To All Afflicted and Cross-Bearing Serious Christians, and More Particularly to the Right Honourable and Truly Noble Lord, William Earl of Crawford

It is one of the greatest practical debates and contests between God and his own people, privileged with a special interest in him, which they are naturally inclined longest to keep up, and are most reluctant to let fall, namely, whether he shall guide and govern them, and shape out their lot to them while they sojourn here in the world, as he himself in his own infinite wisdom shall think fit, having a blank submission put by them into his hand, to be filled up with what kind and quality, with what measure and quantity, and with what continuance and duration of troubles, trials and afflictions himself pleases: or whether he should, as to some things at least, consult their will and pleasure, and as it were take their advice, and allow them a liberty to prescribe to him how he should guide and dispose of them. And indeed to be here denied to their own will, and absolutely submitted to the will of God, is one of the highest and most difficultly practicable points of self-denial (to which notwithstanding all the disciples and followers of Christ are expressly called, and wherein he has great delight and complacency, as favoring strong of entire trust and confidence in him); yet if we consider these few things, it will be found that there is all the reason in the world, why they should come in his will and sweetly submit themselves to it in all things, however cross to their own inclination, without any the least sinful reluctance or contradiction; which is our privilege and the restoration of our degenerated nature to its divine and primitive integrity.

First, if it be considered that he has most sovereign, absolute, and incontrollable dominion over you as the potter has over the clay, for you are the clay, and he is the potter; no, he has more absolute dominion over you than the potter has over the clay, for the potter makes not the clay, both the clay and the potter being made by him; but he has made you and not you yourselves; you are all the work of his hands; he has made you living creatures, rational creatures, and new creatures — if any man be in Christ he is a new creature (which is the very flower of the creation) and you are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to good works. If therefore it be unsuitable and incongruous for the clay to say to him that fashioned it, What are you making? Or for a man's work to say to him that he has no hands; it is surely much more so for you to say to your great potter and fashioner, What are you making of us? Why do you deal so and so with us? Woe to him that strives with his Maker, let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth, has not the potter power over the clay? And are you not in the hand of the Lord as the clay in the hand of the potter? He might have made you vessels to dishonor, vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, without being justly chargeable with any injury done to you; and when he has in the sovereignty of his most wonderful free grace, made you vessels to honor, and vessels of mercy which he has before prepared to glory, will you dare to quarrel with him for his disposing in his own way of your external condition in the world, and of these moveables and accessories that are wholly extrinsic, and not at all essential to your salvation and true happiness? (For, let all the pleasures, riches and honors of this world, even all the delights of the sons of men in their very extract, spirits, and quintessence, and when in a manner distilled in an alembic, till they be made to evaporate the purest perfumes of their utmost perfections, be heaped on the Christian; as they make him no better Christian, nor make any addition at all to his true happiness; so when he is stripped naked of them all, every bird as it were of these earthly comforts taking back again from him its own feather; he is made never a whit the worse Christian, nor his happiness in the least impaired). It were certainly much more becoming you to say, It is the Lord who can do us no wrong, and who has undeservedly done us much good, let him do to us what seems good in his eyes.

Secondly, if it be considered that he is of infinite wisdom, and knows much better what is good for you than you do yourselves; who often mistake what is good for you through your corruption, ignorance, partiality, or prejudice; but he by the most absolute perfection of his blessed nature is infinitely removed from all possibility of mistaking what is good in itself, or good for you; and if you will adventure your estate and livelihood in the world on able and faithful lawyers, when you yourselves are much unacquainted with, and ignorant of law, and are disposed to think that the suit that is commenced against you will ruin you, while they think otherwise; and if you will commit your health and life to skillful and painful physicians or surgeons, and receive from the one many unpleasant and loathsome potions and pills; and suffer from the other such painful incisions and injections, such searchings, lancings, and pancings, such scarifications, cauterizings, and amputations; from all which you have so great an aversion, if not abhorrence, will you not much rather and much more confidently commit the conduct and care of yourselves and of all that concerns you to him, of whose undertaking there is no search as to what is good for his own people, and whose faithfulness in his dealing with them reaches to the very clouds, and never fails? The most skillful of these may mistake, none of them being infallible, and the most faithful of them may possibly at sometimes and in some things be found unfaithfully neglective, none of them being perfect; but it is simply impossible for him either to mistake or to be unfaithful, for otherwise he should deny himself, and so cease to be God, of which once to admit the thought is the highest blasphemy. Let therefore your confident trusting of men in their respective professions and callings, make you blush at, and be ashamed of your distrustings and jealousies of God, and of your quarrelings with him, even when you don't know for the time what he is doing with you, and when what is done would have been none of your own choice, but does very much thwart and cross your natural inclination. Is it not enough that he is infinitely wise in himself, and for you? May you not therefore safely trust in him, and with unsolicitious confidence, commit the conduct of yourselves and of all your concerns to him? As knowing that he cannot himself be misled, nor misgovern you; may you not in faith without distrustful and perplexing fear follow him, as faithful Abraham followed him, not knowing where he went, and cast all your care on him who cares for you and has made it your great care to be careful for nothing, and thus even sing care away?

