall say when they see the plagues of the Land and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it c. even all nations shall say wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land What meaneth the heat of this great anger He lays some Countries desolate that their Desolations
shall soon decay and that there needs not the Force of his Arm and the Greatness of his Power to crush such worms as we are As David said Is the king of Israel come out after a flea 2 Sam. 24.14 so may we in our distresses say to God Why dost thou arm thy self with wrath against us whom one word of thy mouth can throw upon the ground or send into the grave It is not with him as with the great Oppressors of the world that use their greater power to trample upon those that are of unequal strength no he delights to bind up the broken to heal the wounded and to comfort those that mourn Isa 57.16 For I will not contend for ever neither will I be always wrath for the spirit should fail before me and the souls which I have made Such is the impatience the unbelief and the unsuitable behaviour of his people that they give him cause enough to be always angry but he does not proceed with the utmost rigour of his Justice he freely pardons what with right he might exact Psal 78.38 39. Their heart was not right with him They did flatter him with their mouth but he being full of compassion forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not yea many a time he turned his anger away and did not stir up all his wrath for he remembred that they were but flesh a wind that passeth away and cometh not again And when our extremities are so great and our sense of his displeasure is so very pressing that we know not what to do we may desire him to remember his own Greatness and our Frailty that we are his own handy-work and that we are no more able to resist his Power than we are to change our own natures and to be his Equals Job 13.25 Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble Remember I beseech thee that thou hast made me as the clay Job 10.9 2. Reason why his Anger towards his people is but for a moment is Because he is obliged to it by his Covenant If they break my statutes c. Psal 89.31 32 33. then will I visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from them nor suffer my faithfulness to fail He is obliged by the Covenant of Grace to be their God to use all the methods that his Infinite Wisdom sees necessary for their final Happiness and if his Anger and their own Afflictions will contribute to this tho their flesh be pained and their bodies smart he will not fail to use those severities His dearest servants may by temptation and their unwatchfulness be overtaken by their spiritual Enemies they may wound and hurt themselves and occasion his departure and to excite them to a due consideration of their Folly he will leave them for a season Their sins are the object of his abhorrence and he may send very sore troubles upon them tho they shall even then come upon a gracious errand and promote their future welfare when in the anguish of their souls they may conclude them to be the mark of his Eternal Wrath he will not spare his rods nor by a fond Indulgence suffer them to take their own course for a Parent you know will correct his own child tho he concerns not himself with those that are strangers to the Family The Anger of God for your sin may deprive you of your dearest Comforts your most kind Relations your most beloved Children your Estate your Health and your Ease and yet in all these he may have a design to make you more full of Holiness and to bring you nearer to himself This is an ordinary Discipline wherewith he trains up all those whom he will convey to Glory tho their own Reason and their gloomy Thoughts may judg that it is for a quite contrary purpose He has promised That all things shall work together for our good and he is faithful when he lays upon us the severest strokes because they stir up our sleeping Grace and purge away our Sin 3. Reason his Anger towards his people is but for a moment Because whatever his present dispensations are he will never throw off the Relation of a Father to them they do not render void the Kindness and the Grace by which he did at first adopt them to be his own A Father when he frowns and when he corrects is still a Father and his bowels earn with him when the rebellion and undutifulness of his child causes him to be severe Tho we groan and weep through the bitterness of our grief yet he changes not his Paternal care as Christ when he was a man of sorrows was pronounced by God to be his beloved Son Psal 103.13 Like as a father pities his children so the Lord pitieth them that fear him None of our earthly Friends can be more tender-hearted than he is only with this difference that they would heal our wounds when they first begin to smart and he being more skilful does make our Cure to advance by slow degrees he does bereave us of this or that enjoyment which we dearly love because he sees it necessary for our Salvation as 't is many times expedient to cut off a gangreen'd part of the body to save our Life He will separate between us and our Iniquities rather than that they should make a separation between us and him and there is nothing but a most tender Love in all this Jer. 31.20 Is Ephraim my dear son is he a pleasant child for since I spake against him I do earnestly remember him still therefore my bowels are troubled for him I will surely have mercy upon him saith the Lord. If there were any ways more mild and gentle that would equally promote our good he would use them with the greatest readiness if our own absolute necessity did not require that he should bring Judgments upon us Nor would he use at all those methods that seem to be rigid and severe Those that are his people should be in as much ease as other Men and laugh and rejoice as much as they do but only that he would by his displeasure teach us that knowledg of himself that faith and that patience and those other Graces which without his seasonable Corrections we should never know 'T is more grateful to him to smile than to frown to reward than to punish Deut. 5.29 O that there were such an heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always that it might be well with them and with their children for ever When we wander his Goodness and his Love will not suffer him to see us run to misery His Anger will overtake us to stop us in our hasty course and to reduce us into the right way He never strikes but for just Reasons tho they may be for the present very much wrapt up in his own
present undisturbed Case and their seeming welfare for their happiness is not real but apparent and all the goods that are bestow'd upon them are but mean and low in themselves though our erroneous and blinder Judgments think them to be somewhat great and considerable Dr. Scots Christian life part 2. p. 255. For considering of what little moment the present goods and evils are which good men suffer and bad men enjoy they ought rather to be lookt on as an argument of God's Wisdom than as an objection against his Providence for he understands the just value of things and knows that the best of these worldly goods are bad enough to be thrown away upon the worst of men and so expresses his just scorn of these admired vanities by scattering them abroad with a careless hand for why should he partake of the error of vulgar opinion and express himself so very regardful of these trifles as to put them in Gold Scales and weigh them out to mankind by Grains and Scruples When we see therefore bad men to rejoice and the good to mourn let us not censure but adore that Providence that will assign to them both different portions in another world those that are healthful are not more beloved for that nor are the sick and weak more hateful to God for those outward troubles that they now suffer there are many who have their paradise in this world that shall have none hereafter and there is many an one torn and mangled with the thorns and bryers of the Wilderness to whom God does reserve a Throne above We see many a Vessel on whom the Sun shines and which sails with a fair gale that yet by splitting on a Rock or on the Sand never reaches the Port And others we see that meet with nothing but high waves and contrary winds and tho' they have an unpleasant voyage yet it is for all that very safe and attended with comfort in the latter end The wicked do not always prosper in this life God sometimes makes them examples of his Justice and if he do not usually do so to those that are very bad it affords us a certain ground for the belief which we have of a Judgment that is to come wherein punishments and rewards will be distributed after another manner than now they are This maxim of our Christian Divinity * Fragmens de Serm. de Mons Morus p. 74. That God sometimes afflicts very severely those whom he tenderly loves even then when they well perform their duty even then when he is well pleased with them was unknown to the ancient Isralites This was a Lesson above their understanding God did not afflict them but when they had provoked him by some particular transgression but when they did not so they always had a peaceable and happy life it is not so with us our afflictions are sometimes indeed not the marks of his Anger but of his Favour as when he calls his own out to the enduring of things very bitter and unpleasant for the tryal of their patience and faith there is none of the Prophets that does reckon suffering among the gifts of God but our Apostle does esteem them to be so Phil. 1. We hear none under the new Testament which gives us a clearer discovery of another world say as they did heretofore Why doth the way of the Wicked prosper but rather count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations CHAP. VI. Of the duty of such as never have been under a sense of God's Wrath and Terrors and what is the doleful condition of a Soul that apprehends it self to be under his hot displeasure 1. SEeing God is often angry with his own Servants what cause have those of you that fear him to bless him that he is not angry with you and that you do not feel his displeasure He sets up others as his mark against which he shoots his Arrows you hear others groaning for his departure and yet your hearts are not sadned as theirs are your eyes can look up towards Heaven with hope whilst theirs are clouded with a vail of sorrow He speaks roughly to them but comfortable words to you he seems to set himself against them as his enemies whilst he deals with you as a loving Friend you see a reviving-smile in his Face and they can discern nothing there but one continued and dreadful Frown Oh admire and for ever wonder at the Soveraign distinguishing Grace of God are you that are at ease better than many of his people that are now thrown into a fiery Furnace Have you less dross than they Have they sinned think you at an higher rate than you have ever done He is angry with them for their luke-warmness for their backsliding and have your hearts always burn'd with Love have your feet always kept his way and not declined have you never wandred have you never turned aside to the right hand or to the left surely you have and therefore what a mercy is it that he is not angry with you as well as them You see many whose Consciences for their sins are turned all into flame and horror and perplexity full of accusations full of guilty fears for their sinning their sinning against Light Knowledge Mercy and Love and have you never so sinned Have not your Consciences also been defil'd Have you never done what was evil when you knew it to be so Have you not been often kindly entertain'd of God after you have run away from him Have you not after great Transgressions met with joy and pleasure in the sense of his pardoning healing Grace whilst others that have been it may be more dutiful did not fare so well nor have ever had such a fatted calf killed for them nor such feasts to refresh their Souls as there have been prepared for you You can never sufficiently bless God for his mercy every day you deserve his Anger and yet you have not been under the terrible apprehensions of it for a moment Why are you sitting at his Table and honoured with his Presence in all your Duties in all your Sufferings whilst he is a stranger to them and as a wayfaring Man that tarries but for a night What is it that makes him to bless some Children of the Family with greater peace and comfort than he does the rest Nothing but his own Grace and Mercy Some are drawn with Cords of Love and some have their Iniquities constantly visited with Stripes Some are glad with the hopes of Heaven and some are afraid they shall never go thither and know not by experience what Joy and Pleasure means Some have their spirits overwhelm'd their whole Souls covered with thick darkness and their Bones broken whilst others are at ease and see the light of his Countenance and have an unchanged Health Some travel with weary steps and make their pilgrimage with their own sorrows to be a vale of tears whilst others run the way of his
and my Father any more I have lost all my Fervor and all my Confidence and all my hope in Prayer I go round the streets to seek him that was once my beloved Help me all ye Servants of the Lord to find my God again but for my former undervaluing of his Presence he is now departed and I find him not Woe Woe is me what have I done Woe is me that I have lost him whom to lose is Hell 3. All this will be attended with great anguish of Spirit and with great Tribulation Job 16.12 13 I was at ease but he hath broken me asunder he hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces and set me up for his mark c. Then all our Sins are brought fresh into our minds with a new and a cutting remembrance as if they had all been committed but as Yesterday They rank themselves in order every one of them being set before us give us a new stab and a wound to encrease the sore and the pain of our former wounds They present themselves with all their hideous Aggravations against what Mercy what Goodness what checks of Conscience and what Warnings and what motions of the Blessed Spirit they were committed And who can bear so terrible a fight as this Job 13.26 Thou writest bitter things against me and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth i.e. 1. Always to think upon them 2. To feel pain and smart in that Remembrance 3. To be astonisht with my guilt and fears Then all our thoughts of God himself are uneasy We can think of nothing but his Greatness his Majesty his Justice and Holiness How does it overwhelm us to think what a powerful God we have against us It troubles us to think that he is displeased and yet we know that he is justly so If God were for me says the troubled soul I would bear any pains and wait and hope but He who only can help me is gone away He who alone could speak peace seems to take no notice of the sadness of my case My Sins have taken my God away and what have I more And when we are set on fire with the sense of his Wrath the more we think the more we are distressed every thought returns with sad tidings and pours oyl into the flame And what that anguish is which we feel when we continually think of a displeased God There is nothing on Earth that does resemble neither are any words capable of expressing it We do then smell the Fire and Brimstone of the Infernal pit then a man may say with David The sorrows of death compass me and the paint of hell gat hold upon me Psal 116.3 And I think that these Spiritual terrours are of the same kind with those which they feel who arc now in Hell only they differ in the degree and in the duration For a Sinner under the sense of God's displeasure and in terror for his Sin is as if he were in a burning Oven or in scalding Oyl he is every way beset and every way tormented Trouble of Conscience indeed is a slighter thing but the sense of wrath kindled there is vastly terrible 't is the suburbs of destruction 't is the noisom smell of the bottomless Pit Job 6.4 The Arrows of the Almighty are within me the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit The Terrors of God do set themselves against me whatsoever he thought of which way soever he turned himself he saw nothing but what filled him with amazement Ps 88.16 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me thy terrors have cut me off 4. That which these troubled Souls are afflicted with is the fear they have thut this displeasure will be Eternal this is implied in that Is his mercy clean gone will he be favourable no more Ps 77.7 So the Church Lam. 3.18 My strength and my hope it perisht from the Lord. So Psal 88.5 I am free among the dead like the slain that lie in the Grave whom thou remembrest no more And that sickness is grievous to us when we have no hope of being better That wrath is not to be born which we think to be forerunner of eternal wrath and thus does the troubled soul argue God has withdrawn himself and it may be will never return again I have lost him for the present and Oh! What will become of me should I lose such a God for ever I have now no beams of light and what if I go hence into outer darkness What if my lot and portion should fall among those that are abhorred of the Lord Have I once tasted how good he was and must lose henceforth all the pleasant sense of his Mercy Must not Christ be my Saviour nor Heaven my home after all this Oh! what shall do where shall I appear should he say at last Depart from me for I know thee not Shall I be placed at the left hand of Christ shall I after all that I have read and heard after all my profession strivings and my prayers be shut out of that Kingdom when others shall enter in How shall I bear so great a disappointment How shall I dwell with everlasting burnings III. If you have not yet been under the apprehension of Gods displeasure take warning by those that are so dare not to venture upon any sin when you behold their grief and their sorrows for their Iniquities You see their tears you hear their lamentable groans you see that nothing in this world is refreshing or comfortable to them and made you â—hug the Serpent that has stung them and made them to cry out in the bitterness of their Souls Oh stop where you are go no further lest you fall into the depths lest the Fire that scorches them begin to seize on you lest the God whom they account their Enemy begin also to frown on you learn obedience by their Stroaks lest you also be made to feel the smarting Rod. You see how those that once were as chearful as pleasant and as little afraid as you are now cast down and troubled and perplexed and cannot be merry as they used to be The sense of God's displeasure has untuned their Harps that they cannot sing the Songs of Zion You see how their Pleasure and their Hope is shipwrackt beware lest you run upon the same Rock for the doing so after the sight of their example will make you to be guilty of a double Crime first of doing ill and then in doing it after such a warning as their sorrows gave you Job says he was set up as a mark ch 7.20 And so are others in the like case They now receive the shots of that Justice which they have provoked but if their punishment do not make us to humble our selves and to repent we may be set in their place and it will render the Wounds we shall then receive more poisonous and malignant for not having taken and improved the warning that was given us by
