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mifery. My God, fave thy fervant, that putteth his truft in thee. Be merciful unto me, O Lord; for I will call daily upon thee. Comfort the foul of thy fervant; for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my foul. For thou, Lord, art good and gracious; and of great mercy to all them that call upon thee. (g) Ō reO member not the fins and offences of my youth, but according to thy mercy, think upon me, O Lord, for thy goodness. (b) Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am defolate, and in mifery. The forrows of my heart are inlarged: O bring thou me out of my troubles. Look upon my adversity and mifery, and forgive me all my fin. (i) Help me, O God of my falvation, for the glory of thy name; Oh deliver me, and be merciful to my fins, for thy name's fake. I am not worthy the leaft of all thy favours; but it is thy property, O Lord, always to fhew mercy, and do good to fuch as have no way deferv'd it at thy hand. Thou art my Strength, and my Hope: O be thou my mighty Saviour and Deliverer, both now and evermore. This I beg for the fake, and through the merits and mediation. of my ever blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Theoph. Give me leave to tell you, dear Anchithanes, we are not a little delighted, to find you thus feriously and devoutly difpofed, and that you have fuch a lively fenfe of God's gracious over-ruling Providence, and fuch a comfortable dependence upon it. Faint not, I beseech you, nor be difcouraged; but be ftrong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Be mindful to call upon him continually; and then affure yourself; that, in all your afflictions and troubles, he will be your defence, your impenetrable fhield, your ftrong tower, and invincible fortrefs. (k) He will not leave you, not for fake you; but be with you, and affift, fupport, and comfort you in all your difficulties. difficulties. Remember his gracious promife to fuch as put their trust in him, (2) Ver. 15, 16, 17. (i) Pfal. lxxix. 9.

(g) Pfal. xxv. 6. (4) Heb. xiii. 5

and

and study to get your mind seriously affected with it. (1) Because he hath fet his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him; I will fet him up, because he hath known my name. He fhall call upon me, and I will bear him: yea, I am with him in trouble; and will deliver bim, and bring him to honour. With long life will I fatisfy him, and fhew him my falvation.

Eufeb. To be diffatisfied at ficknefs, or any other affliction, argues a great want of confideration, and a ferious attendance to the vaft diftance that is betwixt God and us, the relation we ftand in to him, as our Sovereign Lord and Creator, and the duty we therefore owe him, which would naturally incline us all to a ready fubmiffion to his moft Holy Will, in all his determinations concerning us. For nothing can be more highly becoming poor, impotent, needy creatures, than intirely to refign themselves to their Creator's difpofal; who, by virtue of his abfolute dominion over them, may juftly affign each one his work and station, as well as his reward, according to his own good pleasure; and who befides, being infinitely wifer than man, and loving us much better than we do ourselves, muft therefore be much fitter to chufe what is most advantageous and beft for us; and who, as daily experience fhews, is never backward to bestow his benefits upon us, not only beyond and without our deferts, but even when we have highly deserved the contrary. (m) In him we all live, move, and have our being. And (n) he has not left himself without a witness of his continual bounty and goodness to his creatures without distinction, in that he indifcriminately does them good, and gives them rain from Heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their heart with food and gladness. He continually difpenfes fuch bleffings for the good of mankind, as naturally reach, not only to his faithful fervants, but to their neighbours round about them, who are equally capacitated to partake of them with themselves. And yet, as (1) Pfal. xci. 14, 15, 16. (m) Acts xvii. 28. (~) Acts xiv. 16. K

if

if this were not exprefs enough, our bleffed Saviour tells us pofitively, that they are defigned for the relief of the wicked, as well as of the righteous. For fpeaking of our (0) Father which is in Heaven, he exprefly affirms concerning him, that he maketh his fun to rife on the evil, and on the good; and fendeth rain on the juft, and on the unjust. So liberal is our good and gracious God of his mercies and favours! And fo conftantly does he heap them upon fuch as stand in need of them! And can any one that has received his fubfiftence, and all the good things he ever enjoyed, from God's bounty, murmur, and be displeased, because he receives fome mixture of evil and forrow with them?