Thirdly, if it be considered, that you have in your own experience (as the rest of the people of God have in theirs) found, that in all his past dealings with you, even these that for the time were most afflicting, his will and your true welfare, have been inseparably joined together, and that but very seldom and rarely your own will and welfare have trysted together; so that you have been constrained when at yourselves and in cold blood, to bless him that you got not your will in such and such things, however for the time you were displeased with the want of it; and have been made to think, that if ever you had any good days or hours along your pilgrimage, your most crossed and afflicted ones, wherein God took most of his will, and gave you least of your own, have been your best days and hours. Dare you say upon serious and just reflections that it has been otherwise? Or that you have not reason as to all bygone cross providences, even the most apparently crushing of them, since the day that you were first brought under the bond of his covenant to this day, to set up as it were your stone, and to call it Eben-ezer, the stone of help, saying, Until now the Lord has helped us? May you not, and should you not then humbly and confidently trust him, that you shall through grace have reason as to present and future ones, however sadly and surprisingly they are or may be circumstanced, to say, Jehovah-Iireh, the Lord will see or provide? Oh, but it is a sweet, pleasant, spiritually wholesome and refreshing air that breathes in that walk between Ebenezer and Jehovah-Iireh, wherein a few turns taken by the most afflicted Christians in their serious, composed, spiritual and lively contemplation, would through God's blessing very much contribute quickly to reconcile them to all their respective crosses, however cross, and to the keeping of them in better, firmer, and more constant spiritual health.

Fourthly, if it be considered, that by your petty, fretful malcontented and unsubmissive contendings, strivings and strugglings with him, you will not help yourselves, you may well make your own burden the more uneasy, and your chain the heavier; Should it be according to your mind? Shall the earth be forsaken for you? Or shall the rock be removed out of his place? Will you disannul his judgment? Will you condemn him that you may be righteous? Will you strive against him who gives not account of any of his matters? Will you tax his wisdom as if he did not understand what is convenient for you? Will you teach God knowledge? Is it fit that he should come down to your will rather than you should come up to his? Shall God change and break all his wisely laid measures and methods of governing his people, and take new ones to gratify your peevish humors? He will not be diverted from his purpose — when he is in one way who can turn him, what his soul desires that he does, for he performs the thing that is appointed for you. He is more just to himself (to speak so) and more merciful to you, than to degrade as it were his infinite wisdom so far, as to suffer himself to be swayed against the dictates of it, by such short-sighted and froward tutors as you. The great physician of souls is more compassionate and wise than to permit his distempered, and sometimes even in a manner distracted patients, to prescribe their own course of physic. But he will needs do what he thought fit and resolved to do, whether you choose or whether you refuse. Only he would (to say so) have your consent to, and your approbation of what he does for the greater peace and tranquility of your own minds. Surely therefore it is meet, meekly and submissively to be said to God, whenever and however he chastises, I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more, that which I know not teach you me, if I have done iniquity I will do no more (Job 18:4; Job 40:8; Job 13:33; Job 21; Job 23:13-14; Job 34:33; Job 34:31-32). It is the surest and shortest way to get our will in so far as may be for our well, to allow him to take his own will and way with us. For he has a special delight in this, and therein gives wonderful expression to the bowels of his tender compassion toward his chastised and humbly submissive children. Surely (says he) I have heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus, You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke; turn you me, and I shall be turned, for you are the Lord my God (Jeremiah 31:18-20). Surely after that I was turned, I repented, and after that I was instructed, I struck upon my thigh; I was ashamed, indeed, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth. Is Ephraim my dear son, is he a pleasant child? For since I spoke against him, I do earnestly remember him still, therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, says the Lord. Thus when you come submissively to his hand, he comes as it were sweetly to yours. And as you gain nothing by your striving with him, so you lose nothing but gain much by your soft stooping and silent submitting to him. If you humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, he shall lift you up (James 4:10; 1 Peter 5:6). Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time.