looked for some to take pity but there was none and for comforters but I found none they gave me also gall for my meat and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink Psal 69.20 Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease and with the contempt of the proud Ps 123.4 But above all abhor the thought of the least inward delight from their miseries Obad. 12. Thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became a stranger neither should'st thou have rejoyced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction neither shouldst thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress Job 19.28 Ye should say why persecute we him seeing the root of the matter is in him Roughness and severity is not the way to help such as are troubled and cast down and he had need be learned that speaks a word in season to the weary Isa 50.4 The rarity of such a one is expressed Job 33.23 If there be an Interpreter one among a thousand to shew unto man his uprightness Those that under the Characters of Ambassadors of the Gospel of Peace do nothing but thunder out the Law to a wounded and a troubled Soul shew they are unlike to the Jesus whom they would seem to represent and they shew that they have in such matters very little skill and no experience at all neither do such do as they would be done by in the like case There is a sort of balsome in compassionate and gentle words tho' they do not fully perform a Cure upon our wounds yet they make the pain and the smart less whereas a rough and sour carriage does exasperate and heighten them and is but the pouring of oyl into the flame CHAP. VII Shewing what is to be done by those that think God is angry with them And first of Prayer as a principal help against their trouble And some Objections of tempted persons answered I Am now to make application to those who are under an apprehension of God's Anger There are no people in the World whose case does require a greater pity and to whose relief we should be more forward to contribute all that we are able While we are at liberty their poor Souls are under the bondage of an overwhelming fear That God whom we serve with hope is terrible to them in those Ordinances and that Sabbath which yield sweetness and refreshment to us they find no delight because the Comforter that should uphold their Souls is departed from them if on a journey we saw any person wounded and mourning under his bleeding wounds and crying out for help the compassion that is fixed in humane Nature would move us to assist him and not to pass by and suffer him to groan under the smart of so deplorable a condition and much more should we be ready to help our fellow creatures in a Case that is far more sad and dreadful such as is this now before us There are a great many at this very time who are complaining that they have no hope no prospect of deliverance from their present miseries and afflictions that tell us They are cast off by God that he has forsaken them that their Sins are set in order before them and that they are afraid the God whom they once thought their own God will be favourable no more Oh! how little do we know what we do when we sin It is easie for a moment it yields us a little uperticial transient delight but it leaves a woful sting and a lasting bitterness behind Oh! what would such poor creatures give that they had never sinned or that they had never finned so wilfully so frequently against that God whom they once experienced to be very good and gracious but whom they now find to be very severe and very terrible They cannot look below but they think that Hell is opening its mouth to swallow them up they cannot look above but they see the great Creator of Heaven and Earth to be as an Enemy to them And who can stand before thoughts so cutting and overwhelming as these are Now this being a condition which I was in my self not long ago and from which the Mighty Grace of God has been pleased to save me I desire to give all the help I can to such dejected and trembling Souls and none among us but perhaps may at one time or other fall into such depths as these therefore I hope the following directions may be of some use or other I beg of you that are at ease now to regard these things for if you fall so low the anguish and bitterness of your spirits will nor allow you to give such a distinct and careful attention to what shall be spoken to you then as you now may First If you are under the sense of God's Anger for your sin pray earnestly to him to turn his Wrath away We usually deprecate War and Famine and the Plague and those other mischiefs which by the evils they bring upon our bodies are very formidable to us but this sense of the Divine Displeasure has something in it that is more formidable for it brings an unspeakable load of trouble on the Soul and wounds that part of our selves which is capable of having either a very pure and noble joy or a very piercing grief and sadness A man that is sunk under a burthen that is too heavy for him to bear cannot but groan to be at ease Thus Psal 6.1 2 3. O Lord rebuke me not in thy wrath neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure have mercy upon me O Lord for I am weak O Lord heal me for my bones are vexed My soul is also sore vexed but thou O Lord how long Return O Lord deliver my soul O save me for thy mercies sake These are the breathings of one sensible of a great and a violent distress and tell us that even our weakness and our helpless condition is an argument that we may plead with God As here Have mercy upon me for I am weak q. d. Thy Goodness thy Glory and Power will be rendred more illustrious in giving some relief to one so desolate and lo low as I am But I know what poor trembling Souls will be ready to reply and Object 1. Alas I cannot pray the Spirit that should warm my Soul and kindle my Desires does not move upon me as he used to do I grieved and vexed him heretofore and now he has left me to grieve and to vex alone I am so troubled that I know not what to speak and when I endeavour to do it I find no Fervour no Life at all my Prayers are grown very troublesome and uneasie to me Answ I grant you this is a case sad enough it is sad for creatures so miserable and so full of wants as we are not to be able to pour out our Supplications before the Lord and it is more sad when
tho more in this I fully believe I shall be so As Zeph. 2.3 It may be you shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger Joel 2.13 14. Who knows but he will return and leave a Blessing Tho you are afflicted and tost with Tempests and not comforted yet there is a prospect of a quiet shore Christ is not far off with his pleasant and reviving Consolations Hold out a little longer and your expectation shall not be in vain length of pain and continuance of sorrow does tire and spend the natural spirits and long attendance upon God without any manifestation of his appearance for our help dulls our motions enervates our souls strikes off the Wheels of our Chariots and greatly tempts us to despair and to say Because he does not help us that he never will Jer. 8.18 When I would comfort my self against my sorrow my heart fainteth within me for the harvest is past and the summer is ended and we are not delivered But let us hope still for when we are at the lowest then is the proper season for God to work we are indeed altogether desolate but in him there is compleat and suitable Salvation it is an honour that we give to his promise when we believe it and rely upon it when all things seem flatly to oppose our Faith Isa 8.17 I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob and I will look for him Psal 27.13 14. When we let our hope go we pull up the sluce we deluge our selves with Miseries and Calamities that are inexpressible tho that God that raises the dead does many times after long despair give our departed hopes a Resurrection and makes our broken bones to rejoice So very merciful and so good is he CHAP. X. Shewing that People under great Trouble and Anguish of Soul are not to look for Assurance or great Joy on a sudden but as far as they can to enquire into the Reasons of God's Displeasure towards them and to look up to him through the Great Mediator and not further to provoke him As also how they may know when Afflictions are sent in Wrath and when in Love VI. WHen you are under the sense of the Anger of God do not look for assurance and great triumphs of Soul on a sudden if you have supports 't is a great matter tho as Mr. Bayne used to say You do not know what Spiritual Festivities and Jubilation means If you have daily bread to maintain your Life 't is what you ought thankfully to acknowledge tho your Tables be not covered with Dainties and tho you do not fare deliciously every day They were but Three of the Disciples whom our Lord admitted to the sight of his Glorious Transfiguration he does not treat all his Followers with the same Dishes with the same Joys and Transports We are sufficiently priviledged if we are in the Verge of his Family if we are adopted ' tho there be several that are greater Favourites than we and whom he is pleased to set at his Right Hand and on his Left He may chuse whom he will to be his beloved Disciples to whom he will manifest more of his Presence and his Love and an extraordinary Care Do not think that because you have read of some that have had Heaven to meet them with Angelical Triumphs and Consolations that therefore you must drink as full draughts of the same Rivers of Pleasure or that they will follow you as much as them in this Wilderness Some of the Eminent Servants of Christ that have been very laborious and useful that have been remarkable for their Patience their Faith and their Self-denial have been blest with a nearer access to God and have seen more of the Lord of Hosts in his Glory but it is enough for such unprofitable Servants and such great Sinners as we have been that we look for the Promised Land Tho we have not many Clusters of the Grapes of Paradise to chear us on the way our Master uses us very well if he do not turn us out of doors tho we fare not so well as others do it is a Mercy that we have but the Crumbs that fall from his Table This advice is needful because if we look for extraordinary Joy and Delight and then find it not after long waiting we shall be ready to give over our work when we do not receive that Pay in the hope of which we flattered our selves a long time Because some in a Transport after long Desertion and sore Tryals and after long Absence of Christ have cryed out He is come he is come oh he is now come whom I longed to see Now Salvation is come to my house Now I am fully satisfied now I am content to dye Oh the Riches the Depths the Greatness of the Grace of God! Now I see that my Fears were too great my Thoughts of him too low I see that he that inhabits Eternity even the Great Jehovah will deal familiarly with the Sons of Men. I could not have thought that ever I that was so faint should be revived that I that was so full of Despair should be full of Hope that I who was so near Hell should be brought to the Gates of Heaven but my own experience now tells me that so it is Cant. 2.3 4. I sate down under his shadow with great delight and his fruit was sweet to my taste he brought me to the banqueting house and his banner over me was love This is the language of those whom the King of Heaven delights to honour These are the Golden Vessels which he fills with the Oyl of Gladness These are the Elijahs to whom he sends his Chariots of Fire to convey them home But this is not the Lot of all his Subjects this is not what we are certainly to expect if we go to Heaven tho by Dispensations that have in them a great deal of Cloud and Darkness yet it will be very well for us if we believe we shall be safe tho some there be that with Simeon embrace their Saviour in their Arms and see his Salvation before they dye for the sight of which we must stay till after death the greatest part of Believers have a comfortable and reviving hope through Grace that they shall come to Heaven but few there are that are so well assured of it as to have no remaining doubts and fears But notwithstanding what I have said we must endeavour to work out our Salvation and by a diligence in good works and holy duties to strive that we may be among the blessed number of these excellent Saints whom God is pleased to clothe with the Garments of Praise and Joy The passionate feelings of Joy are not essential to Holiness tho when they are bestowed they do greatly quicken our obedience and inlarge our hearts If we resolvedly adhere to God he will give us what will be sufficient for us Our very fears shall
221. and were not Forgiveness in God somewhat beyond what men could imagine no flesh could be saved Isa 55.88 My thoughts are not your thoughts neither are my ways your ways saith the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts It is not the manner of men to pass by multiplied Transgressions as he doth The consideration of his Infinite Mercy removes all those obstructions which our unbelief viewing the greatness and aggravations of our sins throws in the way and tho our sins have been every way inexcusable and do upon every reflection that we make upon them fright and trouble us yet the Mercy of a God surely will yield us some relief for there is no other reason why he does good to this or that sinner but his own Grace Hos 3.4 He freely chuses justifies adopts and renews the Souls of his Elect 't is all not from their merit or from any thing that he foresaw in them but from the good pleasure of his will Eph. 1.5 All that he does for them all that he will do for them to Eternity will be to the praise and glory of his own grace This is the true way to humble us when we see nothing in our selves but what exposes us to misery and that is true Gospel Obedience which is the fruit and product of his Love shed abroad in our hearts This is the only Rock whereon we are to build our Comfort when the Storm comes This Free Grace of God is that which the Saints admire on earth which revives their drooping spirits and which they will wonder at for ever 'T is a shelter from the accusations and the malicious insultings of the Devil for tho he set our sins with all their overwhelming circumstances before us tho we cannot deny the charge and believe that we are miserable in our seves yet do we resolve to flye to the Mercy and the Love of God in Christ We should disparage the Excellencies of his Nature and the Offers of his Goodness if we did not lay hold upon them And this is that which some call a natural Novatianism in the timerous Consciences of Convinced Sinners whereby they doubt and question pardon for Sins of Apostacy and falling after Repentance IX Beware of running into further sin and so to provoke God to further Anger When our Hope is perished there is nothing so evil which we shall not dare to do If help do not speedily come we are apt to say it is in vain to pray it is vain to look up to a God that has thrown us of Jer. 2.25 Thou saidst There is no hope no for I have loved strangers and after them will I go You are lost for ever will the Devil say and therefore it is all one whether you sin or not you can but still be loft this is one of his fiery darts and if by our compliance we suffer it to take hold upon us it will terrifie us the more he will rejoice at our fall and put our Souls by every new Transgression into much more violent and scorching Flames What monstrous Injections what unbecoming Thoughts of God does he suggest and alas how frequently do we entertain them for they come thick upon us In the time of God's displeasure when the edge of his Holy Spiritual Law does wound our Souls what vast multitudes of Corruptions do we then discover that we never saw before How do our old Sins amaze us and new ones arise and spring from them And what can we do in the swelling of Jordan What in so great an inundation but endeavour in our poor feeble manner to look up to Christ for help Beg the Spirit for as one says There is no heart so unclean which this Spirit will not cleanse no soul so feeble which he does not fortifie none so forrowful which he does not comfort none so desolate which he does not cause to rejoice none so slavish which he does not set at liberty none so sick which he does not heal none so dead which he does not quicken Surely he will regard us for he knows that of our selves we cannot bear up against the Winds and Waves And let us always remember That among so many cruel Enemies 't is Unbelief that leads the Van It encourages and draws them on and when we have got the Victory over this all the rest will be daunted and run away By Unbelief we open our hearts and let in all those Thieves and Robbers which deprive us of our Peace It is the defilement of our Consciences by manifold acts of sin that makes us like the troubled Sea which cannot rest And for a Conscience guilty of many neglects to lay claim to God's Mercy is to do as we see Mountebanks sometimes do who wound their Flesh to try Conclusions on their own Bodies how sovereign the Salve is yet often they come to feel the smart of their own Presumption by long and desperate Wounds Let us in the case even of sore Afflictions be afraid to sin Sibbs Souls Conflict p. 31. for that Devil that tempts us will immediately vex and torment us the more for it X. Mistake not those things for evidences of the certain Wrath of God which perhaps are not really so He may suspend the expressions of his Love tho he love us still as Joseph had the tenderness of a Brother whilst his Brethren thought him very angry with them Nay in our secret supports we are not destitute altogether of his care tho we know not how they come As the Metals that lye deep in the ground partake of the Influence of the Sun tho he does not shine upon them with his Light There are few Afflictions but have rather the marks of a Fatherly Kindness in the seasonable Correction of our Faults than the Marks of Displeasure No outward losses no inward troubles that are but for a time are the certain signs of Wrath no tho they be very long and very grievous for it was not so in the case of Job But how shall I know will some say when Afflictions are in wrath It is a question to be answered with great tenderness and caution They are by Divines said to be so 1. When they come with great Violence and suddenly destroy as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah and in the Deluge Psal 58.9 Before your pots can feel the thorns he shall take them away as with a whirlwind both living and in his wrath Nahum 1.9 He will make an utter end affliction shall not rise up the second time And yet this must have some limitations for a good man may be seized with a violent Disease and suddenly dye of whom we ought not to say that he died by the Wrath of God 2. When there is no Mercy discernable in the Cross but only what is evil 3. When one Evil makes way for another and none are sanctified 4.
