Rule 5

Rule 5. If you would bear your affliction with moderation, compare it with the afflictions of other people, and that will greatly quiet your spirit.

You have no cause to say God has dealt bitterly with you and that there is no sorrow like your sorrow. Look around and impartially consider the conditions of others in no way inferior to you. You have one dead child; Aaron had two at one stroke; Job had all at one stroke — and both of these by an immediate stroke from the hand of God. Some godly parents have lived to see their children die in their sin by the hand of justice. Others have seen them live to the dishonor of God and the breaking of their own spirits, and would have counted it a mercy if they had died from the womb and given up the breath when they came out of the belly, as Job speaks.

In what misery have some parents seen their children lie, God holding them before their eyes as terrible spectacles of suffering — so that they have begged the Lord with urgency to release his hand and cut them off. Death seemed to them as nothing compared to the continual agonies in which they saw them writhing from day to day. O you little know what a bitter cup others have been given to drink! Surely if you compare, you must say: the Lord has dealt gently and graciously with me.