Fifthly, if it be considered, that you stand in need of all the troubles, trials, and afflictions that you meet with; whenever you are in heaviness through one or more, or manifold temptations, it is always and only if need be. And if you be well seen in the state and posture of your soul affairs; what graces of the Spirit are to be quickened and drawn forth into more lively and vigorous exercise; what of these precious spices in your gardens are to be blown upon, not only by the more gentle and soft south winds of consolations, but also by the more sharp and nipping north winds of afflictions and to be beaten as it were in the mortar thereof, that they send forth their pleasant and fragrant smell; what religious duties are either much neglected, or but very lifelessly, coldly, formally, lazily, superficially and heartlessly performed, and to what a higher pitch and peg of spirituality in the manner of performing them they are to be screwed up; what lusts and corruptions are to be further mortified and subdued: how little your hypocrisy, your self-love and self-seeking, your pride, passion, impatience, inflexibility, and unsubmissiveness to the will of God, your carnalness, earthly-mindedness, your immoderate and inordinate love to the things of the world, your murmuring and fretting at, your dissatisfaction and discontent with, your present lot; how little these and many other corruptions are crucified and brought under; if, I say, you be well seen and versed in the knowledge of your spiritual condition, you will upon serious and thorough reflections find, that you stand in need of every affliction you meet with, as to all the circumstances thereof; or if you do not, in so far you are unacquainted with, and strangers to yourselves and to the state and posture of your spiritual affairs. In fact, you will easily find, that all, even your heaviest crosses and afflictions, have enough ado to work you up to what you should be at; and though sometimes you may be disposed to think that you could hardly bear any more, yet you will upon due search find that you could have wanted nothing of what you meet with, without a greater prejudice than the cross has brought along with it. We are naturally perverse and peevish, bent to fretfulness and discontent, inclining rather to restless endeavoring to have our lot brought up to our spirits, than to be at suitable pains to have our spirits brought down to our lot; and therefore have much need to be tamed and calmed by the cross. This rugged and uneasy temper of spirit, being the great hinderer, indeed the very opposite, of that stayed and sweet contentment of heart with and in every state; which is the very life of a Christian's life, consisting (as the Lord says) not in the abundance of the things which we possess, but in our satisfiedness with them whether abundant or not (Luke 12:15). To the attaining to which blessed temper, the shortest cut and most compendious way, is, in the first place to be well pleased and satisfied with God himself, and with a solidly secured interest in him; and to endeavor in the next place, to be well-pleasing in his sight, to be gracious in his eyes, to stand well in his thoughts, even to do always those things that please him (John 8:29); to which desirable frame of soul, if we were once through grace brought (whereto our bearing of the yoke, and putting our shoulders under the cross, is not a little through God's blessing contributive;) O! how good-natured then and easy to please would we be found to be, and how ready to construe well of all that he does to us? Seldom out of humor (to speak so). Now, if we stand in need of all the afflictions we are met with in all their most sad and sorrowful circumstances (as certainly we do, because God who cannot lie or mistake has said it (1 Peter 1:6),) why should we not submit ourselves to his will in measuring them out to us? Or what just reason can there be to be dissatisfied with, or to complain of God's giving to, and ordering that for us, whereof we stand in need, and which we cannot want without being considerably prejudiced and worsted by the want?

Sixthly, if it be considered, that in all your chastisements and afflictions God is graciously driving the blessed design of your spiritual good and profit, making them all to work together for that desirable end, causing them turn to your salvation through the help of the prayers of others of his people, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:25; Philippians 1:19); giving you assurance by his faithful word of promise, that thereby your iniquity shall be purged, and that this shall be all the fruit — O, strange and admirable condescension of grace, all the fruit — to take away sin (Isaiah 27:9); and that he will not chastise you as parents according to the flesh do their children, to wit for their own pleasure; who however they may have a general design of good to their children in their chastising of them, yet through a remainder of corruption in the best of them, they are often subjected to such hurries and transports of passion, when it comes to the act of chastisement, that they much forget to consult the good and advantage of the chastised child, and too much gratify their own pleasure and humor; but that he will chastise for your profit, that you may be made partakers of his holiness (Hebrews 12:10): now, if this be his design in chastising, and if this be the promised fruit of your chastisements and afflictions, why should you not therein submit to his pleasure, which has your own profit inseparably joined within it? If you yourselves do not sinfully lay obstructions in the way thereof, as otherwise, so particularly by your being displeased with this his pleasure? Which yet his grace in his own people suffers not to be invincible nor final: I do not say that our chastisements and afflictions do of themselves produce this profit and bring forth this fruit; for alas, we may from doleful experience have ere now arrived at a sad persuasion, that we are proof against all applications, excepting that of sovereign efficacious and all-difficulty conquering free grace, and that nothing will do at us save that alone. Whatever means be made use of, this only must be the efficient producer of our profit: it is a piece of God's royal and incommunicable prerogative which he has not given out of his own hand to any dispensation, whether of ordinances never so lively and powerful in themselves, or of providences never so cross, loudly alarming and clearly speaking, abstractly from his own blessing, effectually to teach to profit; and therefore he does (as well he may) claim it to himself alone as his peculiar privilege, while he says I am the Lord your God that teaches you to profit (Isaiah 48:17). Since then this is his design in all the chastisements inflicted on his own people, and since he only by his grace can make it infrustrably take effect, let him have our hearty allowance and approbation to carry it on vigorously and successfully, and let us pray more frequently and fervently, that by his effectual teaching our profiting may be made more and more to appear under our chastisements; and withal in the multitude of our sad thoughts about them, let his comforts delight our souls, and this comfort in particular, that in them all he graciously designs and projects our profit, even the making of us more and more to partake of his holiness.

