God to us, fo he is the fole Mediator for conveying all our fervices and spiritual facrifices to God. God accepts of them only as they are perfumed by Christ's meritorious facrifice and potent interceffion.

DIRECT. III. When the Lord is pleafed to grant thee any fignal mercy or deliverance from trouble, beware of forgetting the Lord's kindness towards thee.

FORGETTING of God's remarkable kind providences, is an evil we are naturally prone unto, when we are in a profperous ftate. Hence it is, that the Spirit of God gives fo many cautions against it in his word; and the faints of God do fo folemnly charge their own fouls to beware of it, as in Pfal. ciii. 2. "Blefs the Lord, O my foul, and forget not all his benefits; who healeth all thy difeafes, who redeemeth thy life from deftruction." Forget not his benefits, but carefully preferve and treasure them up in thy memory. It was ufual for faints under the Old Teftament, to set up some vifible monument to remind them of God's fingular favours to them; they erected ftones, and built altars, to be memorials of the mercies they received, and put names on the places for this end. Let all this teach you to guard against this evil of forgetting the Lord's kind providence in recovering you from sickness.

You are guilty of this evil, when you do not duly value the mcrcy, but let it pafs as a turn of common providence. When you let the impreffion of the mercy wear foon off your hearts; when you make a bad ufe of it, or do not rightly improve it to God's glory, and your own foul's good; when you do not put on new refolutions to walk more exactly, live more fruitfully, and ferve God more holily and humbly; then are you guilty of forgetting his benefits.

This is an evil moft grievous and provoking to a good and gracious God, as is evident from the many

heavy complaints he makes of his people for it, as in Judg. viii. 34. Pfal. lxxviii. 11. Pfal. cvi. 13. Wherefore watch and pray against it,

DIRECT. IV. Enquire after the fruits of righteoufnefs, which are the genuine effects of affliction in the children of God, who are duly exercised thereby.

THE Apoftle speaks of these fruits, Heb. xii. 11. as natively following upon fanctified afflictions, and a kindly exercise of spirit under them. And therefore it is your duty to enquire if they be produced in you.

1. The increase of true repentance is one of those fruits which is the product of fanctified trials. Job found it in himself on the back of his afflictions, Job xlii. 6. "Now I abhor myself, and repent in duft and athes." It would be happy if we could find our hearts more foft and melting upon the view of fin, after we have been in the furnace of affliction.

2. Another fruit is the improvement of faith. The afflicted believer is taught to look to, and depend more upon God, for help in time of need, and lefs upon the creature. He now fees that vain is the help of man in the day of calamity, and that God in Chrift is the only proper object of the foul's truft. This was the fruit of the Apoftle's affliction. 2 Cor. i. 8. 9. 10. "We were preffed out of measure, above ftrength, infomuch that we defpaired even of life. We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead: who delivered us from fo great a death, and doth deliver in whom we truft that he will yet deliver "

3. Humility, and low thoughts of ourselves, is one of the fruits of righteoufnefs which fanctified affliction doth yield. How proud and lofty was Nebuchadnez. zar before his affliction, Dan iv. 29. 30. But afterwards he is made to own God, and humbly fubmit to him as his fupreme and uncontroulable fovereign, and to acknowledge, that thole who walk in pride, he is VOL. I.

able

able to abase, ver 27. This was God's defign in the various trials of his people Ifrael in the wilderness, Deut. viii. 16. "That he might humble thee, prove thee, and do thee good at thy latter end." See then, O believer, if this fruit be produced in thee.

4. Another fruit is the fpirit of prayer and fupplication. This was vifible in the Pfalmift's cafe, after God had delivered him from the forrows of death, and heard his voice, Pfal. cxvi. 2. "Therefore, fays he, will I call upon him as long as I live." O, faith a true believer, God's mercy to me in trouble, and his fending me relief when I cried to him, will make me love prayer the better, and engage me to be more diligent in it all my days; for I ftill fee I have daily need of his helping hand.

5. Heavenly-mindedness is a fruit of fanctified affliction. Before the man was inclined to that language, it is good for us to be here, let us build tabernacles in this lower world, but now he turns his tongue, and changeth his thoughts, and faith, with the Pfalmift, "It is good for me to draw nigh to God. Arife, let us depart, this is not our reft. This world is nothing but the house of our pilgrimage, heaven only is our home."