and to throw my self at his feet whom I have provoked in the submissive terms of the poor Prodigal saying Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son And not because I have once wandred still to wander in a strange Countrey far from my proper home Our grief for sin is too great when it causes us totally to despair to give our selves over as hopeless and lost for ever This we never ought to do we weep too much when we cannot see the Goodness and the Mercy of God as well as his Justice and Severity When we think that it is good to him that he should oppress and crush the works of his own hands and when we judge him to be Tyrannical and Cruel as if he intended nothing but our Ruin and when we peremptorily say that he will not hear our Prayers nor shew us any Favour When we have no suitable thoughts of his Amiable Nature his Covenant and his Promise When by the Painfulness of the Rod we call in question all that he has ever done for us and when because he frowns we say he has thrown us off When because he delays his help we say that he will be gracious and favourable no more for ever When we charge him foolishly and either deny his Providence or blame his Conduct because he uses not so gentle a method towards us as we would have him to take or when from our distress we make desperate Conclusions of him or of our selves And most of all when seeing that others whom we reckon as great sinners as our selves to be in health and peace whilst we groan and languish we are apt to say Psal 73 11. We have cleansed our hearts in vain That it is a vain thing to be Religious to fear such a God who suffers his Servants to be so very much afflicted and with such sort of sorrows that are more spiritual and consequently more bitter than the rest of the world is acquainted withal 3. We are then too much troubled for our sins when that trouble does not only indispose us for duty for if it be attended with pain and trouble if will be apt so to do but when it â—â—â—kes us altogether to omit our duty that we owe to God when our sorrows damp our affections which are the wings of our souls to carry us up to God When it causes us to mind nothing else but what is sad and grievous When our sorrow swells to so great a height that it covers with its imperious Waves all the foundations and grounds of Peace and Comfort it was not so as some have observed with our Blessed Lord for when he was upon the Cross he was in extreme in a mighty pain and violent agonies and yet did not these take away from him his care for his Mother So the Good Thief in the midst of his pangs laboured to gain his fellow and to save his own soul and to glorify Christ These were indeed extraordinary instances for our sickness may be such that all that we can perform to God is a quiet submission to his will and a desire of the Prayers of others thus our forrows for sin are excessive when they make us to give over Prayer or Hearing or the like Duties when they unstring our Harps and dull our Traises and make us unfit for our Calling 4. When our sorrow puts us upon indirect means for relief when we put that trust in men that should be placed in God when we expect that Cure from them which he alone is able to give when we seek it in vain Company in Recreations or the things of this World but if our fense of God's displeasure be very great we soon know that all these things are of no value XIII Call to mind those experiences that you have heretofore had of the goodness of God remember the years of the right hand of the most High you are now fearing his Wrath But can you not remember the time when his Love was your dayly solace and delight You are now complaining that he does not hear your cry But how many Prayers has he sent back with a gracious answer How many times have you laid at his feet in humiliation and tears and his hand has wiped your tears away How many times when you have been fainting has his Word revived your poor troubled souls And tho' his Word be now bitter to your taste and fill you with Gall and Wormwood yet it is still able to revive you Those places of Scripture that heretofore revived you are still able to refresh you those breasts are still as full of consolation as they ever were but only you are for the present under a decay of spirits and have lost your appetite that you cannot draw that consolation thence as you used to do Do not forget the many Mercies of your Infancy your Childhood your Youth and your Riper Age how seasonable how unexpected how necessary have your Mercies been both for your bodies and your souls and tho' I know it is your abuse of them that grieves and troubles you yet remember that he that once forgave you can forgive you still and that he that did you once so much good is still able to do you good Judg. 13.23 If the Lord had meant to destroy us he would not have received a sacrifice at our hands nor have done all this for us Shall we distrust shall we forsake shall we limit a God that has been heretofore so very mericful and so gracious And tho it is very true that it is no comfort to a poor man to think that he was once rich or to a sick man to think that he was once in health for the bitterness of his present evils takes away the relish of his former comforts and when a Man has lost God in his terrible apprehensions it makes it to be more intollerable than if he had never enjoyed him yet the having once had Communion with him by his Grace and by his Spirit may give us some reason to hope that the root of the matter is in us and that God will cause it to bud and spring forth again tho' it now lye under water and be covered with many storms and tribulations And I may add also with many sins and corruptions with which we were not troubled before XIV Remember that God will not judge you according to what you are in such a woful distemper as that of Melancholly but it will go with you as you were in the time of your health This is highly necessary to be considered for many good people when they are under the disease of Melancholly which can no more be prevented than a Consumption or a Fever they are very apt to express themselves after this or the like manner I thought I had once been serious but now I see that all was a deceit I see that I heard and prayed and received
Wormwood and Gall with all his Entertainments to think the God is his Enemy that these common Blessings may conclude in Hell and that by all that he Eats and all that he Drinks he may be but Fatting for the day of Slaughter Whilst he is allowing himself in all the Carnal gratifications by a little consideration he may discern a Two-edged Sword that hangs over his head and see a Gulph below that is ready to swallow him and devour all his hopes and joys and that all his comforts depend upon the slender thread of Life and that here is but a shall partition between him and Everlasting Burnings How does this fill him with Amazement and Consternation With Fear and Horror And whilst he is most Jovial he may see a dreadful Hand writing on the Wall that may make his Knees of smite one against another and overthrow all his mirth and pleasure Alas What does it signify to a man if all the World smile upon him if he be under the Wrath and the Frowns of God They cannot shelter him from the coming storm nor screen him from the Consuming Fire What a small satisfaction is it to a Condemned Malefactor that the partakers of his Wickedness applaud and caress him when his Execution draws near and the day of his Death will put an end to all his Hopes What Peace can a Sinner have who has the Lord of Hosts against him How can he lye down with Comfort when he knows not but he may awake in Flames With what ease can he look upon any thing he enjoys when he knows not but the next moment he himself may be destroyed and lost for evermore And that his next remove may be to the Grave and to a place full of Torment What Comfort can he find from loud laughters from cheerful Company from vain Sports when it may be the next moment he may be in a place where there is weeping and wailling and gnashing of teeth Without the Favour of God and that is in the World all its Promises all its Pleasures all its Friendships all its Entertainments are meer Vanity and Vexation of Spirit If a man fare deliciously every day if he drink of the most sparkling VVine if he procure all the Spices of the East and all the Riches of the VVest those will not keep his heart from Sorrows nor these secure him from the Wrath to come These things are very grateful whilst he is embodied whilst he can Hear and Smell and Tast But what shall a man that is a stranger to God do when he is turned into a Spirit VVhat shall an Immortal Soul do when all these Corporal goods are past away VVhere will be his provision VVhat will be his entertainment when he is lodged in the Eternal world VVhen he shall no more hear the Musick that once charmd and gratified his Sense when he shall no more see those Beauties that he once admired and doted on How must his Soul that pursued nothing but a Temporal and a Carnal Happiness in that State of Separation be filled with Uneasiness and Regret with Anguish and Despair to see it self stript of all its ancient Comforts and to have nothing remaining that is Comfortable To be full of flaming desires and to have nothing wherewith to quench the raging Flame All that is present without the Favour of God is but like Grass upon the House tops it flatters us with a false opinion of its high station it looks fair and green but the mower has not wherewith to fill his hand it quickly fades and withers away but with God is the Fountain of Life Psal 36.9 a Fountain that supplies us with vital streams and ceases not to refresh till it mingle with the River of delight that makes glad the City of God Psal 46.4 The glories of this World are soon covered with night and darkness but he is a Sun that ever shines and from whence issues nothing but cheering and reviving Light Hence a little that a righteous man hath it better than the Revenue of many Wicked Prov. 15.16 Better is little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith His little is given him with a Blessing and their multitude of things attended with a Curse His Temporal Mercies are the forerunners of Eternal he tasts a sweetness in what he has because he is sure that it flows from the Love of God He can eat his bread with joy and drink his wine with a chearful heart because his works are accepted Eccles 9.7 2. The Favour of God is Life in all temporal Wants and Afflictions No Affliction can be born if a man do not see his Fatherly Goodness orders and directs the most sharp and bitter Cup. How can a man hold out in trouble when he knows not but it may be to him the beginning of Sorrows With what grief must he weep that knows not that his tears shall ever be wiped away How deeply must he sigh that looks upon his stroke to be the stroke of an Enemy and the chastisement of a Cruel one Jer. 30.14 15. But now the Favour of God reconciles the Soul to his most severe and mysterious Dispensations and teaches it to be silent under his hand and to believe that though he is angry now yet he will not be so for ever When a poor Soul looks round about and sees vexation and trouble over all the World this Favour of God encourages him to look above where he finds a calm and rest When the men in whom he most confided prove deceitful and when from those from whom he expected the greatest kindness he meets with the greatest disappointments then he can have recourse to that God that will never change when he is left alone and forsaken the Divine Presence gives him Honey in the Wilderness and turns his Dungeon into a Paradise what he wants in the Creatures is plentifully supplied in his blessed and glorious Creator And though he be poor in the World yet he is rich in faith Jam. 2.5 Though he have nothing on Earth that he can call his own yet what a sweet support is it to think that God is his what need he care though he be cast off by all the World when God receives him What need he care if they condemn him when thâ— Sovereign Judge of all does acquit him and bids him be of good chear for his sins are forgiven He need not fear all their daring Threats their Insolence and Pride when he can look up with Stephen and see Jesus at the right hand of God to plead his Cause Though he lose his Friends and his Earthly Comforts yet he has an Almighty Friend that he can never lose Every Correction is grateful to a Soul thus priviledg'd for how unpleasant soever it be for the present he knows it shall promote his final good Rom. 8.28 He knows that his heavenly Father tutors him by so sharp a discipline for his own glorious
to get the Victory if Christ pray for us that our faith do not fail Luk. 22.31 VVhere can we go for shelter but unto God our Maker when this Lyon of the Forest does begin to roar how will he terrify and vex us till he that permits him for a while to trouble us be pleased to chain him up again 5. Gods Favour is Life even in Death it self He cures all the disorders of the Soul He weans it from the Body and makes the passage to another World sweet and easie He can take away the frightful ghastly aspect of Death and bestow upon it a pleasant and amiable look and hence it is that sick People are often heard to say Oh! If I had but the Favour and the Love of God I could he freely willing to dye even in this moment If I had but his Love I could bear all these pains and quietly submit though I have restless nights and weary days for then I should be sure of Eternal Rest It is our estrangedness from God that makes us live in bondage all our days and when our time to dye is come makes us so very loth to depart This sense of God's displeasure makes a Death-bed to be a Bed of sorrow and makes Death to be indeed the King of Terrors and who can but tremble when he finds himself leaving this World and knows not what will be his portion in the next That finds himself going to the Judgment-feat but knows not whether he shall be acquitted or condemned there how many times do the very thoughts of Death cut us in our Sickness to the very Soul because our spirits are clouded and our evidence for Salvation is departed even before we depart so that we stand trembling on the borders of Eternity and would fain stay on Earth though we cannot VVhat but the favour of God will help us When our heart and our flesh fails He will be the strength of our heart and our portion for ever Ps 73.26 VVhat but this will attend us through the shady Vale How can we part with our Friends if God be not our Friend How can we leave this Earthly Tabernacle if we have not an House not made with Hands How shall we look upon so vast a Change as that of Time into Eternity if we are not to change this Mortal for a better Life But one smile of the Face of God in that great and concluding-work will keep us that we shall not be afraid to dye one fore-taste of Heaven will make us with undaunted hearts to bid this sinful VVorld adieu we shall then like Moses undress our selves and dye we shall with the same chearfulness go down to the Grave which Jacob went with into Egypt because our Mediator and our elder Brother lives and has made good provision for us VVe shall not be amazed to lie down in the dust when once we have the hope of a blessed and a glorious Resurrection and the day of our death will be a comfortable day if our blessed Lord be then pleased to tell us that on the same day we shall be with him in Paradise CHAP. II. Of Heaven and Hell and of that spiritual death which hath seized the greatest part of the World As also the Reason why Good people are many times very willing to dye and of the inexcusableness and misery of those who are without Gods favour And whence it is that some grow in Grace more than others and are more earnest for a share in the Love of God WHat a blessed and glorious place is Heaven Inf. 1. that is full of God's favour The City bad no need of the sun neither of the moon to shine in it for the glory of God did lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof Rev. 21.23 Rev. 22.2 3 4 5. It is the Land of the Living and 't is no wonder that death shall never enter thither here indeed he is a God that hides himself he is hid under the veil of the Creatures and under abundance of mysterious Providences for tho' his Throne be established in Righteousness yet Clouds and Darkness are round about it Psal 97.7 Beams of his Glory do every where break forth through every Creature Providence Law and Ordinance of his yet much of his Glory that shines in the Creation is hid by a train of second Causes through which few look to the first his work in the World is carried on in a mystery his Interest lives but is deprest they who are devoted to him are supported indeed by his invisible hand but are in the mean time low for the most part and afflicted But in that Eternal state Mr. How of delighting in God p. 353. the Veil shall be rent and he will in a brighter manner shew himself his Glory will shine out with direct and pleasant Beams to all the beholding and admiring eyes he will there give forth the full and satisfying Communications of his Love that will chear and satisfy and refresh a vast multitude of grateful and adoring spirits Here the Souls of good Men are deprest by the misrepresentations of Satan and by the frequent jealousies and suspitions of their own guilty souls but there they shall see him as he is and which will encrease their joy see him to be their own God for ever No storms shall there molest their Peace nothing shall interrupt their Eternal Calm Not a vain tumultuous repining or uneasie thought shall assault their peaceful and quiet hearts for ever No more shall they cry out Is his Mercy clean gone Has he forgotten to be gracious for they shall be with him in his own presence Here his Family is composed of several distressed mourning Children and when some praise him their praises are disturb'd by the groans of others or their own sins but there they shall all be clothed with praise and none shall be sick or dye If we did but know that there were a place in the World where the people never dye the love that all have of Life would put them upon many inquiries how they might get thither This Countrey is Heaven thence death and fear and consternation is banished for ever and thither should we lift up our eyes thither should we direct our hearts in Heaven the favour of God shines with an unclouded brightness they that are Inhabitants of that holy place are employed in an honourable attendance on their mighty King they need not they desire not any of those enjoyments which are here below no more than favourites of their Prince desire a meaner station or a poor Cottage or some obscure and forlorn retreat And alas what are all our pleasures and our most splendid entertainments to that Bread and to those spiritual and intellectual Joys which Angels and glorified souls feed on The first hour the first day of joy there is better than an Age of joys here below if one day spent in his Courts in his Love and Praises here