Seventhly, if it be considered, that all your trials and troubles are but of time-continuance and will period with it; they are but for a season, yea but for a moment (1 Peter 1:6; 2 Corinthians 4:17); he will not contend for ever, knowing well if he should do so, the spirit would fail before him and the soul which he has made (Isaiah 37:16); though they should follow close on you and accompany you to your very dying day, yet then they will leave you and take their last good-night and everlasting farewell of you; sorrow and sighing will then forever fly away, and all tears on whatever account shall then be wiped from your eyes (Revelation 7:15; 21:4). It is a great alleviation and mitigation of the most grievous affliction, and of the bitterest and most extreme sorrow, to think that not only it will have a term day and date of expiration, but that it will quickly in a very short time, even in a moment be over and at an end; (as a holy martyr said to his fellow-sufferer in the fire with him, It is but winking and our pain and sorrow is all over) and that there shall be an eternal term of freedom from it, and that everlasting solace, satisfaction and joy without any the least mixture of sorrow and sadness, shall succeed to it and come in the room thereof. It is but for the little space of sixty years and ten, or eighty (which length most men never come) that his people are subjected to trouble, and what is that very short moment and little point of time, being compared with vast and incomprehensibly long eternity (Psalms 90:10)? In respect of which a thousand years are but as one day, or as a watch in the night when it is past (Psalms 90:4). And no doubt the little while's trouble, sadness and sorrow of sojourning and militant saints, is in the depth of divine wisdom, ordered so, that it may the more commend and endear that blessed calm and tranquility, that fullness of purest joys, and these most perfect pleasures at his right hand that triumphant saints shall forevermore enjoy.

Eighthly, if it be considered that all along the little moment that your trials and afflictions abide with you, they are, even the saddest and most severe of them, moderate, and through his grace bearable and light; In measure he debates with you, and stays his rough wind in the day of his east wind. And whatever difficulty you sometimes find under sore pressures, to get it solidly and practically believed, yet God is faithful who has promised, and will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will with the temptation make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it. He is a God of judgment and discretion, that suits his people's burdens to their backs, and wisely proportions their straits to their strength. He puts not new wine into old bottles; neither does he break the bruised reed. And even when he hides his face and is wroth with his children, and smites them for their iniquity, it is only fatherly wrath. And however dreadful that may be and difficult to be borne, yet there is nothing vindictive in it. It is a father's anger, but tempered with a father's love, where also love predominates in the mixture. And indeed the most extreme, and the very heaviest of all our afflictions are moderate, and even light being compared, first with what your sins deserve, exceedingly far beneath the desert of which you are punished, even so far, that you may without all compliment most truly say, that it is because his compassions fail not that you are not consumed. That you are kept out of Hell, and free from everlasting burnings, to which your many, various, and grievously aggravated provocations, have made you most justly liable. So that you have reason to think any affliction short of everlasting destruction from the presence of God, to be a highly valuable piece of moderation, and to say, Therefore does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin? We will bear the indignation of the Lord because we have sinned against him. Secondly, with what others of the people of God have readily met with, for we have not resisted to the blood, striving against sin. We have, it may be, all this while been but running with the footmen, when they have been put to contend with horses. Thirdly, with what we ourselves have sometimes dreaded and been put to deprecate, when horrid guilt has stared us in the face, and when God was apprehended to be very angry, even threatening to smite us with the wound of an enemy, and with the chastisement of a cruel one, to run upon us as a giant, to break all our bones. And again to show himself marvelous upon us, by taking us by the neck, and shaking us in pieces. Fourthly, with what our blessed Lord Jesus suffered for his people, who all the while he sojourned here on earth, was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and might most justly have said beyond all men, I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath: is there any sorrow like to mine in the day when the Lord has afflicted me? And fifthly, being compared with that far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory which they work for you. Seeing then that the sharpest and sorest of your afflictions are in all these and many other respects very moderate, gentle, easy, and light, is there not reason why you should in them, without grudging, sweetly submit yourselves to his will? Heartily saying, it might have been much worse, this falls infinitely short of what we have deserved, blessed be God that it is only thus, and no worse.

