who mightest have cast me into a bed of dames, instead of mj' bed of sickness ; and therefore I accept tliy correction thankfully. Thus lie catches at the blow, without retorting it back upon (iod, by any cjuarrelling, discontented language. Secondly, Sincerity enables the soul to expect good from God, when his hand presseth hardest on body or soul, Psa. xxxviii. Never was David in a worse case for body and soul ; it would break a flinty heart to read the sad moans that his throbbing soul makes in the anguish of his flesh and bitter agony of his spirit ; one would have thought that they had been the pangs of a soul going away in despair ; yet even in this great storm we find him casting out his sheet-anchor of hope, and that takes sure hold of God for mercy, ver. 15 : 'In thee, O Lord, do I hope : thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.' This ex- pectation of good from God corrects and qualifies the bitterness that is upon his palate from his present sorrow ; so Psa. Ix. 17: 'I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me.' My state at jjresent is sad enough, but my com- fort is, I am not cast out of his mind, I know his thoughts are at work to do me good. Holj' Job proves that he is not a hypocrite, as his friends unchari- tably charged him, by this confidence he had on God in the depth of all his afflictions. Job xiii. 1.'), IG. ' Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. I will maintain my ways before him. He also shall be my salvation : for a hypocrite shall not come before him.' As if he had said. If I were not sincere, I durst not appeal thus to God, and comfortably believe, while God is killing of me, that he would j'et save me : ' for a hypocrite shall not come before him ;' that is, he dare not thus trust himself in God's hands, and acquiesce in his promise, when his neck is on the block, and God's knife at his throat ; no, if he could, he would never come in his sight. His conscience tells him, God knows him too well to intend him any good ; and therefore when God begins to lay his hand on him, except his conscience be dead and seared, which is the curse that God nov/ and then brands the gross hypocrite with, he presently hath the scent of hell-fire in his soul, in a fearfid expectation thereof; and looks on these present afflictions, though but a cloud of a hand-breadth, as those which will spread further and further, till the shades of that everlasting night overtake and encompass him in hell's utter darkness.
Section III. — ^Thirdly, Sincerity comforts the Christian when he wants success visibly to crown his endeavours in his place and calling, — a great affliction no doubt to a gracious soul ; as when a minister of the gospel spends his strength and wears out his life to a gainsaying people, that sit like stocks and stones under his ministr}^ no more moved than the seats they sit on, and the pillars they lean to ; ignorant and profane he found them, and such, he sees, he is likely to leave them, after twenty years, may be, almost twice told, spent among them. This must needs be a heart-aching trial to one that God hath given a compassionate heart to souls. It costs the mother no small pains to bring forth a living child ; but what are the bitter throes of one that travails with a dead child I Such is the travail of a poor minister with a dead-hearted people, yet the portion of none of the meanest of God's messengers ; indeed God sets his most eminent servants about the hardest work.
Now sincerity lightens this affliction, and sends in that which may cheer the sonl under it. Paul saw he shoidd not carry all to heaven with him he preached unto; to many the gospel was 'a savour of death unto death.' The sweet perfume of the gospel proved a deadly scent to hasten and heighten their damnation ; this could not be but sad to so tender a ph3'sician, to see his patients die under his hands; yet he thanks God that makes him trimnph in Christ, 2 Cor. ii. 14. But how can he do this? Poor souls droji to hell from under his pulpit hearing him, and he triumph ! This is as strange as to see the father follow his child's mournful hearse, not weeping, but singing and dancing. Mark, and the won- der will cease : he doth not triumph that they ])erish, but that ho is not guilty of their blood ; not that they are daumed, but that he sincerely endeavoured their salvation, ver. 17: ' For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God ; l)ut as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.' Had Paid dropped some wild gourd error into his doctrine, or mingled some ingredient of his own with what Christ, the great Physician, had ordered, he would have had little list to triumph ; but preaching pure gospel, and that purely, with a sincere heart, he might triumph in Christ, that made him faithful.
ggg HAVING YOUR LOINS