them from pain and yet suffer your Souls to languish and pine away If you did but know how miserable you are without the Favour of God it would create a vast horror in your thoughts How deeply would you groan if you were but sensible of the vast load of Guilt that is upon you How earnestly would you cry for help if you did but see whither you are sinking and where you are like to be for ever How would you start if you did but perceive that the Devil flatters you that he may destroy you That it is his work you do his Lusts that you embrace his Designs that you comply withal There is no Dungeon so doleful no Place so full of Torment no Fire so hot as that whither he leads you and which will be more insupportable to you because you let him lead you captive at his own pleasure If we receive any Life from God let us bewail our Dead let us pity them that have no pity for themselves let our eyes and our hearts melt and be troubled for them tho they will not shed any tears for the sadness of their own case Inf. 7. Hence we see the Reason why some grow more in Grace than others do and are also more serviceable in the world Fear and sadness damp and contract our Spirits but joy and comfort dilate them and cause them to act with spriteliness and vigour The Displeasure of God weakens the Faculties and Powers of the Soul by the terrible apprehensions which it is then fill'd withal but his favour-bringing life fills it with defight and Faith is then strong and unmov'd when it can behold God his Son and the Promises all as her own Portion Love is then genuine and durable when it has a warm sense of the Love of God and under the constraining power and force of this the heart is dissolved into a tender Sorrow and a true Repentance It is the shining of the Face of God that makes us active for his Glory and unwearied in his Service And under his pleasant and reviving Beams the Christian travels with delight and haste to his dearly-beloved home But when this Favour is eclips'd this Sun covered with a cloud then the poor Christian is as one who travels in the darkness of the night and has lost his way he is full of fear and perplexity and so is the deserted Soul but the first Beam of day makes him to go on and to finish his Course and then is accomplished that promise Isa 35.1 2. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad and the desart shall rejoice and blossom as the rose it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing c. The Favour of God is as dew upon the grass it causes fruit where there was nothing but withering and decay before According as he is pleased to favour us or to be displeased so there is either a great Ease or Restlesness and Indisposition on our Spirits His Favour excites Admiration and Praise and Love and Joy and with these cheerful Affections a man may do a great deal for God Whereas most usually with our departing Comforts does our strength depart what can we do for the Salvation of others if we are under great fear that we our selves shall not be saved How can we work in the Vineyard if we fear that our Master will in Anger cast us out Psal 51.11 Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy holy Spirit from me v. 12. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit And so it is as it 1. Delivers us from those Lusts and Corruptions which chain us down that we cannot run the way of God's Commandments 2. As it keeps us from being intangled with the affairs of the world that subjugate and enthral our minds 3. As it is in us a Spirit of Adoption and frees us from those slavish Fears of the Justice and Sovereignty and Holiness and Power of God which overwhelm our hearts Job 22.26 Then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty and shalt lift up thy face unto God Thou shalt pray unto him and he shall hear thee It gives us access to the Throne of Grace it takes off our unwillingness to and our restraint in holy Duties it gives a freedom and enlargement of Soul and it is then as the flower that opens it self to the shining Sun †See Mr. Burrough's Gracious Spirit p. 20. Tho a man suffer no alteration in his Constitution or his outward appearance yet if God withdraw all greatly decays within When the Spirit came upon Saul 1 Sam. 10.6 He prophesied and was turned into another man He was inspired with greater courage and had a disposition more Heroical and better qualified but when this Spirit was taken away an evil Spirit succeeded in his room then Saul was no more the same nothing but fear and horror and despair and vexation raged in his breast he was in all respects a very miserable man he had the name of a King but was divested of all Royal Qualities when he was left of the God of Israel and went to ask Advice of the Witch of Endor see his own Complaint 1 Sam. 28.15 I am sore distressed for the Philistines make war against me and God is departed from me and answereth me no more neither by prophets nor by dreams Does not every Christian find it by his experience that he is not the same in his Duties at one time that he is at another Sometimes his heart melts under a sense of the Love of God and he feels such a vital Influence of the Spirit that it seems as the Foretaste of Heaven he seems to be even swallowed up with Joy he seems to be within the Courts of God and to set his foot within the Land of Promise Oh who can express the sweetness that spreads over all the panting Soul when it sees the Face of God! it lives then indeed but hardly knows whether it be in the body or out of it so many wonders of Grace and Mercy does it view And yet this same person that is now in Triumph at the Gate of Heaven may at another time be bewailing its own case and in deep sorrows as at the very door of Hell When the Dew of God ceases to fall upon it it looks no more so fresh and so fair but sighs and groans for her Saviour tho a little while ago she could say I am my beloved's and he is mine The same person may look upon God as a Judge that before thought him to be a Father The Life as one says which God gives his servants may be weakned but 't is never extinguish'd there is oftentimes upon them a spiritual fainting tho not a total Death when the Spirit does not produce any chearful motion nor display any of his usual Beams of Light so that they are tost between Fear and Hope between the
doth behold the upright Psalm 11.7 He encourages the weakness of that Soul that is tender and afraid of sin he will not treat you with the kindness that he shews to his honourable Subjects if you take part with his open enemies Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you Joh. 15.14 Obedience is the genuine effect of so excellent and so near an alliance and 't is the proof and evidence thereof Joh. 14.21 He that hath my Commandments and doth them he it is that loveth me and he that loveth me shall be loved of my father and I will love him And vers 23. We will come unto him and make our abode with him A Promile full of Mercy Words that have in them all that is desirable that are big with consolation What can a soul wish for more than to have God the Father and the Son to have them for his Friends for his Guest and not only to tarry for a night or a day but for ever Not to comfort him with a transient visit which were a great privilege but to dwell with him Oh! blessed is the House that hath such Inhabitants and blessed is the Soul who is thus honoured and esteemed By obeying his Commands you shew your selves to be vessels of Honour and when you are so he will at one time or other fill you brim-full of Joy If you serve the Devil you can by no means have that satisfaction that flows from the hope of being a Son of God and an Heir of Heaven And tho' his Showers fall upon the Sands as well as on the manured and cultivated ground yet till you are fruitful you cannot expect to be refresh'd with his gentle and comfortable Dews There are peculiar influences of his Grace that fall upon his inclosed Gardens and not upon the Deserts If favour should be shewed to the wicked yet will he not learn righteousness Isa 26.10 It shines like the Sun on a Rock he is no more fruitful no more tender-hearted than he was before if you embrace your ancient Sins if you hold on your correspondence with your former Lusts God will not pour the oyl of gladness into such old and depraved hearts if we go on in sin we violate our own serenity and raise within our breasts a multitude of storms whereas Psal 119.165 Great peace have they which love thy Law and nothing shall offend them And so Gal. 6.16 As many as walk according to this rule peace be on them and mercy Isa 64.15 Thou meetest him that rejoyceth and worketh righteousness By these means you shall obtain the favour of God and when you have so obtained it CHAP. IV. Shewing that we ought to take heed that we do not lose the favour of God after we have once enjoyed it and what we are to do that we may not fall into a condition so miserable at this would be 7. TAke great heed that you do not lose the favour of God again It is true indeed that those whom God once loves he loves to the end they are not suffered totally to be miserable but yet they may lose the sense of his favour and all the comfort that once flowed from the pleasant thought That he was their God Those that have sailed with a very prosperous gale may upon their negligence be tost with very many storms and may be terrified with a Thousand dangers and calamities whilest they do not see the Sun Moon and Stars for many days and nights together and tho' they do not at length fall short of Heaven yet they may travel as through a Wilderness in their way thither and not meet with those clusters of the promised Land with those joys and comforts that others meet withal The Spirit may suspend his influences and leave the Conscience in a very lamentable slate and take away the peace that he once gave so that the poor soul in that condition cannot but look upon it self with as sad an eye as if it were a reprobate and great difficulties and dangers there are ere the spirit return again to repair the breaches which our sin hath made The disorders of our souls afterwards remain a great while and it will cost us vast labour to remove them as when some River that is very muddy has overflowed the neighbouring Fields tho' it do return to its ordinary Channel yet it nevertheless leaves those places all covered with slime and dirt The least Eclipse of the Face of God is a very formidable thing 't will shake all the powers of your souls and put you into such terror as will seem to be like Hell it self If you be so foolish as upon slight temptations to forfeit his favour you ll dearly pay for that folly you may do that in a moment that may fill you with astonishment and sorrows all your days and make you go at last mourning to the Grave You may by a sudden fall have your Bones broken and it may be never again recover your former ease and strength do not therefore wound nor bruise your selves If you are not very careful that Candle of the Lord that shines upon your Tabernacle may be removed and then you I know by a sad experience that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against him Tho' you now do not question your title to Salvation yet you shall then be full of doubts and fears tho' you are now looking to God as to a Friend yet you shall then be forced to look upon him as an Enemy and think your afflictions not the rebukes of a Father but of an angry Judge He will be indeed the same God still as full of Goodness and of Love but to you he will be as a Fountain sealed up and your poor mourning souls like the Mountains of Gilboa curst and barren there will be no Dew nor Rain upon them Tho' you are never so flourishing now yet then the sharpness of the Winter will blast all your Fruit that the Fig-tree shall not blossom neither shall there be any fruit in the Vine and the labour of the Olive shall fail Consider how great was the sorrow of David when God was for a season departed from him How many were his Tears how heavy his Complaints and how sad his Thoughts Tho' he was as 't is usually judged of a sanguine and a merry temper and had a peculiar skill in Musick which is the usual allayer and charm of Grief yet in the sense of God's displeasure his Joy was turned into Lamentation his Harp and those Songs with which he had driven away the melancholly of Saul could not stifle or chase away trouble from his own soul the Storm was too loud to listen to those softer Airs the Wound was too deep to be Cured by those gentle and easie Methods Beware lest you lose the sense of the Favour and the Love of God lest you make your Heavenly Father to visit you with painful Rods and severe Afflictions Take
that Favour of his that is so graciously bestowed and so dearly bought Be circumspect and walk closely with your God beware of every thing that may stir up your Father's Anger for though he will not throw off so kind a Relation yet his Wrath is very terrible I beseech you to be very fearful of all inward backslidings and of spiritual decays and lest the warmth of your first burning love to God wear away again take heed lest the death that is in his displeasure steal upon you by degrees and lest from a less degree of zeal there come a total indisposition on your hearts for when you once begin to slide the descent is easie as soon as ever you are sleepy rouse your selves by those powerful motives that you may fetch from the Word of God from his Promises and from his Threats slothful Servants will never have their Master's Approbation you have good encouragement manifold assistances and the prospect of a great reward Is your joy your Peace your present Consolation and your Hope nothing worth if it be then let no Dangers no Difficulties whatsoever make you to part with it as knowing that it may cost you dear before you obtain it if it once be lost Take heed that you do not begin to lose your awful sense of God that you do not grow bold with sin take heed that you comply not with the Devil who being forsaken of God would have you to be so and who being shut out of Heaven would hinder your arrival there or at least make you to go uncomfortably thither if he cannot hinder your walking towards that Jerusalem he will endeavour to make you halt and to go with pain thither But to prevent this and all other his malicious Designs be you fervent in the spirit serving the Lord And upon his first withdrawing be you restless till you find him whom your Souls love As you now flourish in the Courts of God take heed that you do not blast your own Fruit seeing you are fixed on the Rock of Ages take heed that you do not pull up your own Anchor and so your Vessel be driven on the Sands and your hope shipwrackt Make no excuses for your not working hard use no delays apply your selves to the most active and zealous endeavours that so you may prevent your own sorrow For the field of the sluggard will be all grown over with thorns and nettles will cover the face thereof and the stone-wall hereof will he broken down Prov. 24.31 These Thorns are evil desires that will spring up of their own accord without sowing they will encrease of themselves and then you will be exposed without defence to every Invader and to all the Birds of prey and consider That as one says * Symmond 's Deserted Soul p. 523. the Duties of godliness are not only a debt to God but a reward to us and in our sloth there is not unfaithfulness only but ingratitude both the Majesty and the Mercy of God is despised Remember what the Church saith Cant. 3.1 By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth I sought him but I found him not c. She did not find him for she sought amiss no wonder she was not blessed with his presence when she sought it in such a lazy manner and therefore tho' she took pains afterwards yet she did not meet with him He chastised her former negligence with a longer absence tho' there was no place which she did not frequent no person of whom she did not ask and yet heard no tidings of him He that suffered on the Cross for her might justly expect that she should leave her Bed and quit her ease for him Cant. 5. from v. 2 to 9. 5. That you may not lose the favour of God which is your Life take heed of an inordinate affection to this World and sensual Delights If the care and business the riches and projects of this World take up your hearts and the flower of your time you will have but few thoughts of him and consequently but a little Love the more you advance in the mortification of your Appetites and your dearest Lusts the more chearful influences you 'l find of his Grace Beware that you love not any thing in this World too much no Child no Relation no Creature-Comfort lest he tear away these Idols from you and the loss of an over-prized enjoyment vex your souls He will have your whole hearts and your must not think that he will show you his favour if you only give him one half and share the other amongst the several objects that your mistaken affections doat upon If you prize this favour of God as you ought you 'l not too vehemently desire any present good nor too sorrowfully bewail its departure from you your Life will be in God and not bound up in any of your Friends lest when they dye your peace and comfort dye at the same time If the World be set upon the Throne the disorder that is thereby offered to God will cause him to frown and to fetch the Rebel and Usurper thence tho with your smart and grief Sensual pleasures will clog and vitiate your appetite that you shall not so well taste nor apprehend the sweetness that there is in God if you have seen his face the beauties and the glories of it will make all the World appear to you as a mean and despicable thing as the Woman that was clothed with the Sun had the Moon under her feet You will see such an attractive excellence in Christ that you will esteem him as the chief of ten thousands and the tempting fair-spoken World will not be able to lead Captive that heart which you have already given to a better Lord and whilest others feed upon Husks you will be treated with the Bread of your Fathers House whilest others pursue the drossy short-liv'd pleasures of sense you will have the delights of Angels and of an Eternal Heaven to feed upon and your splendid satisfaction will keep you from envying them whose ignorance makes them to be content with lower fare and who when they might fly as with the Wings of Eagles chuse to grovel in the dust and as the Moon then is Eclipsed when the Earth shadows it and hinders its admission of the light of the Sun that makes it visible and as in such an Eclipse the nearer that Planet is to the Earth the more durable is its darkness so if we suffer an Eclipse of God's Favour it is when this Earth interposes between him and us when its false allurements and promises turn our Eyes downward which should be always lifted up to that glorious Sun by whose light we see This World is a more dangerous Enemy than we usually take it to be and therefore the Apostle says If any man love it the love of the father is not in him 1 Joh. 2.15 Its Joys are like those false Fires that wander up
there are several ways like to this way that have a resemblance to it and yet vastly differ from it there is the Peace of God and there is the Peace of Satan it is the design of that malicious Spirit to let you be quiet in your Sins that you may not see their evil nor feel their bitterness and then you save him the labour to make you miserable for you make your selves so Suffer not him to blind your eyes nor to lead you to destruction whilst you never so much as make one halt nor startle at it You hear others complaining of their Sins and crying out that they are forsaken and undone and miserable and you thank God you have no trouble your Consciences are still and quiet I beseech you take heed that it be founded upon good Reasons that it prove not to be only a short slumber and not a lasting peace It may be you never doubted of God's love to you and it is very well if you have no cause to doubt You think it may be that such as are in Soul distresses are so because they have committed greater sins than other men and that Vengeance therefore like the Viper on Paul's Hand fastens on them because they have been guilty of some very great and monstrous Sin but you must know the Judgments of God are too great a deep for you to fathom he has wise Ends in those severe Dispensations though those that are at ease may have committed as great Sins as those that are in trouble many times a great Calm precedes an Earthquake many times the Sky is very clear just before the Clouds gather and the Lightning and Thunder comes Beware lest you be unsafe whilst you are most confident Beware lest you go down to the Grave as thousands do with a foolish and ungrounded hope Remember the foolish Virgins and that of the Apostle 1 Thess 5.3 CHAP. VI. Shewing by what means we may know whether we have God's Favour or not And first by the graces of his Spirit though the acting of them is neither so strong nor so comfortable at one time as at another And secondly by our hatred of Sin and our being satisfied with all his Providences THE next thing is to Examine and to try whether you have indeed this Favour of God in which is Life There are a great many people that think God to be their Friend when he is their Enemy and a great many troubled distressed Christians think that he is their Enemy when he is their Friend Let us I beseech you be very careful in a thing that so nearly concerns both our present and our future peace Let us take heed that neither the Devil nor our own hearts cheat us in a matter that is of so vast a consequence and we have need of the greater care because if we should flatter our selves with a foolish hope that we are God's Favourites when we are not truly so as our vain Expectations would leave us at the last so the Ruine that it would bring forth would come with a double weight upon us for to fall from great hopes is worse than never to have hoped at all to be miserable after we have thought our selves happy gives a more acute and bitter sting to that misery There is many an one in Hell now groaning under the Eternal Wrath of God that thought he should have seen the Smiles of his Face and not have been terrified with his Frowns that thought he should have walkt in the Streets of the New Jerusalem in liberty and light and peace whereas he is now in Chains of darkness and in anguish inexpressible With what tenderness with what caution and with what holy fear should we manage such an Affair as this with what solemnity ought I to proceed when I am enquiring whether I am a Favourite of God or not whether I belong to the Living or yet remain among the Dead whether I am an Heir of Heaven or an utter stranger to the blessed place and the God that makes it to be so blessed as it is And there is not one person that reads this but has cause to make such an Enquiry and to say with himself I feel by the warmth and vigorous motion of my spirits that I have a natural Life I eat and drink and sleep and take abundance of care and use a thousand projects to maintain this same dear and pleasant Life but whilst my Body is indulged and thrives is not my poor slighted Soul in a state of death and whilst men shew me favour and are friendly to me have I the favour of that God that is to be my Judge and who is either the best Friend or the worst Enemy Now in this matter we may proceed by such Rules as these 1. Have you those graces of the Spirit wrought in you which are the certain pledges and tokens of his Favour Are you rich in faith and yet poor in spirit Are you hungring and thirsting after Righteousness And when you find your own best Actions fall vastly short of the strict and pure demands of the Divine Law do you prize and seek the Righteousness that is in Christ Is that Sin now bitter to your taste and grievous to your thoughts which was once highly esteemed and prized Do you hate and bewail that with a relenting spirit that was once your dearly beloved and your joy Are you mortified to this World and do you walk humbly as wisely considering how weak you are and how liable to be surprized and to fall always considering that you are very sinful and very frail These Graces of Faith Mortification Humility and the like are certain tokens of the Love of God and in a Soul thus qualified he delights to fix his Habitation Isa 57.15 in such a Soul there is a Heaven begun and it not only lives but will attain new strength and proceed to further degrees of life though it now flourish in the Courts of the Lord yet his Light shining upon it will cause it to take the deeper root and to look with a more amiable freshness the Self-conceited shall miss abundance of refreshments that a Soul so lowly will meet withall as those showers of Rain that slide away from the tops of Mountains descend into the Valleys and make them more fruitful Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Liberty He does not give this to remain for a small space only but to remain with his Servants till their work be done it is called the earnest of our Inheritance Ephes 1.14 An Earnest you know is part of the Payment not to be returned again and we are said to be sealed with this Spirit unto the day of Redemption Eph. 4.30 i. e. that is as one explains it God does by that distinguish Believers from other men as Seals are employed to make a difference from other things that are not so much to be regarded and as we seal our own Goods or Papers