Ninthly, if it be considered, that often when in any more than ordinary spiritual and lively frame of soul, you have in prayer desired the Lord that he would take any way, and make use of any means he pleased (wherein your sin might not be) to make you more serious in the exercise of godliness, more effectually to mortify your corruptions, and to further your conformity to his image in holiness; And you should through his grace be content, putting, as it were, a blank in his hand, to be filled up as himself in his own infinite wisdom should think fit, declaring that you were satisfied on the terms proposed by Jesus Christ, to be his disciples, and to take up not only a cross, or the cross in general, but your cross in particular, the cross that should be shaped out for you however circumstantiated: And when under some very sad affliction he on the matter bespeaks you thus, I am now about to grant you your own desire, though it may be in such a way, and by such a mean, as either would have been none of your own choosing, had it been left to your choice, or possibly such as you did not think of; Will you be displeased with me, or mistake my hearing of your prayers, fulfilling your petitions, and granting you according to your own hearts desire, because I do it in my own way, and by means of my own choosing, wherein also you left and allowed to me a latitude, and not in your way and by your means, which you then renounced as not thinking yourselves competent judges thereof? Alas! here we are often found at best to border upon a practical ruing, retracting, and lifting up again of the blank-submission which we professed to lay down before him; and to say by our fretting, repining, dissatisfaction, immoderate heaviness, and despondency of spirit, that we were somewhat rash, and not so well advised when we subscribed and gave in such a submission and surrender of ourselves to him; That we did not think he would have taken such advantage of us, or would have put us thus sore to it, and, that if we had thought he would have done so, we would have been better advised before we had thus submitted to him, and with our own consent put ourselves in his reverence; and that if it had been any thing but this we could have borne it (whereas he says nothing but this;) Whereby we do not only not a little reflect upon him as dealing unkindly, and doing what we would not have expected at his hand; But also make a sad and humbling discovery of much unsoundness in ourselves as to our offering up of such general desires, and as to our making of such absolute submissions to him: Let us therefore, in order to the justifying of him as both righteous and kind, and to the vindicating of ourselves at least from allowing of any unsoundness, dissimulation, or unfair, and merely complimentary dealing with God, in our submitting ourselves to him in the general, without any buts or ifs, any restrictions or exceptions; Hold at the submission given; sharply expostulating with, and severely chiding ourselves for, this discovered practical [reconstructed: contradiction] and contravention, And we shall find that he has done nothing unworthy of himself, nor in the least prejudicial to us, but what is according to our own most deliberate desires, and greatly to our advantage.

It were a very wide mistake if from what is discoursed in this Consideration, any should conclude that we intend either to commend or allow Christians praying directly and expressly for crosses and afflictions, let alone for such and such afflictions in particular: For, beside that we neither find it commanded in the Scriptures, nor allowedly (if at all) set as precedent or practiced by the saints recorded there; And that it seems to be a sinful limiting of the Sovereign God to a particular means; We may easily know from sad experience, with what difficulty, repining and fainting we often bear these crosses and afflictions that we are most clearly called to take on, and that are unavoidably laid upon us; And how lamentably little for most part we profit by them; What hope or assurance could we then have that we should either carry Christianly under, or make suitable improvement of, such crosses as we should unwarrantably seek, and pray for to ourselves? It's true, we find some of the saints, and these, stars of the first magnitude, as Moses, Job, Elias, David, and Jonas, in their distempered malcontent or fainting fits, passionately, preposterously, and precipitantly praying, or rather wishing for death (for which they were not for the time in so good case); But that was not for death under the notion of affliction, but rather to prevent future and further afflictions, or to have a period put to presently incumbent ones. If it should here be said, why may not saints pray for afflictions, since they seem to be promised in the Covenant of Grace, as (Psalm 89:30-32), (Hosea 2:6-7 and verse 14); And since God has graciously promised to bless all the afflictions of his people, and to make them turn to their spiritual good, profit and advantage, as (Romans 8:28) and (Hebrews 12:10) and elsewhere? To the first part of the objection, it may be briefly answered, that these and others such, are not properly and formally promises of the Covenant of Grace, but rather Covenant-threats (for the Covenant of Grace has its own threats suited to the nature thereof as well as the Covenant of Works has its) though dipped (to say so) in Covenant-grace and mercy: And to the other part of it as briefly, that God has promised to bless and to cause to profit by such afflictions and chastisements as himself thinks fit to inflict and lay on, but not these which we seek and pray for to ourselves: Neither does that Scripture, (Psalm 119:75) — I know that in faithfulness you have afflicted me — say anything towards strengthening the objection, or invalidating the answers given to it; For the Psalmist only there humbly and thankfully acknowledges God's faithfulness in fulfilling his threatening in afflicting him when he went astray; and in performing his promise in blessing his affliction to him for preventing his after-straying, and making him learn better to keep his commandments; In both which he is faithful. All that is either expressed or meant in this Consideration, is, that the saints often pray God, that he would take his own way, and use his own means to bring about these great ends mentioned; wherein there is indeed at least a tacit insinuation, that if he in his wisdom see it meet to make use of the rod and affliction in order thereto, that they will not allow themselves to decline the same, nor to mistake him in it; But that rather they shall through grace be satisfied with, and bless him for fulfilling their petitions, and granting them according to their own hearts' desires, though it be by such means: Which is not praying for affliction, but a resolved and declared submission to infinite wisdom's love-choice of his own means to effectuate and bring to pass the prayed-for ends.

