their corruptions; whereby they are made to fink under their trial. They fee more unbelief, impatience, diftruft, and enmity to God in them, than they faw before; they see more of the weakness of grace, and of their want of faith and love, than before; whereby they are fometimes tempted to raze the foundation, and fay, all their former attainments were but delufions, and their profeffions but hypocrify. These things make afflictions fometimes very heavy and finking to the people of God.

II. In the next place, for preventing and helping this evil of fainting under affliction; let believers confider,

1. These heavy trials are all needful for you. Deep waters are not more needful to carry a fhip into the haven, than great afflictions are to carry the veffels of our fouls into the port of blifs. Strong winds and thunder are frightful, but they are neceffary to purge the air. One of the fharpest calamities that ever befel Ifrael, was the Babylonifh captivity, yet even this was in mercy to them, for the Lord faith, Jer. xxiv. 5. “I have fent them out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good." Strange! of freemen to be made prifoners, and that in a ftrange land among the Heathen; to be removed far from their own houses, vineyards, friends; nay, and from the temple of God and his ordinances; and yet all this for their good! Why? They were hereby effectually weaned and broke off from their darling fin of idolatry.

2. Confider that your affliction, however heavy it be, will foon have an end, Ifa. lvii. 16. "For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth; for the fpirit fhould fail before me, and the fouls which I have made." The goldfmith will not let his gold lie longer in the furnace than it is purified. The wicked have a fea of wrath to drink; but, O drooping believer, take comfort; you have but a cup of affliction, which will foon be exhaufted. The time is near, when all thy trials fhall have an end: In heaven there is no croís, no complaint, no tears, nor forrows for ever.

3. Faint not, O child of God; for thofe afflictions are the hell which thou shalt have; thou haft nothing. to fear hereafter. Judas had two hells, one in time, by terror in his confcience, another after this life, which endures to eternity; but all the hell that a believer hath is the light affliction, which is but for a moment.

4. Defponding or murmuring in affliction, is evil in any, but in none is it so bad as in the children of God: It doth very ill become their covenants, their privileges, their hopes. Have they refigned and given up themselves, and all they have, to God, by a folemn covenant, and will they fret when he difpofeth of them? Didft thou not fay, O believer, in the day when thy heart was ftung with fin, and the terrors of God made thee afraid, "O, let me have Jefus Chrift for my Saviour and portion, and I will be content though I fhould be ftricken with boils like Job, or beg my bread with Lazarus?" Now, God tries thee if thou wilt ftand to thy word : O beware of retracting. Hath not that foul enough, who hath an all-fufficient God for his portion? If God be thine in covenant, that comprehends all things.

5. It doth difcompofe and unfit the foul for any duty. It is ill failing in a ftorm, fo it is ill praying when the heart is in a ftorm of difquiet and defpondency.

6. Your fainting under affliction, and carrying as if the confolations of God were small, is enough to ftumble others at religion, and make them call the truth of it in question. When they fee thofe that profefs religion, and have often declared that their rejoicing is in Chrift Jefus as their portion, begin to fink and defpond under outward afflictions, O, may not they be tempted to fay, "Where is the truth of religion? Where are thofe divine fupports and confolations we have often. heard of?"

7. O then feek to get faith revived, and ftrengthened, and refolve with Job to trust in God, though he fhould flay you. This would be of noble ufe to keep the heart from finking under preffures of affliction, as

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the Pfalmift found it to his fweet experience, Pf. xxvii. 13. "I had fainted, unless I had believed to fee the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

III. I come to anfwer fome objections or excufes of fainting believers, which they do commonly allege as the ground of their difcouragement in their afflictions.

Object. I. "O (faith one) my afflictions are not ordinary, they are fore preffures I lie under, and of various kinds too."

Anf. 1. O believer, God hath taken the ordering of your lot in his own hand, and he knows what is fittest for you Should a man be left to carve out his own portion, it would foon appear he would be his own greatest enemy. We would all be for the dainties of pleasure and profperity, which would not be for our foul's health; as children think green fruit the best diet, because they please their tafte; but their parents are wifer to keep them from them.