think our Sighs better than Praises and Hallelujahs Let us hasten in our desires from this diseased World which by its low scituation is apt to suffer an inundation of innumerable miseries and prepare for that World where there is an Eternal Health and Joy CHAP. IV. Shewing what dreadful apprehensions a soul has that is under desertion and in several respects how very sad an doleful its condition is from the Author 's own Experience THE next thing I design to insist upon is To shew that the time of God's forsaking of a soul is a very dark and mournful time 't is not only night but a weeping stormy night and it may not be unuseful to you who have it may be hitherto lived in the beams and chearful light of day to know what passes in this forrowful and doleful night And in this matter I will not borrow Information from others but give you My own Experience 1. In this night the deserted soul it overwhelmed with continual thoughts of the Holiness and Majesty and Glory of the Lord nor does it think of him with any manner of delight according to that of Asaph Psal 77.3 I remembred God and was troubled I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed And in how deplorable a Case is such a Soul that cannot think of its God and its Creator but with grief and sorrow That fixes upon nothing in him but his terrible and severe Attributes In other Cases when a Man is distressed on Earth and beholds vexation and disquiet there he can lift up his eyes towards Heaven and see joy and comfort for him there but in this woful Case there is neither the light of the Sun the Moon or the Stars for many days the face of God is hid and covered with a dreadful Cloud Job 31.23 Destruction from God was a terror to me and because of his highness I could not endure Secondly The deserted soul in this mournful night does look upon God at its enemy and as intending its hurt and ruin by the sharpness of his dispensations and this makes it to be incapable of receiving any consolation from the Creatures for will it say to them Alas if God be mine enemy as I apprehend him to be which of you can be my friend I have a dreadful sound of his displeasure in my ears and which of you can bring me any glad tidings If his power his Irresistible power be against me who can keep off the killing-blow Job 19.6 Know now that God hath overthrown we and hath compassed me with his net he hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass and he hath set darkness in my paths And so v. 9 10 11. and Psal 88.7 Thy wrath lyeth hard upon me and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves If in such desertion God were apprehended to be upon a design of the future happiness and welfare of the soul it would bear up with courage or with hope but having no such belief it must needs sink and languish The stroke that wounds us in such a case is the more painful as edged with a sense of wrath Psal 102.9 10. I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping because of thine indignation and thy wrath for thou hast lifted me up and cast me down Thus does the weeping person vent his sorrows God never gives to his people such a bitter Cup but he mingles love and mercy with it but alas I taste nothing but gall and wormwood nothing but misery and vexation He is with his people but he has forsaken me he has cast me into a fiery furnace where I am daily burnt and scorcht and he is not with me there He is unto me as a Roaring Lion and who can turn away his powerful wrath Ruth 1.20 The Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me I have often heard that it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God and I now find it to be so all the wrath of men is nothing to his one frown of his is more intolerable than all their rage and persecution Job 16.12 13 14. I was at ease but he hath broken me asunder he hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces and set me up for his mark his Archers compass me round about he cleaveth my reins asunder and doth not spare he poureth out my gall upon the ground Job 10.16 17. Oh what anguish what desolation is caused in the soul by such thoughts as these I dare not says the mourning person look up to Heaven for there I see how great a God I have against me I dare not look into his word for there I see all his threats as so many barbed arrows to strike me to the heart I dare not look into the Grave because thence I am like to have a doleful Resurrection And what can a poor Creature do that apprehends the Almighty to be his enemy It is a common thing to say why do you so lament and mourn you have many mercies left many friends that pray for you and that pity you Alas what help is there in all this it God himself be gone nothing is then lookt upon as a mercy And as for the prayers of others will the distressed person say they can do me no good unless I have faith and I find I have none at all for that would purifie and cleanse my heart and I do nothing else but sin and God as he is holy must set himself against me his Enemy 3ly In this doleful night the soul hath no evidence at all of its former grace so that in this night the Sun is not only set but there is not one Star appears such an one looks upon himself as altogether void of the Grace of God he looks upon all his former duties to have been insincere or hypocritical he feels his heart hardned at present and concludes that it was never tender finds himself at present listless and indisposed and concludes that he never had any true life and motion and expresses his sorrows after this or the like manner I thought I had belong'd to God but now I find I am none of his I thought I had been upright but now I see I was mistaken the storm is come and that house that I built upon the sand is now washt away those that are Christ's he will enable to persevere to the end but I am fallen from grace I am an Apostate if I had any share in the Intercession of the Great Redeemer he would not leave me thus sad and desolate I thought that I had been planted in his Vineyard and brought forth fruit but now I am cut down as a barren tree Oh how greatly have I been deceived that imagined my self to be an Heir of Heaven and am now seizd with the pangs of Hell I now see that I was never right never born again never renewed by the Spirit never changed from death to life And Oh
what will become of me that flattered my own soul to ruin that thought my self safe when I was not and well when I was diseased To come to misery after I thought so long of happiness is a double misery I am like after all my prayers my endeavours and my hopes to be a Reprobate and a cast-away And such a soul concludes it self to be in a condition much more dangerous than they are that never named the name of Christ nor ever pretended to Religion because it reckons their misery will be much more tollerable than its own it judges it self to be an Hypocrite and then all the threats that are made against such do every moment overwhelm it with inexpressible confusion Thus the Graces of the Spirit and the former fruits of holiness are not discerned in this sad and mournful night Fourthly During this sadness the soul cannot thinly of Christ himself with any comfort For thus it argues He will be a Saviour to none but those that believe I have no faith and therefore he will be no Saviour to me he that is to his Servants as the Lamb of God will be to me as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah he that deals gently with them will tear me to pieces I have heard of his sufferings and his death but if his blood has not cleansed and purified me I am like to perish for all that I heard his voice and I disobeyed it I heard his Gospel and did not improve it and now even the glad tidings of Salvation are not so to me I did not know in the long day that I had the things that belong'd unto my peace and now they are hid from mine eyes Now I have to deal with the great and the dreadful God himself and I have none to plead my cause Oh how can I resist his power or bear his wrath Christ indeed called me but I did not open to him and now he calls no more he seems to be angry and enraged against me for my disobedience and tho I have cried sometimes Have mercy on me thou Son of David he passes away and does not regard my cryes And O what shall I do when he comes in the Clouds of Heaven when I am to stand at his Bar and to be punished as an unbeliever To others that will be a day of Refreshment but what will it be to me the thoughts of it are now amazing And thus by a sense of unbelief the deserted soul is plunged in the waves and sees no way of escape and by this Unbelief it thinks of God as absolutely considered and the thoughts of him are as terrible as if there were no Mediator and it is continually saying I have all my sins to answer for and have none to undertake for me I am condemned and have none to procure a pardon and salvation for me Fifthly In this Night the soul is full of terror and how can it be otherwise when every thought of God and of Christ overwhelms it Job 6.4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me the poyson whereof drinketh up my spirit the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me Such arrows that are shot by an Almighty arm with a great power and force they must needs being so directed pierce very deep deep and painful must the wounds be that a God makes and then they are poysoned arrows too that being dipt in his wrath inflame the wounds they make and put the distressed person into pain and anguish inexpressible Night is a time of terror especially in commotions uproars and the like mischiefs Psal 91.5 and in this night it is much more so when a man 's own Conscience discharges a thousand accusations against him for his guilt for then every sin gives a blow and altogether being set in array make a formidable force and when God sets on peculiar impressions of his wrath and it falls upon the naked soul with its scorching burning drops there is not then one quiet thought nor one easie moment all is amazement confusion and wo. Lam. 3.3 Surely against me is he turned he turneth his hand against me all the day A person that is thus distress'd sits and muses on his misery and would gladly find something that might be comfortable but he cannot what he first thinks of is tormenting he changes that uneasie thought for another and that is as tormenting as the first there is a circulation of flaming disquiet thoughts and such a person dwells as in a nery Furnace or as in a thicket of briers which way soever he turns himself he is pained and wounded all the terrible places of Scripture that are made against the wicked do continually present themselves to his consideration and he thinks that he shall most certainly have their portion every thing in nature that is frightful frights him as still believing God to be against him from all the terrible things imaginable he fetches something that does still more afflict him and thus he will be imagining Suppose I were to be sawn asunder to be burnt to be flea'd alive or to be torn to pieces Oh what a sad thing would that be and yet I am in a case worse than all this for I am now continually racked with guilt and am like to be in Hell for ever The terrors of the Lord we may seel indeed but we cannot express them they are so very terrible they wound our most sensible and tender part they cause our very souls to pine and languish away they fix our minds to the contemplation of every thing that is sad and doleful they fill us with confusion and Heman says Ps 88.15 they are terrors that compass us round about they seize upon every faculty and distress us in every part to have God against us his holiness to dazle us his Power to overthrow us his Law to condemn us our Consciences to accuse us is the sum of terrors Sixthly Fear is another occasion of sorrow and the night is usually a time of horror we are apt then to be imposed upon with false as well as with real dangers We can think of nothing but out misery and the continual unavoidable thinking of it makes us more miserable Job 13.21 these fears are as so many Fetters from which we cannot fly and when we think to shake them off we put our selves to more pain If I say I will forget my complaints I will leave off my heaviness and comfort my self I am afraid of all my sorrows I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent Job 9.27 28. we are frighted with the Greatness and Majesty of God with the Glory of his Being and the Thunder of his Power We are frighted with the view of our innumerable sins and with the dangers that attend them the thoughts of Heaven fright us because we think we have lost that blessed place and the thoughts of Hell are no less frightful because we think we shall soon be there
the thoughts of life are frightful because t is with anguish and horror that we live nor can we bear the thoughts of death because we dare not die Seventhly 'T is a night of weeping to deserted souls because they find no heart to pray and no life in prayer they fall upon their knees and cover the Altar of the Lord with tears but he seems not to regard them they beg and he gives them no relief they cry and he does not answer and this fills them with shame and grief Lam. 3.7 8. the thoughts of such poor people are in a continual hurry and so are very full of wandrings in the performance of their duty Grief by saddening the spirits destroys the freedom of our speech for joy is the mother of Eloquence and fluency and when they would move up towards Heaven this sorrow damps their vigor and makes them that they cannot fly and finding they are still perplex'd even after prayer and still as uncomfortable as before they are apt to throw it off and say It is vain to pray as Saul 1 Sam. 28.15 God is departed from me and answers me no more And sorrow is naturally a very dull and sluggish thing a man has no heart to go about any work when he is very sad and this faintness occasions a new trouble we are vext when we do not pray and when we would we cannot Sorrows damp our faith our love and our hope and so spoil our duties for without these they are without life and without acceptance and sometimes our grief is so violent that it finds no vent it strangles us and we are overcome I am so troubled that I cannot speak Psal 77.4 It is with us in our desertions as with a man that gets a slight hurt at first he walks up and down but not looking betimes to prevent a growing mischief the neglected wound begins to fester or to gangrene and brings him to greater pain and loss so it is with us many times in our Spiritual sadness when we are first troubled we pray and pour out our souls before the Lord but afterwards the waters of our grief drown our crys and we are so overwhelmed that if we might have all the world we cannot pray or at least we can find no enlargement no life no pleasure in our prayers and God himself seems to take no delight in them and that makes us more sad Psal 22.1 Eighthly Such have no patience wherewith to bear their evils Oh who is he that can bear the wrath of God! one thought of him as a reconciled Father would sweeten the most heavy Cross but one view of him as an enemy causes all our strength to depart and melts our very souls In bodily evils the mind lends its assistance and furnishes the natural spirits with courage but when its self is weakned and troubled what is it able to do the wounded soul is most commonly fretful and impatient the sight of Heaven inspires our breasts with vital heat and makes us quiet and submissive under every dispensation but the daily sight and fear of Hell fills us with tumult and disorder the language of deserted people for the most part is in groans and in their prayers they chatter as a Crame or a Swallow or mourn as a Dove Isa 38.14 Job 13.20 21. Ninthly They usually see no prospect of relief or deliverance and that encreases the sorrows of their doleful Night they are covered in the deep pit and see no way to fly from it Job 9.27 28. they are wounded and carry their wounds with them where they go they are continually fixing their mournful eyes upon destruction and the Grave Job 7.7 8. they have indeed now and then some intermissions but they are like the small breathings and refreshments of a person that is newly taken off the Rack to be carried to the Rack again The Tears of these poor deserted people are not like the Tears of Mary in the Garden for as soon as she began to weep she beheld the Lord He quickly came to her help and changed her Sorrows into Consolations and his sweet Voice did in a moment run through all the powers of her soul and made her heart to leap with Joy and scattered light upon it But in this case he suffers his Servants to be tost for a long and doleful night ere he be pleased to speak and to calm the storms so that they are as persons straitly besieged and have no relief at hand as persons athirst and have no Water hungry and have no Bread Psal 113.4 I looked on my right hand and beheld but there was no man that would know me refuge failed me Tenthly This Night of weeping is the more sorrowful because it is the time of Satan's Cruelty When our Spirits are broken with long and painful afflictions then this Cowardly Spirit sets upon us he knows that he can easily perplex us when we are already thrown upon the Ground When the Sun sets then the Beasts of the Field creep abroad When God is departed then the Devil comes He comes and torments us with innumerable fears comes and Triumphs over us insults and says Where is now your God What think you now of Sin What is now become of all your Hearing your Reading and your many Prayers You thought to have escaped my Power and now I have you within my reach now remember that at such or such a time you sinned and therefore God has forsaken you you weep and your Tears are just for you are miserable and are like to be with me for ever He makes use of our sore Afflictions to represent God to us as Tyrannical and as one that will certainly destroy us and it is our grief and our misery that we have so little in our desertions to answer to him When we really believe that God is departed from us What can we say How does this Roaring Lion most cruelly molest us when our Glory and our Strength is gone though at other seasons we can oppose his malice and confidently say The Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee He is indeed a knowing and a subtile Spirit he knows our weakness sees our trouble and urges even the very Scriptures and Providences of God upon us to our disadvantage and that with a marvellous importunity and diligence He shoots at us with fiery Darts that are extreamly painful and comes to shoot them when we are under a sense of God's displeasure which is like thrusting of a Red Iron into a Wound that is already very sore It pleases the Devil to hear us groan and to see us sad and when we are already pressed down with our Evils he will be sure to throw upon us more weight our Groans are his Musick and when we wallow in Ashes drown our selves in Tears and spread our Hands for help and roar till our Throat is dry he gluts his cruel heart with looking on our woes it is the pleasantest sight