Tenthly, If it be considered, that it now neither grieves nor troubles any of all the glorified, triumphing, and palm-bearing company before the throne of God and of the Lamb, that they were exercised with so many, and so great trials and tribulations while they were here below; It troubles not John the Baptist that he was imprisoned, basely murdered and beheaded there in a hole, without having access to give any public testimony before his death; And at the desire of a wanton dancing damsel, through the instigation of her adulterous and incestuous mother; Nor Stephen (commonly called the Proto-Martyr) that he was stoned to death as a blasphemer for giving testimony to the most precious and comfortable truth of Christ's being the Messiah; Nor Paul that he was three times beaten with rods, and received five times forty stripes save one, that he was in so many perils by sea and land, in the city, in the country, and in the wilderness, by the heathen, by his own countrymen, and by false brethren; That he was stoned, and suffered all these other things whereof he gives us a historical abridgment in his second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 11. Nor does it trouble any of all these worthies, of whom the world was not worthy, that they were cruelly mocked, imprisoned, scourged, tortured, or tympanized and racked, stoned, tormented, sawn asunder, killed with the sword, tempted, driven to dens and caves of the earth, and put to wander up and down in sheepskins and goatskins, whose martyrology the Apostle briefly compiles, (Hebrews 11). Nor does it trouble any other of all the martyrs, saints and servants of Jesus, who have in the several ages of the Church suffered so many and so great things while they were here in the world; In fact, all these their sufferings go to make up a considerable part of their song of praise in heaven, (where the history of these wars of and for the Lord, will be very pleasant to them to read, however sore and bloody they were on earth;) And not only so, but these of them who have suffered most, wonder much that they have suffered so little, and that they are come to so excellently glorious a kingdom through so little tribulation in the way to it: Believe it, there will be as much matter of thanksgiving and praise to God found treasured up under the plies and foldings (to say so) of the most cross and afflicting providences that ever the people of God met with here in the world, as under these that for the time were more smiling and satisfying: Let us then, valuing all things we meet with, according to the aspect they have on our spiritual and eternal state, (which is sure the justest and safest valuation of them) heartily allow him to take his own will and way in afflicting us.

Eleventhly, if it be considered, that as this submission to the will of God in cross and afflicting providences is chronicled in the Sacred Records to the perpetual commendation of several of the saints; namely of Aaron, of whom it is said, when God had slain his two sons in a strange and stupendous manner, even by fire from heaven for their presumptuous offering of strange fire before him, that he held his peace: of old Eli, when he received a sad message concerning himself and his house by the hand of young Samuel, who said, 'It is the Lord, let him do what seems good to him': of Job, after by four several messengers (each of them coming immediately on the back of the other, so that he scarcely got leave to breathe between, or the former to finish his lamentable narration) the terribly alarming tidings were brought him concerning the plundering of his oxen and donkeys by the Sabeans, and the killing of the servants with the sword; concerning the consuming of his sheep and servants by the fire of God falling from heaven upon them; concerning the carrying away of his camels, and the killing of his servants by the Chaldeans, and concerning the smothering to death of all his sons and daughters while feasting together, by the falling of the house upon them; who said, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord'; in all this not sinning, nor charging God foolishly: of David, who in a crowd of crosses says to God, 'I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because you did it': and who, when forced to flee from Jerusalem by his unnatural and rebellious son Absalom, and sending back the Ark there, with admirable composure and sweet stooping of soul, said, 'If I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again, and show me both it and his habitation, but if he say thus, I have no delight in you, behold, here am I, let him do to me as seems good to him': of Hezekiah, when that heavy message was brought to him by the prophet Isaiah concerning the Babylonish captivity, wherein his royal posterity were to have their deep share, who said, 'Good is the word of the Lord which you have spoken,' who said moreover, 'Is it not good if peace and truth be in my days?' — if the threatened doom and sentence shall be for a while suspended and not presently executed: and of these Christians, who, after they had with much weeping earnestly entreated the apostle Paul, deservedly very dear to them, not to go up to Jerusalem, where the prophet Agabus had foretold he should be apprehended and put in bonds, and perceived that he was inflexibly resolved at any rate of hazard to go there, ceased, and submissively said, 'The will of the Lord be done.' As, I say, it is thus chronicled to their commendation, so it is a piece of most beautiful and admirable conformity to the practice of our blessed Lord Jesus, of whom we ought to be followers as dear children in all these things wherein he is proposed as a pattern for our imitation, who in a great and grievous agony of trouble, and when most terribly assaulted by a strong combination of cross and afflicting providences, and after earnest prayer deprecating that bitterest cup and blackest hour, pleasantly, sweetly, and submissively subjoined, and said to his Father, 'Nevertheless not my will but yours be done: not as I will, but as you will.'

