Answer

Granted what the objection supposes — that God has afflicted you for your sin and removed from you the comfort you idolized and too much doted upon — yet there is no reason you should be so cast down under your affliction. For all this may be, and probably is, the fruit of his love and care for your soul. Revelation 3:19: Whom I love, I rebuke and chasten. How much better is it to have an idolized enjoyment taken from you in mercy, than if God should say concerning you, as he said of Ephraim in Hosea 4:17: He is joined to idols, let him alone.

It is better for you that your Father now reckons with you for your follies with the rod in his hand, than to say of you, as he does of some: Let them go on — I will not hinder them in or rebuke them for their sinful courses, but will reckon with them for all together in hell at last.