Theoph. The confideration of God's fovereignty tied up David's tongue, when under great affliction at the profperity of his enemies, and most probably of his rebellious fon Abfalom, and his accomplices : (P) I was dumb, fays he, I opened not my mouth. And then follows the reafon of this his filence and fubmiffion, becaufe thou didst it: Because it was the hand of God by which he fuffer'd; this he readily acknowledged a fufficient caufe of his acquiefcence in it, how hard foever in itfelf. What is befallen me, fays Dr. Hammond upon this place, I am far from repining or murmuring at it comes, I know, from thee, whofe difpofals are moft wife; and be it never fo fharp, I am fure I have well deferved it.' And there is no reason why Chriftians fhould not be equally fubmiffive to the Divine Will in all cafes; feeing not only God has the fame authority over us, with those that were before us; but we have been blessed with fuch peculiar bleffings, as the world had before in hope and profpect only; and the promises whereof were never actually compleated till our Saviour's incarnation. Which makes our ingratitude and diffatiffaction the more abominable, and calls upon us therefore the more readily to fubmit to the Divine Will in (0) Matth. v. 45- () Pfalm xxxix. 9.

all

all cafes; whatsoever portion of fufferings may be

allotted us.

Timoth. There is another very weighty reafon, why we should thus give up ourselves to the Divine difpofal; and that is, because of our own demerits. For be our afflictions ever fo grievous, or our wants ever fo pinching, it must be owned to the glory of God, that he is still gracious to us, and has punished us lefs than our iniquities have deferved. And this may well teach us filence, left our diffatisfactions for leffer fufferings prevail, to the bringing down fome heavier calamity upon us. This is a cafe wherein every mouth must be stopped, and all the world become guilty, highly guilty, before God, if his infinite patience towards them, and the numerous undeferved benefits he loads them with, do not outweigh thofe lighter corrections they at any time smart under. There is none, but if he would ferioufly examine his own confcience, will immediately discover such a mass of wickedness there, as must inevitably convince him, that, how hard foever his cafe be, he has yet abundant cause to admire and magnify the infinite clemency of God towards him, in not having far more feverely avenged himfelf upon fo guilty a finner. And it is intolerable ingratitude for him to complain of the lofs only of one joint of a finger, when he has deferved to lofe his hand; or rather to be uneafy at the cutting off his hair, when, inftead thereof, he had juftly forfeited his

head.

Eufeb. And if you inquire farther into the reafonableness of these complaints, you will foon fee the ill management that is in them, amongst others, efpecially upon these two accounts: Firft, Because a patient compliance with the Divine Will is the best way the sufferer can take, to make himself easy under fufferings, whether fickness, or of any other kind. It is not neceffary to turn a ftoick, to experiment the truth of this. A man may foon find the benefit of fuch a deportment, in abating the pungency of his distemper,

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distemper, tho' he has not brought himself to fuch a fenfeless degree of affection, (q) as to proclaim himfelf happy in Phalaris's Bull. For a truly christian patience, fuch as Lipfius (r) desired at the time of his death, is the best remedy we have at hand; which, though it will not remove our fufferings, will however be very useful, for taking off the edge of them, and making them the more tolerable; whilft, on the other hand, impatience makes a great addition to any evil that befals us, by our unfitnefs to bear it; non quia dura, fed quia molles patimur, not fo much from the weight of the affliction, as from our own weaknefs and difability to ftand under the burden of it. Such as are querulous and difcontented, and upon the fret, at every misfortune they meet with, take the ready way to make themselves miferable; at least much more fo than they would otherwife have been ; whereas 'tis easy to obferve of those who are never diffatisfied, howfoever it pleases God to difpofe of them, that if they cannot be said to be truly happy in their worst condition, yet it cannot be denied, that they are so in comparison of what these others would be in the like circumftances. This therefore is one unanswerable reafon, why every one fhould compofe himself to bear his afflictions to the beft advantage; I mean with an unwearied patience, and refignation to God's most Holy Will. The other I intended to mention is, fecondly, Because we know not whether what we wish removed, be a real cause of grief or not, and whether it be not rather designed as a kindness, and like to prove fo in the event, as being introductive of fome greater good, whether

(2) Sapiens, inquit Epicurus, femper beatus eft; & vel inclufus in Phalaridis tauro hanc vocem emittet, Suave eft, & nihil curo. Lanctant. Inftit. l. 3. c. 27.

(r) Cum folatii a Stoicis magnam illi materiam fupereffe quifpiam infufurraret, Illa funt vana, refpondit; digitoque in Chrifti crucifixi imaginem prope aftantem intento, Hæc eft, inquit, vera patientia. Mox magno fpiritu fubjecit, Domine Jefu, da mihi patientiam chriftianam. Drexel. de Eternit. Confid. 4.

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