to him to see God hiding himself from his Child and that Child broken with fears torn in pieces with Griefs made a Brother to Dragons a Companion to Owls under restless Anxieties perpetual Lamentations feeble and sore broken their Tongue cleaving to their Jaws their Bowels boyling their Bones burnt with heat and their flesh consumed * Dr. Gilpin on Satans Temptations Part 2. p. 281. He sets upon us after we have been long troubled and weary with our March in the doleful Night And which is the sorrow of our sorrows God may for a long while leave us in his hands and by his usage of Job we know what his temper is Luke 22.31 'T is the hour and the power of darkness Eleventhly Sometimes this Sorrow is mixed with deep Despair It is a Tempestuous and Stormy Night And as Paul said in another case All hope of their being saved is taken away I shall surely perish saith the mourning soul I am damned I am lost for ever I am already as in Hell under unexpressible insupportable pains and amazing fears the Lord will be favourable no more he hath shut up his Bowels and his Tender Mercies he is gone he is gone from me and he is for ever gone No more shall I call him Father no more shall I behold his shining face no more shall I hear his kind and loving Voice he is my Judge and my Enemy and I am afraid he will be so for ever He hath cast me off he hath forsaken me he hath condemned me and I am lost for ever I am now like to have my poor Soul gathered with Sinners and with Bloody Men I am now never like to see that Heaven where I once hoped to go I see nothing but ruin nothing but desolation nothing but blackness of darkness and these unbelieving despairing Conclusions produce hard and strange thoughts of God and an enmity to him in our minds Twelsthly Looking upon their present troubles as an Introduction to more and that these are but the beginning of sorrows Isa 38.13 I reckoned till morning that as a Lion so will he break all my bones from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me How often do we hear such saying Oh! what will become of me should I dye in such a state as I now am in in such horror and amazement where will my guilty soul then go Alas I am no way prepared to give up my accounts and yet am like every moment to be called away If I cannot bear these Pains and this Wrath what shall I do to bear an Eternal Hell If I tremble so now what shall I do when the blow is given and the final Sentence past I have but one change to make and it is like to be a sad and woful change God knows I dare neither live nor dye Oh! what shall I do whither shall I go Stay I must not and depart I dare not I am now sorely tormented and must I be for ever and for ever so and worse too I now see that the Gate is strait and the way is narrow and that there will be few indeed that will be saved The shadows of the Evening are stretched out upon me and what shall I do if it prove an Eternal night For as it is the glory of Faith to shew us future things as if actually present and to give us joy from them so considered So it is the torment of despair to make poor distressed Souls believe they are even as in Hell whilest they are on Earth and that they are actually scorched with that wrath that is to come in greater measures Thirteenthly From all these follow strange discourses and expressions of sorrow they are forced to complain to cry out and to weep bitterly Job 7.11 Therefore I will not refrain my mouth I will speak in the anguish of my spirit I will complain in the bitterness of my soul They speak without any manner of concern or fear things that both vex themselves and make others tremble they scarce care what they say of God or of themselves My soul is weary of my life I will leave my complaint upon my self I will speak in the bitterness of my soul Job 10.1 3. Nay they frequently proceed to wish they had never been born knowing it is better not to be than to be miserable Job 3. Job 10.16 17 18. Nay they may proceed so far as to wish even to be destroyed that they may know the worst Such is the sorrow of their hearts and so violent Job 6.26 Do ye imagine to reprove words and to reprove the speeches of one that is desperate which are as wind And there are two things that make their sorrows more sorrowful 1. As comparing their state with that of others 2. As with their own former state 1. It makes them more sad when they consider the case of others with what peace and joy they live with what hope and comfort whilest they are drowned in sorrows Others says the deserted Soul can sing the Praises of God with delight whilest I am overwhelmed and my Harp is hung upon the Willows others can go into the solemn Assemblies and hear his Word but I am confined in my thick darkness and dare not go thither others have the hope of Heaven and I have the dayly fear of Hell I am like to see others enter into Glory and my self shut out Oh! what have my sins done If I had not greatly sinned I might have had as much quietness and comfort and peace as they and I that am now cut down for my unfruitfulness might have been serving God with as much chearfulness and light and hope as they do 2. When the deserted soul compares its present with its former state To a person in misery it is a great increase of misery to have been once happy It was to David an occasion of new Tears when he remembred his former Joys Psal 42.3 4. Time was says the poor Soul when I thought of God with comfort and when I thought of him as my own God and to lose a God that I once enjoyed is the Loss of all my Losses and of all my Terrors the most Terrible Time was when I could go and pray to him and ease my self in Prayer but now I have no boldness no hope no success in Prayer I cannot call him my Father any more Time was when I could read the Bible and treasure up the Promises and survey the Land of Canaan as my own inheritance but now I dare not look into the Word lest I read my own Condemnation there The Sabbath was formerly to me as one of the days of Heaven but now it is also as well as the rest a sad and a mournful day I formerly rejoyced in the name of Christ I sat under his shadow Cant. 8.10 I was in his eyes as one that found favour but now my soul is like the deserts of Arabia I am scorched with burning heat From
it self David was a man often exercised with sickness and the rage of enemies and in all the instances almost that we meet with in the Psalms we may obobserve * Dr. Gilpin's Treatise of Temptat Part 2. p. 296. that the outward occasions of trouble brought him under an apprehension of the wrath of God for his sin Psal 6.1 2. and the reason given ver 5 6. all his griefs running into to this more terrble thought That God was his enemy as little Brooks lose themselves in a great River and change their name and nature it most frequently happens that when our pain is long and sharp and helpless and unavoidable we begin to question the sincerity of our estate towards God tho at its first assault we had few doubts or fears about it Long weakne s of body makes the soul more susceptible of trouble and uneasie thoughts I would have more largely insisted on the troubles of a deserted soul but that I find them so excellently described by Dr. Gilpin in the second part of his Learned and Experimental Treatise of Satan's Temptations and to that I must refer my Reader as not knowing any other Book that does with so much exactness and truth set forth these inward and Spiritual afflictions I now proceed to enquire why God suffers such a night so tempestuous and so frightful to come upon his servants 1. That they may be conformable to Christ As they are tempted and distress'd so was he as it is with their souls a season of darkness so was it also with his holy soul that was full of amazement under a sense of God's wrath tho he never despaired indeed as many of his servants are apt to do under the violence of sorrow Isa 53.3 He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief When he was so sadned for our sakes 't is reasonable to think that we should sometimes taste of the bitter cup and not always rejoyce and be at ease If God spared not his only Son why should we expect to feel nothing thing but what is very mild and gentle And our Lord has told us The world shall rejoyce but you shall be sorrowful Joh. 16. from v. 20. to v. 22. The sufferings of Christ were to give a satisfaction to the Divine Justice ours are not to be lookt upon with such an eye by these terrors and desertions we learn to value and esteem the love of Christ who was pleased to redeem us when it cost him so very dear and who was pleased not to decline the field of Battel tho it was not to be managed without vast labour and a mighty pain And says the Apostle Rejoyce in as much as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings 1 Pet. 4.13 Secondly Another reason may be Because our fall and our ruin came by pleasure A delight it was tho a very short one that made our forefather Adam Apostatize and it is equitable that we should be cured by something contrary to that which occasioned our disease seeing our joys are dangerous he makes our grief and sorrows to be healthful and Medicinal Thirdly 'T is a very proper season wherein to be sorrowful Among all the other excellent appointments of Providence this is one That there should be a time to weep Eccles 3.4 There is in this weeping-night nothing strange or uncouth all our fathers have in some respect passed under a Cloud and a Cloud that has dissolved in rain and which has given to the good Pilgrims much trouble as they went along 1 Pet. 2.6 Now for a season ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations 'T is no more strange to see mourning in the Church on Earth than to see storms or snow in Winter every thing is beautiful in its season and so this affliction is The night is useful to the world tho not so pleasant as the day our sickly state will not admit us to have nothing but what is grateful to our pallats the wise God therefore many times instead of very pleasant things confers the best upon us we must allow the Great Master of the Family to maintain its order prosperity and welfare by his own methods to chastise us when and how and as long as he pleaseth for his strokes tho very smart yet are still very just and it is in order to some better thing that he designs for us that at the present we are made to grieve for grief as one observes * Dr. Harris's Serm. p. 277. is an imperfect passion not made for it self but for some higher use as also all the rest of the declining affections are as Hatred for Love Fear for Confidence and the like and so Sorrow for Joy unto which it is subservient as launcing and searing are not for themselves but for ease and remedy and a bitter potion is not for sickness which it may cause for a time but for health so Sorrow is made for Joy and Joy is the end of Sorrow and God we may be sure will have his end IV. To shew his own Soveraignty both in afflicting and comforting He causes such a Prince as Job to sit upon a Dunghill in anguish and trouble whilest another sits in unclouded Glory on the Throne He pulls down one and sets up another and does whatsoever he will in Heaven or Earth 't is the withdrawing of his Spirit that is an occasion of mourning to the soul and he variously acts upon it for tho he deny not what is absolutely necessary to the being of the Christian yet he many times does not vouchsafe to give what would make it very comfortable he upon wise Reasons does many times suffer the hearts of his people to be overwhelmed with sorrow when he could make them brim-full of joy as in nature he lets the Earth gape for thirst when he could immediately refresh it with seasonable showers Who in all this mysterious variety of his Administrations can say unto him What dost thou Some Countries are desert barren and forsaken burnt up with scorching heat and fill'd with Beasts of Prey and others are inhabited and fruitful and greatly blessed and he sees fit to have the parts of his Dominions thus qualified Some does he draw with the sweet savour of his Ointments they perceive nothing but what is grateful and refreshing but others he sorely terrifies with the greatness of his Power his Holiness and Majesty and they never eat nor live with pleasure The Captain of our Salvation causes some of his Soldiers to meet with much more formidable dangers than others do they have more sweat and fatigue and toil and painful duty tho he will be sure himself to help them when they are ready to give way the manner of his dispensations to his servants is various both in life and at death Some are chastned all the day long and with sore pain upon their beds too whilest others have no pain at all some go drooping to the Grave bowed down with his
they have also let loose the bridle before me Do not censure these Mysterious Dispensations of God and of his Providence stay till you see the beautiful structure that he will cause to rise from these Ruins When they are tempted by the Devil do not you with Job's Friends play the Devils to and insult over them or encrease their misery It was a very great sin in those good men to aggravate his trouble by their rash discourses and their sinister interpretations of it God himself decided the case for his Servant and told them that they had not spoken of him the things that were right Be not hasty to judge of persons who are weeping nay even despairing for their sins They are in bitterness but such as God may speedily remove He may change their Wilderness into a Paradise He will perfect his Power in their Weakness turn their Evils into Good and their Darkness into a marvellous Light and stay till you see the end of the Lord. He has taken their Comforts from them to improve them and to restore them to them upon better terms He has removed their Pots of Water but will it may be send them back full of Wine For as one observes God is wont to bring most of his greatest ends about by seeming to look quite another way from what he hath a special purpose to bring to pass He seldom proceeds in a direct way to his Ends or in such a way as the Creature would think stood most with Reason to take but when his business lies in the East he takes his Journey as it were full West and when he has a mind to build he batters down when his design is for Light his method and his way is through the greatest darkness Let the Great Instance of Job for ever repress our bold Censures of afflicted and miserable people Who would have thought that a Man so distressed should ever have been delivered That one that had so many pains should be cured one so poor so derided so scorned by Drunkards and Boys and the meanest of the people should be honoured and esteemed again And yet all this happened to him his latter end was better than his beginning he lived to see the Funeral of his Griefs and the Resurrection of his Comforts the Lord that had afflicted him took off his heavy hand and turned again his Captivity He re-established him in all his former splendor and made him for his short darkness to shine with a double glory and gave him twice as much as he had before and for a year or two of trouble gave him many pleasant long years of Joy till he was old and full of days till he was satisfied with living and calmly desired to dye And the scope of the Book of Job is as Dr. Patrick quotes it from Maimonides to establish the great Article of Providence and thereby to preserve us from Error in thinking that God's Knowledg is like our Knowledg or his Intention Providence and Government like our Intention Providence and Government which foundation being laid nothing will seem hard to a Man whatsoever happens nor will he fall into dubious thoughts concerning God whether he knows what is befallen us or no and whether he takes any care of us but rather he will be inflamed the more vehemently in the Love of God as is said in the end of this Prophecy Wherefore I abhor my self and repent in dust and ashes So say our Wise men They that act out of Love will rejoyce in Chastisements see James 5.11 As to you with whom it is yet night I shall only add this Though I am my self come as to the quiet shore yet I sympathize with you that are yet labouring in the deep You are afflicted and tost with tempests but as in Isa 54. from 9. to 11. The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed but my kindness shall not depart from thee neither shall the covenant of my peace be romoved saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee Oh thou afflicted tossed with tempests and not comforted behold I will lay thy stones with fair colours and lay thy foundations with Saphirs I know you think it is a long night and so it is but it is not Eternal the day will break and the shadows flee away your wise Physician is preparing Cordials for your Hearts and Balsom for your Wounds Let him have your desires to him address your Prayers with your weaker Arms be still reaching after him you are scorched with wrath but he will be a refreshment to your heat you are in darkness but he is the Sun of Righteousness that will chase all the Clouds away Fly to this City of Refuge part for this Fountain of Living Waters and while you are condemned in your own thoughts look to this Advocate and Mediator and he will plead your Cause the wrath that burns you may be hot as Hell but his Blood will extinguish the tormenting flame the Devil may be too strong for you beg therefore help of this Jesus who has overcome him and who will teach you to get the victory He takes pleasure in helping such as have no helper and when there is none to deliver you his own Arm will bring Salvation He hath horn our grief and with his stripes we are healed And trusting in his satisfaction you may freely implore the Mercy of his Father nay even appeal to his Justice for he will not have two payments for the same debt You may say Thou hast promised to pardon sin for the sake of thy well-beloved Son Let it be unto me according to thy word You may in vain complain of your troubles to those that have never felt the like they may grieve you more by their harsh expressions but remember that when you go to Christ for help you go to one that is experienced to one that has tasted of the same bitter Cup to one that was himself forsaken of God for a season and knows how sad it is with you in the like Case And those that come to him he will in no wise cast out CHAP. VII Of the great joy that fills a Soul when the favour of God returns to it after having been long in darkness And the joy is great in several respects As it was unexpected As it discovers God to be reconciled and gives the mourner a possession of Christ by faith through the influence of the Holy Spirit It revives his Graces delivers him from the insulting of the Devil shews the soul its interest in the Promises JOy cometh in the morning Psal 30.5 Having in several Chapters shewed what a mournful night it is to a deserted soul when God is withdrawn and what passes then it is now time to hasten to what is more pleasant and reviving according to the order of Divine Providence which appointeth that where there has been weeping in the night in the morning there should be joy Hence we may observe The return of