2. God may fee you have many and ftrong lufts to be fubdued, and that you need many and fore afflic tions to bring them down. Your pride and obftinacy of heart may be ftrong, your diftempers deeply rooted, and therefore the phyfic must be proportioned to them; as with the Ifraelites, Pf. cvii. 11, 12. "Becaufe they rebelled against the words of God, and contemned the counfels of the Moft High; therefore, he brought down their hearts with labour." O believer, your God and Father, that hath the mixing of your cup and portion, is a wife and fkilful Phyfician, who knows your conftitution and your need, 1 Pet. i. 6. "If need be, you are in heavinefs through manifold temptations." And, as he knows your need, fo he underftands your ftrength. I Cor. x. 13. "Faithful is he, that will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able."

3. God fends great and fore troubles, that you may have the more experience of God's wifdom and mercy, in your fupport and deliverance, Pf. lxxi. 20. "Thou which haft fhewed me great and fore troubles, fhalt quicken and bring me up again from the depths of the earth."

Object.

Object. I. "But (faith one) my affliction is fingular; there was never any in my condition."

Anf. 1. It is very ordinary for every man in great diftrefs to reckon his cafe fingular, because he feels beft what is nearest himself, but is a ftranger to what his neighbour feels.

2. This fuggeftion is one of fatan's devices, that he may tempt a child of God to queftion his father's love; but he is a liar, and not to be credited in what he faith : For others of your brethren have been afflicted in the fame kind and degree, if not woríe, 1 Pet. v. 9. " Knowing that the fame afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world."

3. Whatever your cafe be, you must own your fufferings are not fo great as your fins. The trials of God's people in Babylon were fingular: Yet Ezra owns, Ezra iv. 13. "Thou haft punished us less than our iniquities deferve." If our provoked Judge fhall, in his clemency, fend us to Babylon inftead of hell, we have no caufe to complain.

4. But, O child of God, however thou complainest of the fingularity of affliction now, all fuch complaints will be taken out of thy mouth ere long, and the time is near, when thou shalt be made to wonder at the wifdom of God, in guiding so many fons and daughters to glory, through fuch a variety of trials, exercifes, afflictions, and temptations; and made to fay as thofe in Mark vii. 37. He hath done all things well."

Object. III. "But (faith one) my affliction is long continued, and I fee no outgate: and, how can I buc faint under it ?”

Anf. 1. It is not fo long as your fins deferve; for in juftice it might be for ever; it might be the worm that never dieth, and the fire that is never quenched.

2. Your fufferings on earth are not so long as your reward in heaven, Rom. viii. 18. "For I reckon that the fufferings of this prefent time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which fhall be revealed in us." 3. No length or continuance of affiction here should hinder a believer's comfort. If we take a view of our VOL. I. head

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head and pattern Jefus Chrift, how long did his afflictions continue? No end was put to them, till he cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghoft. Though he was the Son of God, yet, from the hour of his birth to the moment of his death, from his manger to his cross, his affliction still increased, and he ended his days in the midst of them. Now, Chrift is the head of the church, and your great reprefentative, O believers, into a conformity with whom you are predeftinated; be content, then, to be like your head and pattern, to have no case or rest from afflictions, till you lie down in the grave; it is "there the wicked ceafe from troubling, and there the weary are at rest," Job iii. 17.

4. Remember that your afflictions are a part of Chrift's crofs, which your loving Redeemer hath contrived for your good, and hath appointed you to take up and bear with him. Now, love to Chrift fhould keep you from wearying to bear off a part of Chrift's crofs, efpecially when he himself bears the heaviest end of it; nay, bears you and your crofs both. It is faid of Jacob, Gen. xxix. 20. that "he ferved feven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had for her." And shall not we endure a few years affliction for our Lord Jefus Chrift, who lived a life of forrows, and died a curfed death, for our fakes? Had we more love to Chrift, his cross would not be fo tedious to us.

5. Should it not be good news to thee, that there is a deliverance for thee at death from all thy troubles, and that this time is hastening, and very near; be not anxious for an outgate here in time, for that favours too much of unbelief and love to the world. Doth it not seem to say, that you would be better content to be turned back again to the stormy tumultuous feas of this world, than to be fafely and speedily landed at your reft above? That you would be more happy in a few temporal mercies on earth, than to enter upon your eternal inheritance with Chrift?

Object. IV. "No wonder (faith one) that I faint under my affliction, for I want those confolations and fupports which God used to reserve for afflicted faints."

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