of saints? Where are two or three to be found that can agree to walk together? Those that could formerly pray together, cannot sit together at their Father's table, can hardly pray one with or one for another ; the breath of one Chris- tian is strange to another, that once lay in his bosom. ' This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.'
CHAPTER V.
THE WORDS OPENED, AND WHAT IS MEANT BY THE EVIL DAY.
That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done, ^c.
Wh come to the argmnent with which the apostle urgeth the exhortation, and that is double.
The first hath respect to the hour of battle, ' That ye may be able to with- stand in the evil day.'
The second to the happy issue of the war, which will crown the Christian thus armed, and that is certain victory, ' and having done all, to stand,'
First, Of the first, 'That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day.' But what is this evil day? Some take tliis evil day to comprehend the whole life of a Christian here below in this vale of tears ; and then the argument runs thus : take to yourselves the whole armom* of God, that ye may he able to persevere to the end of your life, which you will find, as it were, one continued day of trouble and trial. Thus Jacob di-aws a black line over his whole life, ' Few and evil have the days of my life been,' Gen. xlvii. What day shines so fair that overcasts not before night, nay, in which the Christian meets not with some shower or other, enough to deserve the name of an evil day? Every day hath its portion, yea, proportion; ' siifficient is the evil of the day.' We need not bori'ow and take up sorrows upon use of the morrow, to make up om* present load ; as we read of daily bread, so of a daily cross, Luke ix. 24, which we are bid to take, not to make ; we need not make crosses for ourselves, as we are prone to do, God in his providence will provide one for us ; and we are bid to take it up, but we hear nothing of laying it down, till cross and we lie down together ; our troubles and our lives are co-existent, live and die together ; here when joy comes, sorrow is at its heel ; staff and rod go together : Job himself, whose pi'osperity the devil so grudged, and set forth in all his bravery and pomp. Job i. 10, as if his sun had no shadow, hear what account this good man gives of this his most flourishing time, chap. iii. 26 : ' I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet.' There were some trovibles that broke his rest wh«n his bed was, to thinking, as soft as heart could wish ; even now this good man tosses and tumbles from one side to the other, and is not quiet. If one should have come to Job, and blessed him jvith his happy condition, and said. Surely, Job, thou couldst be content with what thou hast for thy portion, if thou mightest have all this settled on thee and thy heirs after thee, he would have said, as once Luther, that God should not jmt him off with these. Such is the saints' state in this bottom, that their very life here, and all the pompous entertainments of it, are their cross, because they detain them from their crown. We need nothing to make our life an evil clay, more than our absence from our chief good; which cannot be recompensed by the world, nor enjoyed v/ith it. Only this goodness there is in this evil, that it is short ; our life is but an evil day, it will not last long ; and sure it was mercy that God hath abridged so much of the term of man's life in these last days, wherein so much of Christ and heaven are discovered, that it would have put the saint's patience hard to it to have known so much of the upper world's glory, and then be kept so long from it, as the fathei-s in the first age were. O comfort one another. Christians, with this ! though your life be evil with troubles, yet it is short ; a few steps, and you are out of the rain. There is a great difference between a saint, in regard of the evils he meets with, and the wicked ; as two travellers riding con- trary ways, both taken in the rain and wet, but one rides from the rain, and so is soon out of the shower; but the other rides into the rainy corner, the further he goes, the worse he is. The saint meets with troubles as well as the wicked, but he is soon out of the shower ; when death cimies, he has fair weather : but as for the wicked, the further he goes the worse: what he meets with here is but a few drops, the great storm is the last. The poui'ing out of GA<l's
IN THE EVIL DAY. jyg
wrath shall be in hell, where all the depths of horror are opened, both from above of God's righteous fury, and from beneath of their own accusing and tormenting consciences.