Proposition 1

Proposition. I.

There is a various trial which the God of Heaven causes to pass upon His people. No Christian can be without his trials. But there are especially two sorts of trials which our God will subject us all to. First,

There are the trials of divine examinations, which will be critical upon us. It is said in Psalm 11:4, 5: the Lord's eyes behold, and His eyelids try the children of men; the Lord sounds (as the French translation has it) both the righteous and the wicked. Every man in the world falls under the notice, and so, under the trial of the omniscient God. The all-seeing eyes of God, as it were, examine us, and His eyelids knit themselves for a scrutiny into our hearts and lives. The blessed God will pass a judgment, after a trial upon us; whether we truly love Him and seek Him, or no. We are told in Psalm 7:9: the righteous God tries the hearts and the reins; an assertion, an expression, it may be, more than seven times repeated in the Word of God! The examination and observation of God extends itself to the most interior parts of men; the motions of their very hearts and reins come under His exactest cognizance. Every man may so far say after that godly man, in Psalm 17:3: Lord, you have proved my heart, you have visited me, you have tried me. To use a similitude made legitimate and canonical by the Apostle himself, in Hebrews 4:13: the sacrificing knife of old never did penetrate so far into the bowels of the creatures it was employed upon; it never laid them so naked and open, before the standers-by; as the examining eye of God makes a discovery of what is in our souls and our ways.

Secondly, there are the trials of divine dispensations which we must have experience of. God's providences are our probations; by them we are tried what we are. The things which befall us in the world fetch out of us those things which manifest what metal we are made of. Particularly, it is said in 2 Corinthians 6:3, 7: we are approved by things on the right hand and on the left.

First, the merciful dispensations of God are trials of us: these are trials on the right hand. It is a sacred proverb, in Proverbs 27:21: as the fining-pot for silver, and the furnace for gold, so is a man to his praise; or so the mouth which praises any one, is to try him. As when a man is praised by his neighbor, so when a man is blessed of his Maker, he is then tried to the utmost. Honours from below do Indicare virum; they soon try and show the man that is perfumed therewith; and the same is done by mercies from above. Therein the Lord brings us, as He did the soldiers of Gideon, to a river of plenty, and He says, as in Judges 7:4: now I will try them there. The favors of God, as it were, put us into a crucible, in a furnace, where it soon becomes apparent, whether we fear Him or no. They are so many trials, whether we will hear God speaking to us in our prosperity; or whether when we wax fat, we shall kick against the Lord.

Secondly, the afflictive dispensations of God are likewise trials of us. And these are trials on the left hand. So much is intimated in 1 Peter 1:6, 7: you are in heaviness through many temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than that of gold which perishes, though it be tried with fire, may be found to praise. All afflictions are temptations; by them we are tried whether we have the grace of God in us or no. It is faith, but not faith alone, which our troubles here are the trials of. A sick-bed is a furnace, a reproach is a furnace, a loss, or a gaol is a furnace, in which it is tried whether we have the spirits, not of bastards, but of children in us. Hence we read of a great trial of affliction. Afflicted persons may make that confession in Psalm 66:10, 11: you, O God, have proved us, you have tried us as silver is tried; you have laid affliction upon our loins. Hereby we are tried whether we will despise the chastening of the Lord, or whether we will faint when rebuked of Him.