Twelfthly and finally, if it be considered, that when the whole contexture and web of providences — and more especially about the Catholic visible, militant church, and every individual member thereof — shall be wrought out, and in its full length and breadth (as it were) spread forth in the midst of all the redeemed, perfected, glorified, and triumphant company of saints, standing round about and with admiration beholding it; there will not be found (to say so) one misplaced thread, nor one wrong-set color in it all, but every thing will be found to have fallen in, in the fittest place, and in the most beautiful season and order thereof; O, so rare, so remarkable, so renowned, and so ravishing a piece as it will by them all unanimously and with one voice be judged and declared to be? Even worthy of the most exquisite art and infinite skill of the great worker thereof; the severest critics and most difficultly satisfiable of them all while here below about more public and more particular cross-providences, will then fully and to the height be satisfied, and will all, without any the least hesitation or dissent, readily and cheerfully bear him this concordant testimony, that he has done all things well, every thing in particular, and all things in the general; though when he was doing them, they often presumptuously took on them rashly to censure, and to offer their impertinent and crabbed animadversions on, and their emendations and alterations of several of them; and will most cordially bless him that he wrought on in his own way about his church and each of themselves, without consulting them or following their way, which would have quite marred the beauty and darkened the luster and splendor of that most close and curious divine contexture.

Every one of these considerations has much reason in it to persuade to this entire and absolute submission to God's will and pleasure, in what is cross to you, afflicted and sorrowful Christians; but O, how much weight and strength of sound spiritual reason is there in them all united together (beside the many other excellent considerations dispersed up and down these choice sermons, stuffed full with strong cordials, fitted both to recover and to preserve you from fainting under your many several afflictions) powerfully to persuade and prevail with you, even the most averse, untoward, wayward, and cross-grained (to say so) of you all; without further debate, demur, or delay, in these things that are most afflicting to you, and do most thwart your inclination, to come in to his will, and pleasantly, without any the least allowed reluctance or gainsaying to submit to him? How might you thus possess your souls in patience, and how quiet, calm, sedate, and composed might you be, more especially in troublesome times, amidst these things with which others are kept in a continual hurry, almost to the hazard of being distracted by them?

Let them all, my Noble Lord, prevail with your Lordship in particular, reverently to adore, silently to stoop to, and sweetly to acquiesce in, the Lord's sovereign, holy, and wise ordering your many and various complicated trials, and more especially his late removing your excellent Lady, the desire of your Eyes, the Christian and comfortable Companion of your Youth, by his stroke: As indeed all the ties of nearest and dearest relations, between Husbands and Wives, Parents and Children, Brothers and Sisters, etc. are capable of dissolution, and will all before long by Death, be actually dissolved; there being but one tie and knot of marriage-union between precious Jesus Christ and the Believer, that by divine ordination is eternally incapable of any dissolution even by Death itself; which, though it dissolve the close union that is between the soul and the body, yet does not at all loosen the closer bond of union that is between him and both of them, but it remains still inviolable; and by virtue thereof, the Believer's vile dead body, shall be raised again at the last Day, conform to his own glorious body, and be reunited to the perfected soul; which two old intimates will then meet in far better case than when they were parted and pulled asunder; for he is a husband that cannot grow old, sick or weak, neither can he die; he is a husband whose Bride and Spouse is never a widow, neither has he any widows: The drawing on of which matchless match and marvelous marriage, is one great design of these sweet Sermons, wherein pregnant reasons are adduced by this friend of the Bridegroom, to persuade Sinners to embrace the offer thereof made to them in the Gospel; and to make them, who, by his own gracious and powerful insinuations on their hearts, have entertained his proposal, towards making up, and final, closing of the match, to bless themselves in their choice, and to bless him, that ever he was pleased to stoop so very low as to become a Suitor to them, with a peremptory resolution to admit of no refusal, but irresistibly to carry their hearts' consent to take him for their Lord, Head and Husband, to be to them a Saviour, a Physician, and Treasure, even their All in all, their All above all; which day of Espousals, as it was the day of the gladness of his heart, so, it will never be any grief of heart to them. Let all mutinous thoughts about his dealings with you, be silenced with, It's the Lord; let not too much dwelling on the thoughts of your affliction, to the filling of your heart still with sorrow, incapacitate you for, nor divert you from, humble asking the Lord, what he aims at by all these dispensations, what he would have you to learn out of them, what he reproves and contends for, what he would have you amending your hand in, and what he would have you more weaned, self-denied, and mortified in, and what he would have you a further length and a greater proficient in; He has told you the truth, that these things are expedient for you; study to find them to be so in your own experience. Sure he has by them, written in great, legible, and capital characters, yea, even as with a sun-beam, vanity, emptiness, uncertainty, mutability, unsatisfactoriness, and disappointment upon the forehead of all creature-comforts, and with a loud voice called your Lordship yet more seriously than ever, to seek after solid soul-satisfaction in his own blessed and all-sufficient Self, where it is most certainly to be found without all peradventure or possibility of misgiving; make haste, my Lord, yet to come by a more close confining of all your desires and expectations of happiness and satisfaction to your soul, to God only, contracting and gathering them in from the vast and wearisome circumference of earthly comforts, and centering them all in himself as their point; study through grace, in a sweet soliloquy, to bespeak your soul, thus, "My soul wait only upon God, for my expectation is from him" (Psalm 62:5): O blessed confinement of desires and expectations of happiness and satisfaction to the soul! where it is as impossible to meet with disappointment as it is impossible not to meet with it from every other direction from where it is looked for; alas! it is the scattering of our expectations and desires of happiness among other objects beside him, that breeds us all the disquiet, anxiety, and vexation, whereas if we kept ourselves through grace under a more close and constant confinement to him, when this and that, and the other creature-comfort, whether person or thing were taken from us, there would be no deduction made from, nor any diminution made of our true happiness; none of these, how dear and desirable soever being essentially constitutive of it, nor so much as trenching thereupon; and he in whom only all our happiness lies, being the same yesterday, today, and forever, without any variableness or shadow of turning: There are some whom he loves so well, that he cannot (to speak so) find in his heart to see them thus to parcel out their affections, and to dote upon any painted imaginary happiness in creature-comforts; and therefore on design, he does either very much blast them as to the expected satisfaction from them, or quite remove them, that by making such a vacuity he may make way for himself to fill it, and happily to necessitate the person, humbly, prayerfully, and believingly, to put him to the filling of it; and it is a great vacuity, that he who fills heaven and earth cannot fill, a little of whose gracious presence and manifested special love, can go very far to fill up the room that is made void by the removal of the choicest and most desirable of all earthly comforts and enjoyments: Happy they, who, when they lose a near and dear relation or friend, or any idol, they are fond of, are helped of God to make Jesus Christ, as it were, succeed to the same as its heir, by taking that loss as a summons to transfer and settle their whole love on him; the object incomparably most worthy of it, as being altogether lovely, or all desires; there is no earthly comfort, person or thing, but has somewhat in it that is not desirable, and that it would be the better to want, but there is nothing in him that is not truly desirable, nor anything out of him that is worthy to be desired (Song of Solomon 5:16).