6. Another fruit of fanctified trials, is greater love to God than formerly. How much was David's heart warmed with love and gratitude to God, upon the back of his affliction, fo that he wants words to exprefs the affections of his foul? Pfal. cxvi. 1. 8. 12. "I will love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice, I was brought low, but he helped me. Thou haft delivered my foul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. What fhail I render to the Lord for all his benefits towards me."

7. Learning and keeping of God's word, is a fruit of fanctified affliction, Pfal. cxix. 67. 71. Let us enquire if this fruit be produced in us after fickness: Do we attend to the word more clofely? Do we believe it more firmly? Do we embrace its offers more earneftly? Do we rely on its promifes more stedfaftly? And, do we live more in the expectation of that glory which the word deth reveal to us? Then it is good for us that

we

we have been afflicted, for we have learned more of God's word.

8. Tenderness of conscience is a happy fruit of fanctified trouble, when the believer, after it, becomes exceedingly afraid of fin, and of making new wounds in his confcience. He cannot think of adventuring again upon any known fin, for the fmart of former wounds, and the pain they occafioned in his foul, when distress lay upon him, makes deep and lafting impreffion on his mind, as it did on the afflicted church, Lam. iii. 19. 20. "Remembering mine affliction, and my mifery, the wormwood and the gall, my foul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled within me." Now, fuch fruits of righteousness are an evidence we have been fuitably exercised under affliction. O to find them produced in us after sickness is over!

DIRECT. V. Be careful to perform thofe Refolutions, Engagements or Vows, you have come under in the time of Sicknefs; and walk fuitably to them.

AS a time of sickness and affliction is a proper feafon for making vows to God, and binding our fouls with refolutions to mortify fin in the heart, and purge it away from the life, and to be diligent in duty, and walk more humbly with God; fo a time of recovery from Lickness, is a proper feafon for paying and performing these vows. This was the royal Pfalmift's practice in fuch a cafe, Pfal. cxvi. 6. 16. 17. 18. "I was brought low, and he helped me. Truly I am thy fervant, I am thy fervant. I will offer to thee the facrifice of thanksgiving. I will pay my vows unto the Lord, now in the prefence of all his people." Now, for your affiftance in this matter, I offer you thefe few advices.

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i. Defer not to pay your vows, but be speedy, and take thy first opportunity to pay them. Delays in this cafe are most dangerous: Solomon, that wife man, was

fenfible of this, which made him give this advice, Eccl. "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it."

v. 4.

2. Be ftill jealous of thy heart, which is prone to deal treacherously with God after affliction is over: The Ifraelites practice is a fad inftance of this truth, Pial. lxxviii. 34. &c. "When he flew them, then they fought him, and they returned and enquired early after God, &c. Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouths, and they lied to him with their tongues: for their heart was not right with him, neither were they ftedfaft in his covenant." The purposes of many in affliction, are like the vows of mariners in a storm; they are the first things which they forget and break, when once they win fafe afhore. seem to be in fickness, yet, when they recover from it, However penitent some they foon return to their old fins again. They are like metals in a furnace; they melt and turn liquid, while in it, but when out, they foon return to their old hardnefs. There is good reafon for that caution the Lord gives us, Mal. ii. 16. "Therefore take heed to your fpirit, that ye deal not treacherously."

3. Cry continually for ftrength from above, to enable you to perform your vows. The Pfalmift took this courfe, and found it fuccefsful, Pfal. cxxxviii. 3. " In the day when I cried to thee thou answeredst me, and ftrengthenedit me with ftrength in my foul." And forget not, O believer, that God has treasured up ftrength for thee in thy Head and Surety, Chrift Jefus; wherefore be still borrowing from him, for the performing of all thy engagements, 2 Tim. ii. 1. "My fon, be ftrong in the grace that is in Chrift Jefus." Put thy treacherous heart in thy Surety's hand; for though thou art weak, yet thy Redeemer is ftrong. Whenever then you first perceive your heart begin to ftart afide from God, be fure to check it, and look up to God in Chrift, for strength to fecure it against treachery and perfidious dealing: Cry with the Pfalmift, "Be furety for thy fervant for good."

4. Guard diligently against thy predominant fin, the fin that hath moft eafily befet thee, the fin that was

moft