left hand and from thence be commanded to depart and now he is come in a way of mercy and of love He has pleaded for me when I had nothing to say for my self and his Word has calmed the storms that made me so much afraid He cast an eye of Love upon me when I expected nothing but his frowns now can I go and pray in his Encouraging Name and now I have hope when I pray his Satisfaction and his Intercession are both the constant fountains of my joy 3. This joy that comes after a night of sad and mournful desertion it the work of the blessed Spirit who is stiled by way of Eminency the Comforter and Peace is one of the fruits of the Spirit he causes us to close with Christ and to embrace the Promises He assists our weakness and teaches us to pray He convinces us of sin and lays us low that he may raise us up again He humbles and purifies and fits our hearts for lasting and abiding joys this joy is not the product of a natural temper but a disposition that hath its Original from Heaven and leads us thither it is not the pleasant motion of our natural spirits to which it owes its birth but as our grief was in our souls so the joy is in the same as our Consciences were disquieted so it is in them that he works a stillness and repose 4. This Joy revives our Graces In this mournful Night we were quite blasted with the violence and fury of the storm We were like the Ground in Winter destitute and forlorn and no fruit appeared but the manifestation of God's favour is to us as the return of Spring Cant. 2.11 For lo the Winter is past the Rain is over and gone the flowers appear on the Earth the time of the singing of Birds is come and the voice of the Turtle is beard in our Land The Fig-tree putteth forth her green Figs and the Vines with the tender Grape give a good smell That solitary season is now gone wherein nothing but doubts and fears and despondence and accusations did overwhelm the soul the floods that kept it under are dried and there is now a chearful and a pleasant alteration the Clouds are vanisht and the Sky is bright and a new World and face of things does now appear His return to his Ancient Mercies is like Noah's entrance into the World after it had been cleansed and washed by the Deluge God's Favour makes our Tears to be as the gentle dew of Night which with the warining kindly beams of the Sun makes the Plants and Herbs the Gardens and the Flowers to look more fresh and green When God departs our weakness to what is good encreases we have no power left but the joy of the Lord is our strength Neh. 8.10 This is like the return of health and good digestion to one that has been long sick it causes a new ferment and motion in the blood and makes all his actions to be accompanied with more life and vigor men under strange fears and amazement are incapable of service and when we are deserted so are we When we apprehend our selves to be cast-aways we offer the bread of mourners if we offer at all but none of our Sacrifices are with joy and gladness of heart A man whose bones are broken cannot go about his work and when our spitits are wounded if we work at all we do but lamely set about it We may halt a little but we cannot run the way of God's Commands Our sorrows make us serious and thoughtful but 't is joy that makes us active 't is the oyl of gladness that causes our wheels to move and us to advance forward as in the Chariots of Aminadab One that is hungry or a thirst uses but feeble endeavours to what he does that is newly refresht 5. This joy that comes in the Mornings after a Night of weeping is very pleasant to the Soul as it it then delivered from the insultings and triumphs of the Devil In that doleful Night that evil spirit does continually terrifie and fright us but when the morning comes he that dreads the light flies away Then it is in some measure with us as it was with our Saviour in the Wilderness When the Devil left him Angels came and ministred unto him Tho there is between him and us a vast disparity he conquered and was no way worsted by it but we come bleeding from the field of Battel our souls are defiled with his Temptations and the hurts we receive in our Conflicts do now and then pain us and yield us remembrances of our sin by their pain and smart it may be to our dying day But however it is a joy to us to think that tho we were beset on every side yet we are escaped as a Bird out of the snare of the Fowler The snare is broken and we are escaped Psal 124.7 God has brought our souls out of the deep Dungeon and he that was our Gaoler had not power enough to keep us there tho the deliverance that we have had is so strange and so miraculous that our going out is like that so Peter Act. 12.9 He went out and wist not that it was true which was done by the Angel but thought he saw a Vision It was wonderful to Peter that had looked for a sudden Execution on the next day to come to his praying-friends in safety and so it is to us who thought our selves a while ago doom'd to die The Devil hath winnow'd us and Oh that we could say That our chaff is gone This Archer hath sorely shot at us but thanks be to God he hath not obtained his design which was our total ruin We have been in a very fiery furnace Oh that it were with us as with the three Children that came out and were not hurt at all We have been in a den of Lions in a howling Wilderness but we have not perisht there it is a pleasure to us that we have now something to answer the great accuser of the Brethren that now we can by faith in our great Captain ward off his blows and quench his fiery darts 6. This joy that comes in the morning after desertion is from the propriety that we have in God and in the Promises of the Gospel as David says Psal 42. ult He is the health of my countenance and my God 'T is pleasant to know that God is good but more pleasant to us when we taste his Goodness When we can say with the Blessed Virgin Luk. 1.46 47. My soul doth magnifie the Lord and my spirit hath rejoyced in God my Saviour for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden 'T is pleasant to hear of Christ but more pleasant by far when we with old Simeon embrace him in our Arms and say with the Church I am my beloved's and he is mine Then the soul will be cheared with perpetual delight saying Having God I have
from natural and ordinary Causes is very healthful and adds very much to the strength and vigour of the body much more then will that joy promote it which is founded on the Word of God and on the hope of his Acceptance And no question David had a respect to this when he said Psal 51.8 Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoyce Ps 35.10 All my bones shall say Lord who is like to thee which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him and the needy from him that spoileth him No troubles wast our natural spirits more than our inward griefs and fears no joys refresh and make them more sprightly than the joys of our Souls See Job 33.19 to 26. God is gracious unto him and saith Deliver him from going down into the pit I have found a ransome his flesh shall be fresher than a childs he shall return to the days of his youth he shall pray unto God and he will be favourable to him and he shall see his face with joy Those that have writ of Long Life and the means to obtain it advise us to keep our minds always full of splendid and illustrious objects of Histories and the contemplations of Nature and the like but the best Medicine is a quiet Conscience And tho all our Religion will not indeed save us from sickness yet it will enable us to bear it not to be too much concerned and overwhelmed with the manifold and unavoidable Calamities of this mortal Life This is Joy indeed that will recreate our souls and our bodies too that will prepare the one for its passage to Glory and the other for its lying in the Grave Thus our soul which is our glory shall rejoyce and our flesh also shall rest in hope Psal 16.9 and both at length as they have mourn'd so rejoyce together and that for evermore For when God is pleased to speak and to help us both in our bodies and our souls 't is multiplied Salvation and many thousand Cures in one The third General is that Joy arises from the hope of some future Good and this good must be both very agreeable to the soul and very certain For if it be not so there cannot be any other than a weak and a trembling joy There is a great pleasure in expectation of what is to come if it be great and lasting and attainable now to one that hath the returning-sense of God's favour ' tis-very pleasant to look for that hour or day or rather for that chearful Eternity when he shall have the same reviving smiles of his heavenly Father in a more bright and conspicuous manner when not only the night of weeping is gone but that morning is come which shall shine more and more to a perfect day And thus will the comfortable person say If the tast that I have now of God be so sweet Oh! what will the full enjoyment of him be If in this strange Land I am entertained as with the Bread of Angels What Feasts will refresh me when I am at home when I am past the Storms and beyond the Grave and Sin and Tears shall give me no further molestation The first Fruits make them to long for the full Harvest thus says the Apostle We rejoyce in hope of the glory of God and this made the Church to say Make hast O my beloved and be thou like a Roe or a young Hart upon the mountains of spices Expectation of any main event as one says is a great advantage to a wise heart If the fiery Chariot had fetcht away Elias unlookt for we should have doubted of the favour of his Transportation 4. This Morning-Joy will express it self As our griefs cause us to groan and sigh so does this make us in an open pleasant way to manifest our gladness The reviving sense of God's favour does so fill our hearts that we cannot without dishonour to him and prejudice to our selves conceal or stifle it When we apprehend our selves to be happy we take a peculiar pleasure in communicating to others the notice of that happiness and are much more pleased by such a communication This Joy is always attended with an expression of the Mercies of our Deliverer that we cannot but say to our Brethren Come and behold what God has wrought for us Behold what Salvation his own Arm and Power has accomplished so Psal 51.12 Restore to me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit then will I teach transgressors and sinners shall be converted unto thee Then I shall be able to tell them That thy ways however rugged they seem to be for a while yet are at length even and pleasant ways That they lead to Life and Happiness and beholding the beams of thy Love that make me so pleasant and so chearful they shall by such a sight be incouraged also to Religion And to the same purpose Psal 16.9 My heart is glad and my glory rejoyceth His inward Joy was not able to contain it self We testify our pleasure on lower occasions even at the gratification of our senses when our Ear is filled with harmonious melody when our Eye is fixed upon admirable and beauteous objects when our Smell is recreated with agreeable odours and our tast is so by the delicacy and rareness of Provisions and much more will our soul shew its delight when its faculties that are of a more exquisite constitution meet with things that are in all respects agreeable and pleasant to them and in God they meet with all those with his Light our Understanding is refresh'd and so is our Will with his Goodness and his Love So in Psal 126.1 2. When the Lord turn'd again the captivity of Sion then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing It was a sign their hearts were very sull of joy seeing the mouth and the tongue poured it out in so great abundance nay their Neighbours could not but take notice of it They said among the heathen the Lord hath done great things for them far beyond the methods of an ordinary Providence Their Liberty was strange and miraculous that surpassed all Imaginable Reasons and behold as people take delight to go over and over again with a pleasant thing they Eccho to this saying of the Heathens saying Verse 3. The Lord hath done great things for us whereof we are glad Others knew it only by report that God had been so good to them but they by sweet experience In the delivered people it was indeed an inward Jubilation with a loud Cry and Song of Triumph as when God is withdrawn we are forced to speak in the anguish and bitterness of our Souls so when he returns the return is so pleasant that we cannot hold our tongues In our troubles there is a latent grief so sinking and so very sad that no words can express so in the good hope of God's acceptance
dreadful Temptations Clouds Confusions and Terrors of Soul c. so that there was no hope or help to be expected but from Heaven in answer to many Prayers which through mercy were succesful .............................. though still I am under weakness though I hope rather going forward than contrary As to my Soul I have not been without good experiences blessed be the free Grace of God! I cannot neither may I trouble you to enlarge upon any of these things My old Enemy will not lay down but by force strong Temptations and Corruptions c. are my daily Exercise Good Sir help me by your Prayers over to the Lord Jesus there 's as much in that as if I had made more words Pray Sir forget me not and please to put others in remembrance of me you know what Graces are necessary to such a Condition 'T is a true saying Tranquillus Deus tranquillat omnia the Lord teach me to be as humble as he would have me be and in every thing give thanks I desire to rejoice with you and them that rejoice concerning you for your restauration Good Sir again remember them that are still out in the storm such have need of patience c. I know not how to break off But time and strength failing me I remain Daventry March 10. 1690 1. SIR Your Friend and Servant Joh. Worth Jun. LETTER VIII From a Young Student in Divinity Dear and much respected Cousin LOng Experience proves it beyond a thousand Arguments that they who have made choice of God for their happiness must expect none here 't is a contradiction to expect Heaven on Earth or to look for a setled duration where all things rush round in vicissitude I cannot tell what they may find who have the world at will but I am sure Believers upon a reflection and consideration of the hard usage and unquieting perplexities which they are still meeting with cannot but long to be where the weary are at rest The Saints who have now got to the end of their way may well rejoyce for they have good reason for it happy are they who have got safely to their Father's House through so many threatning Difficulties When others are lawless as to their practices we are limited to the holy Rule of the Word our life must be a life of Self-denial mortification and contempt of the World I know not what thoughts many Professors may have of Religion but for my self when I seriously think what a life a true Christian's is I am ready to cry out True Religion is a rare thing Dear Cousin What manner of men should you and I be who are designed for such special work I desire to bear part in the praises for your wonderful Deliverance the Lord teach us the true nature of Thankfulness that we may live more to and for God ............................ I desire an interest in your Prayers that God would keep me from Melancholly which I am inclined to and that God would bless my study to me and make it successful and in so doing you will add one more to the Favours you have bestow'd on Rauthmell in Yorkshire Novemb 17. l690 Your very Loving Cousin THO. BARNS LETTER IX To a Relation of the Author's who was long under Melancholly from a Minister who several years was under that Disease My dear Christian Friend AS Christ has given me any bowels of mercy I cannot but pity you under your Soul-affliction and disquietment of spirit being greatly oppressed by Satan that malicious and active Spirit who hates you for the Truth 's sake and no doubt therefore hates you because he finds in you the love of the truth by the proper and convincing evidences of it And that you might not have any comfort by it as the work of the Spirit of Grace in your heart as also that God might not have from you the praise and glory due unto his Grace for it for he envies him all the worship and glory that 's given him by his Saints in Heaven and Earth Therefore he does all he can to hide the knowledge of it from you by clouding your mind by darkning your evidences by his own malicious suggestions against you as also by stirring up all sorts of sin in you but more especially Unbelief the sin of sins his First-born the Mother of all Abominations in the Soul and so the Provocative whereby he well knows if he can work it up to its perfect and full dominion he shall effectually hinder the income of all peace and joy and so fill the poor despairing Soul with all heaviness and horror never to be removed but by faith and its actings on Jesus Christ the King of Righteousness and the King of Peace I beseech you therefore Dear Sister and the Lord himself work it in you turn away your mind from all the malicious deceitful lying Suggestions of the Adversary whom you know by the Scripture of Truth to be a Lyar and a Murtherer from the beginning and will do all that he can to beguile you of the Grace of God in you as also of all that mercy pardon and peace which God has provided in his Son for all believing broken-hearted Sinners such as I doubt not you are whatever you may seem to your self in your present darkness and hour of temptation Turn your self yea the Lord do it for you and in you from him to your Saviour who will not accuse you with the Father as he does but is pleading his Sufferings and presenting his Blood and Atonement made thereby for you Look to him dear Sister look to him whom you shall find to be as the true Brazen Serpent to your love-sick Soul which has been sore wounded by that fiery-flying Serpent and old Dragon but your Lord has overcome him by death and you also I doubt not have overcome him in divers Combats and Temptations already and shall overcome him fully and finally by the Faith of your mighty Redeemer and the Captain of your Salvation who as he is able to save you to the utmost so I doubt not he will do it whatever your Doubts and Fears may be at present He is with you taking care of your Soul and all its Concerns though your eyes are withheld that you cannot discern him as it was sometimes with the Apostles themselves but he will ere long manifest himself to you and then you shall know and acknowledge also That he has born with you and will be with you for ever even as I now do though I were as much to seek for his gracious presence with me as you are or can well be The Lord himself even our Lord Jesus Christ work this very thing in you and cause you to hold fast your confidence firm unto the end and you shall find that it has great recompence of reward as the Apostles has testified to the Hebrews For he that shall come will come and will not tarry He will not only come to Judgment at
be better than a thousand elsewhere What will one day in Heaven be There we shall not live upon things meaner than our selves we shall there have no mean complacencies nor dishonourable cares in the favour and the sight of God we shall have a taste of all excellencies and delights without the least mixture of evil and what transports shall we have when we come to the full view of him the sight of whom even at this distance was so sweet and comfortable to us When after all our doubtings our fears and our sad thoughts we find that we have through many dangers gain'd our Port. Inf. 2. If the favour of God be life O! what a doleful place is hell where this favour never comes Job 10. last vers How black is their darkness and how long and tedious is their night that shall never have the dawn of day Oh! how terrible and how frightful is the second death A death that torments the separated soul A death that banishes it from the presence of the Lord A death that excludes it from all comfortable sight of God! There the Damned see him as a Judge feel his amazing terrors but they would gladly if they could wrap themselves in darkness and never see such a frowning and a dreadful God there is anguish and wo and tribulation and the continual groan and cry of that place God is gone away from us for ever His Face and his Light chears his Saints but it scorches us and puts us all into a flame This is the language of their misery That God will shew them no pity That he is deaf to their cries and has shut up his bowels that once earned over them in Eternal wrath That he once indeed would have been reconciled and they would not and now they shall never have an offer of his favour any more Oh! poor forsaken souls what shall they do that have no God to give them help no Mediator to plead their Cause no Physician to bind up their wounds no kind hand to give them the least comfort nothing but wrath and no love nothing but vengeance and destruction and no mercy with it The Servants of God never taste so much of Hell as when his face is hid it brings upon them desolation terror and the very pangs of death but they have now and then some support some little beams of light but in that doleful place there is nothing else but sorrow and despair Here in all the temptations of his Servants Christ is concerned sympathizes with them and in his due time sends them relief But he will never concern himself with the Damned nor cast one gracious eye upon them they are fallen and he will not raise them up they are perish'd and they must perish they thirst indeed but shall never have a drop of water to cool their tongues What will the poor creatures do when they are overwhelm'd with the wrath of one that is Almighty Oh! how loud will be their Cries and how dreadful their complaints when after millions of years are past they have still as many more to come When they have been long tost upon the lake of fire they will never be nearer to the shore never hear one comfortable word from the mouth of God! Oh! how glad would they be to have one smile of his face one days refreshment but it must not be the gulph is fix'd and the sentence is irrevocable Isa 27.11 He that made them will not have mercy on them and he that formed them will shew them no favour Oh! what can be thought more desolate than to be forsaken of God! to be forsaken of God in whom alone is Life and to be cast into outer darkness And what will be the consternation of the great day when he shall say to the wicked Depart from me c. To hear that voice and that word Depart from me will be their Hell They shall not be able to turn their thoughts from the contemplation of their own miseries nor their eyes from the sight of those objects that will fill them with grief and horror and be themselves abominable for what a despicable deformed â—â—ing even now is an Apostate Angel that is stript of the Life of God! Inf. 3. If Life be in the favour of God then the greatest part of the World is dead for the most are alienated from him by their evil works the most are stupid and insensible in a dead slumber and are his enemies She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she lives 1 Tim. 5.6 And if this be a symptom and a mark of death How many dead have we among us How many that find time enough for their Games their Sports and their Recreations and find no time wherein to call upon the Lord and to seek his favour How many eat and drink and are merry even when their Souls are in the greatest danger and their Maker is their enemy 'T is a sign that when they are so little sensible of their greatest interest and have so little taste and liking of Divine Joys that they are spiritually dead How much greater is the number of the dead than of the living How many Families are there that are without Prayer without any sense of God at all and in which all the whole Family is dead And in those where there are some alive How many are there yet not quickned How many good Parents are mourning over their dying Children whom they cannot bring to life They see them stepping into the Grave and all their intreaties all their Tears all their Prayers cannot bring them thence And in our Congregations how many are there that have indeed a name to live but are dead Rev. 3.1 that have never yet been in earnest for their Salvation that suffer days and years unconcernedly to rowl over their heads and are never the nearer Heaven at the conclusion of the year than they were at the beginning of it They have indeed it may be risen early and sate up late but all their cares have been as much for the Body as if they had no Soul They are grown crooked with looking downward and are as earthly and as sensual as if they had no Heaven to mind And what an heartless thing is it to the Ministers to find that they spend their labour in speaking to the dead and who in a great measure remain dead still Tho' they do it not without hope that at some time or another their Master will say to them as to the Prophet Ezek. 37.2 3. 4 c. Oh! what a Plague is among us and we feel it not Gray hairs are here and there upon us and we discern it not How many Captives has the Prince of darkness that are no way grieved at their own Captivity How many are strangers to the favour of God that never saw his reconciled face never felt the quickning Influences of his Spirit to this very day And yet rejoyce as if all