I am, my Noble Lord, the more easily prevailed with and encouraged, to address the dedication of these sermons to your Lordship more particularly, when I remember the unfeigned faith that first dwelt in your grandmother, as another Lois; and in your Mother, as another Eunice; and more lately, in your own choice Lady, who, as another beloved [reconstructed: Persis], labored much in the Lord; and though she had but a very short Christian race, (in which she was much encouraged by coming into your Noble Father's family, and her beholding how hard your blessed Mother did run and press toward the mark, even when in the last stage and turning in a manner the last stop of her Christian course); yet it was a very swift one, wherein she did quite out-run many that were in Christ long before her; (all three Ladies of Honor, almost (if I need to say almost) without parallels in their times, in the serious and diligent exercise of godliness, and patterns worthy to be imitated by others); and I trust in your Lordship's self also; indeed, and in several others of your elder and younger Noble Relations (for Grace has had such a draught of souls among you, as it uses not often to have in societies of so Noble extract (for not many noble are called;) which, as it deservedly draws respect to such of you as are thus privileged, from the observers of it; so it lays a mighty strong obligation upon you, to be much for God, and in service to your generation according to his will. Further, when I observe your Lordship's Christian and exemplary carriage, under such a conjunction and combination of so very cross, and almost crushing calamitous providences; choosing rather contentedly and satisfiedly to be (if it so please the Lord, and O! that it may not) the last of that Ancient and Honorable Family, than to be found endeavoring to keep it from sinking by any sinful and unwarrantable course, particularly by defrauding just creditors (though the debt was not of your Lordship's own contracting) under whatever specious pretexts and advantages of Law; of which many make no bones, who, if they may keep up their superfluities, care not to ruin their friends engaged in suretyship for their debt, and to live on the substance of others. Moreover, when with great satisfaction I notice how much your Lordship makes it your business to follow your Noble Ancestors in so far as they were followers of Christ; which many great men even in the Christian world, alas, do not much mind; not considering that it is true nobility where God is the Chief and Top of the kin, and where religion is at the bottom; and what renowned Raleigh says, Hinc dictus Nobilis quaesi prae aliis virtute notabilis; and what another says, Qui ab illustrium majorum splendida virtute degenerarunt Nobilia pertenta sunt. And finally, when I consider, that in your Lordship's retirement and abstraction from usual converse and dealing in business, you will have access at leisure to read them, whereby you may through God's blessing be sweetly diverted from pensive and not so profitable poring on your affliction, and be much instructed, convinced, reproved, directed, edified, strengthened, and comforted. Read them then, my Lord, carefully (as I take it for granted you will) ponder and digest them well, and I am hopeful, that they shall through Grace prove contributive to the bringing upon you a considerable growth of holiness, and to the making of your ways and doings more than ever such, that others of his people observing the same, shall be comforted, and made to think, and say, verily God has not done in vain all that he has done to yonder nobleman.

That these substantial and marrow-rich Gospel sermons may come along to you all, nay to all the readers of them, and to your Lordship more particularly, with showers of Gospel blessings, is the earnest desire of,

Dearly beloved and afflicted Christians, and my very Noble Lord in particular, your companion in tribulation, desirous also to be, in the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, and your servant in the Gospel for his sake, J. C. November 15th, 1682.