were safe and well That sit down to eat and to drink and rise up to play and in the midst of those diversions Death seizes on their Bodies and when their Bodies dye their Souls dye and are past our help Oh! my Friends if you have any Life any Compassion put on the bowels of Christ and take up a lamentation for the dead Inf. IV. Why good Christians are so willing to depart from this World 'T is because the favour of God is their Life and when they are dead they live again because they cannot see God and live they are content to dye that they may enjoy the blessed sight They remember very well that they are strangers and pilgrims on earth that Affiction is as proper to this World as Heat in Summer and Storms and Snow in Winter they know how course soever their fare be how harsh soever the usage they meet withal that they are travelling to their dearest Countrey and every one of those Holy Pilgrims in the way to Sion is continually crying out as one says after this or the like manner As for thee Scituation of Paradise p. 95. O City of God how great and how transcendent is thy beauty Nothing but thee do I desire I think of nothing but thee I pant I thirst I long for thy felicity How do I long for thee thou sure reversion of never-fading pleasures O! Paradise thou art the recompence of my Travels and the sole aim of all my Hopes How fain would I leave these habitations of Clay to dwell in thy eternal and delightful Mansions What would I not give to enjoy the liberty of thy Citizens O! Jerusalem Jerusalem when shall I leave this ruinous and shaken House O that I had the Wings of a Dove for then would I fly away and be at rest O! when when shall I arrive there How long will it be ere I enter the Court of Heaven Oh! how have many on whom the face of God hath comfortably shined long'd to depart and to be with him They bear all disappointments and vexations in the hope of this and pain and sickness are welcome because they are as the wheels of their Chariots and drive them nearer to their home Such as these are like a Ship well fraighted that is ready to Sail and stays only till a favourable Wind present it self They dye not by surprise for these happy Travellers to Glory are always on the road that leads to the blessed place above Death is not frightful to them because they have often meditated what it is to dye and what is required for so vast a change There are indeed a great many formidable things in Death the separation of the Soul the many foregoing pains and an innumerable Army of Sorrows and Griefs that march before the King of Terrors all which by Faith these holy persons overcome they know that Christ hath taken from Death all its poysonous and hurtful qualities Their distance from God is the trouble of all good people and when he shews himself they rejoyce as when he hides himself they mourn And hence many a Religious Person when he came to dye has been heard to say I would not now for all the World be without an Interest in Christ I always found him to be a good Master and I still find him to be so he has taken away the sting of death and I am willing to go unto the House prepared for all living for my Lord hath been there before and has perfumed and sanctified the Grave Thou lookest O Grave with a dreadful aspect to Flesh and Blood but not so to Faith and I bid thee welcome as the way to Glory I commit my Body to thee to keep it safe till the Resurrection when my Soul that I now commit into the hands of my Saviour shall come and fetch it back again With the sense of this favour of God did the Martyrs so chearfully persevere and look upon their dying day as the day of their Coronation this Favour made them to scorn the threats and the frowns of Tyrants and all their rage and fury by this they went to the fiery furnace as to a bed of Roses because they knew God would be with them there In the hope of his acceptance old and young grave Matrons and tender Virgins have embraced the Stakes and kist the Flames and freely dyed and have rejoiced and look'd with an unmoved countenance on all the preparations of death whil'st those that were the spectators of their patience could not look upom them without flowing eyes To whom they have said Death would be frighful if we looked no further but it comforts us when we see the Crowns the Hallelujahs and the Glories that wait for us on the further side This will deliver us from an evil World from our corrupt hearts and from all those sins which we have long groaned under this will bring us to him whom all our days we have long'd to see Our Friends bewail us here but Angels are waiting for our Souls and will be glad to convey them to their Lord Christ and ours and conformably to this did those Forty Martyrs whom Basil and so many of the Fathers celebrate encourage one another when neither Promises nor Threats would prevail with them to forsake their God they were condemned to be exposed on Ice to be kill'd with Cold when they beheld the place casting away their Garments they ran to it with delight not as if they had been going to Death but to gather the spoils of Victory VVith our Garments said they we shall put off our old man our Sin and all the corruptions of our Nature VVhat great thing is it if the servant suffer that which his Lord endured before VVe were the cause that he was disrobed and afflicted the cold said these happy Souls is troublesome but Paradise is sweet This Ice afflicts us but the Rest there will delight us Let us endure this cold a litte while longer and the warmth of Abraham's Bosom will refresh us for ever VVe shall exchange this bitter and tempestuous Night for an Eternal Day Let us turn our backs upon the world and seeing we are once to dye Let us now Dye that we may Live And O Lord let us be acceptable to thee when we are offered to thee by this painful Death Thus they endured in the cold night rejoycing in the hope of Glory VVhat wonders of courage and of zeal have been produced by the sense of the Favour and the Love of God! Inf. 5. How inexcusable are they that refuse this Favour of God in which alone is Life Who would chuse to be a Beggar when he might be the King's Favourite Who would chuse to embrace a Dunghill when he might be treated with Plenty and all suitable accommodations Who would chuse to be Sick or Blind when he might receive his Sight And yet this is the sad case of Sinners God would be their friend and they
Gods favour to a soul is matter of great joy to it or these words may denote the promptitude and readiness of Divine Consolations Three things are the usual occasions of joy all which are in this case 1. The remembrance of some danger that we have lately escaped 2. The possession of a present good 3. The solid expectation of some future happiness First The remembrance of a past danger does occasion a more lively sense of joy As past joys renew our grief and make our sorrows more sorrowful so the griefs that are part give us a sweeter and a better tast of joy after long sickness and acute pain 't is very pleasant to be at ease 't is pleasant to rest when we have been tired all the day with hard labour the Laurels of a Soldier flourish with a purer Green when they have been obtained with a mighty difficulty the danger of the Combat brightens the glory of the succeeding Triumph 'T is grateful to the Mariner to stand upon the firm Land and from thence to behold the waves in which he had like to have been thrown away one that has been long in chains rejoyces to find himself at liberty 't is pleasant after a man has been long athirst to be refresht with the fountain of Living waters it renders the joy more accomplished and more satisfying when refreshment comes after long and grievous miseries After long despair the least beam of hope is more reviving a man that has lost his way all night has cause to rejoice at the sight of day As to persons newly converted their faith is full of joy when they compare their former danger and their present safety their former darkness and the shining light that guides their paths so to souls that have been in great anguish and tribulation for sin that have apprehended themselves to be cast out of the presence of the Lord 't is very pleasant to behold his face again 't is pleasant to such as by reason of their sore affliction have been Companions to Owls and Dragons to come into Religious Assemblies and instead of solitary groans and tears to join with the multitudes of those that keep Holiday the soul is then like that of the Returning Prodigal finds it self in the Arms and Embraces of a Loving Father and well treated when it looked as it might justly for rebukes and wrath Thunder and Lightning and Storms make the calm and pleasant weather more grateful to us 't is pleasant after long absence to meet our friend again we find a joy sparkling in our eyes and in our breasts at the sight of them whom we have not seen for many sad and doleful years whom yet we longed to see and that which heightens our pleasure is when a blessing arrives to us that was unexpected that mercy docs fill us with the biggest joy which is extremely suitable to us and which yet we hoped not to receive The Crown sat the easier upon David's head after he had so often thought that he should have fallen by the hands of Saul As life tasts with a better relish when there has been but one step between us and death With what Transports doth a kind mother see her Son coming home whom she gave for lost and dead What a chearful Interview was that which Jacob had with his Son after he had so often thought that he had been torn to pieces as soon as he came near he fell upon his neck and there the revived soul of the poor old man was ready even with excess of pleasure to melt away he never thought to have seen his Joseph his dear Joseph any more he was even with sorrow for his apprehended death going down to the Grave and the news of his Son's welfare made him to be young and live again for at the hearing of it the spirit of Jacob revived and Israel said It is enough Joseph my Son is yet alive I will go and see him before I die Gen. 45.28 And so the Jews having liberty to return from Babylon were so surprized with the favour of their sudden deliverance and the greatness of the mercy that they could hardly think it true it seem'd to be the meer effect of Imagination which during the Interruption of our usual thoughts by sleep put several deceits upon us Psal 126.1 2. When the Lord turned again the Captivity of Zion we were like them that dreamed They were delivered in a manner illustrious and surprizing and it is thus exprest for three Reasons 1. A man does not foresee what he dreams of a man that is apt to be cherished with sound and refreshing sleep does not know whether he shall dream or not So this deliverance arrived to them when they thought not of it 2. As it arrived without any pain to them that were delivered as when we dream we are in repose and are at no trouble and this heightens the glory of a deliverance and the love of the deliverer when the person delivered takes no care about it 3. This deliverance was above all that they could hope for as if a man dreamed of something like it but which he saw not when he was awake for such are the Chymera's which the Imagination then forms and which fall not under the notice of our senses such a thing was never heard or seen before * Monsieu Charles in loc The return of comfort to a Soul that was even expiring in grief and sadness is like the raising of Lazarus to his mourning Sisters they thought that if the Lord had been there he had not died but they did not in the least think that he should be raised again The review of our former miseries does encrease the sense of present happiness the light which the Grace of the Gospel brought into the world and that dissipated the obscurities that compassed it about made the Apostles full of admiration and of wonder when they thought of their former ignorance and error and the light and knowledg that God had given them ever are they wondring at the Riches of his Grace that instead of the corruption in which they were plunged gave them Sanctification Joy and Hope What a surprize was it to the poor Shepherds that were in the field watching their flock by night Luk. 2.9 to see an Angel and the Glory of the Lord shining round about them To see such a Glory when they thought of nothing less nor did expect so great a Grace * Claude Traitte de la Composition d'un Sermon p. 267. but 't is usual with God to bestow the most eminent favours when men do not look for them as Christ came to seek Sinners when they thought not of him and when their minds were filled with other objects they were afraid for great objects when they present themselves suddenly to us usually give us much astonishment for our spirit on these occasions has not the liberty to use its forces and they are most frequently
dissipated and that dissipation causes fear when a soul has long had in it self the sentence of condemnation a pardon from God is very comfortable our former darkness does encrease our present comfort as shadows set off the light 2. Joy arises from the possession of a present good Thus is the presence of God unspeakably sweet to a soul from which he was once departed I. As it now thinks upon him as reconciled 2. As it has by faith possession of Christ by whom his favour is restored as our sadness came by unbelief so does our joy by faith When it was in anguish every thought of God was terrible and amazing but now nothing is so refreshing so desirable so satisfying as to think of him Psal 94.19 In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul Now the poor finner does not look upon him as an enemy but as a Father sees no more in his hand a flaming Sword but a Scepter of Grace hear 's no more his angry voice but his gentle comfortable Calls and Invitations according to that in Isa 66.13 As one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you and ye shall be comforted and when ye see this your heart shall rejoyce and your bones shall flourish like an herb Oh what a joy is it to the soul to find God with it to behold the wonders of his pardoning mercy to see that all its unbelief all its impatience all its murmurings in its wilderness-condition shall not finally obstruct its Journey to the Land of Promise to be pardoned when they thought themselves actually dying in their guilt does aggravate the mercy of escape 'T is true God loves his people even when he is angry with them he designs their good by the sharpest and severest strokes and when he withdraws 't is that they may give a better welcome to him at his return when our lower Region is most cloudy the Sun is still full of light but it is pleasant to us to see the clouds vanish and the sky clear and to be refreshed with his inlivening beams again God indeed is the same for ever our distresses our fears and our troubles do not alter his kindness these several variations in us make no change in him no more than the several alterations in the air infer a diversity in the Sun which is one and the same it self tho the changes be multiplied here below but yet even Paternal wrath is wrath still and his Love is what we ought earnestly to desire and at the manifestation of which we should greatly rejoyce It was once the saying of Mr. Peacock under great distress of Conscience Oh God reconcile me to thee that I may tast one dram of thy Grace by which my miserable soul may receive comfort Such was his longing after him and afterwards when the storm began to cease being put in mind of God's mercy to him he said Oh the Sea is not so full if water nor the Sun of light as God is of Goodness his Mercy is ten thousand times more The good man long'd but for a drop before and he had given him full draughts of Consolation so far are the ways of God above our ways and his thoughts above our thoughts in our sore trials we think of God as a frowning Judge but when we are deliver'd we see him to be our best friend that he is really kind to us of whom we were so much afraid who can express the joy of having him at peace with us There is a Heaven in the smiles of a Reconciled God Figure to your selves as one expresses it De Lang-Treize Sermons pag. 850. a person that is condemned to death for his Crimes and who at the same time that he prepares to undergo it sees an Herald from the King bringing his pardon in his hand and stops the Execution by crying Mercy mercy to the miserable man with what transports of joy does the poor Malefactor see this Messenger and hear these tidings such and so pleasant is the joy that a deserted Christian finds after he heard the sentence of ruin and saw it near when the Law condemned him and his Conscience ecchoed to the voice of the Law to find that he is absolved that the Sentence is reversed and the sins that made him afraid are blotted out then it is that the mourning foul dares to look up to God as being no more at war with him nor afraid of the Thunder of his Power then it is refresht with his sweet and amiable Attributes and then the disorders and the pangs that it felt within are vanisht and all is quiet then it dwells not as in the shadow of death nor as on the borders of eternal grief Secondly As the deserted soul does by faith obtain a possession of Christ so it is full of joy and Christ is both the Object and the Author of it he has purchas'd it by his own blood and has born our griefs that we might not mourn for ever the having of him is a constant inexhaustible source of joy to the believer to be possessed of this Saviour who is the brightness of the glory and the express Image of the Father His Word his Wisdom his Love and his Good-will the Treasury of his Graces in whom his Fulness dwells this Divine Saviour is our Light that chases away the darkness of our night and who with his Gracious hand dries our eyes this is that Glorious Sun that arises with healing on his wings that not only chears our hearts but cures our wounds dispells the night and makes the voice of sighing to expire at the first dawning of the day this is the Tree of Life the Coelestial Manna that gives us Immortality * See Daille on Phil. IV. v. IV. This is our David that defeats our Enemies our Solomon that establishes among us a sweet and inviolable peace he expiates our Crimes and gives our minds rest he saves us from the wrath to come he delivers us from our sins from Hell from our slavish fears and causes us at length in our darkest and most tempestuous nights to hear his Voice saying It is I be not afraid We are first sadned by unbelief and faith doth first revive us and this faith is attended with joy and peace when the poor deserted soul begins to apprehend its Interest in Christ how are all its apprehensions changed saying Heretofore in my terrible anguish I thought that he was my certain enemy that I had no portion in his Blood nor any share in his Intercession That as I was under unbelief so I should be vastly more miserable than those that never heard of him than Heathens and Pagans and all the rest of men to whom the Gospel never came I then thought and was fully perswaded that I should not hear of him with comfort any more I then thought that I should see him coming in the Clouds to my terror that I should be placed at his