the evil that the creature receives from God, faitli shows more good received than evil. Thus Job quenched this dart, which Satan sliot at him from his wife's tongue : ' Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall not we receive evil V Shall a few present troubles be a grave to bury the remembrance of all my past and present mercies? ' Thou speakest as one of the foolish women.' What God takes from me is less than I owe him ; but what he leaves me is more than he owes me. Solomon bids us, ' in the day of adversity consider.' Our unbecoming thoughts and words of God are the produce of a rash, hasty spirit. Now faith is a considering grace; he that believes will not make haste; no, not to think or speak of God. Faith hath a good memory, and can tell tjie Christian many stories of ancient mercies ; and when his ])rcsent meal falls short, it can entertain the soul with a cold dish, and not complain that God keeps a bad house. Thus David recovered himself, when he was even timibling down the hill of temptation : ' This is my infirmity ; but I will remember the years of the right hand of the IMost High ; I will remember the works of the Lord; surely I will remember thy wonders of old,' Psa. Ixxvii. 10, 11. Therefore, Christian, when thou art in thy depths of afHiction, and Satan tempts thee to asperse God, as if he were forgetful of thee, stop his mouth with this : No, Satan, God hath not forgot to do for me, but I have forgot what he hath done for me, or else I could not question his fatherly care at present over me. Go, Christian, play over thy own lessons, praise God for past mci'cies, and it will not be long before thou hast a new song put into thy mouth for a present mercy. Secondly, As faith espies mercy in every afHiction, so it holds an expectation in the soul for more ; which confidence disposcth the soul to praise God as if the mercy were then in being. Daniel, when in the very shadow of death, the plot being laid to take away his life, three times a day he prayed, and gave thanks before his CJod, Dan. vi. 10. To have heard him pray in that great strait would not have afforded so much matter of wonder ; but to have his heart in tune for giving thanks in such a sad hour was admirable. Mercy in the promise is as the apple in the seed; faith sees it growing up — the mercy coming. Now a soul imder expectation of deliverance will scorn a blasphemous thought. When relief is known to be on its way for a garrison besieged, it raiseth their spirits ; thej' will not then hearken to the traitorous proposal of the enemy. It is when unbelief is the counsellor, and the soul under doubts and suspicions of God's disposition toward it, that Satan finds welcome upon such an errand : an excellent instance of both we have in Isaiah viii. ; we find, ver. 17, what is the effect of faith, and that is a cheerful waiting on God in difficulties : ' I will wait upon the Loi-d, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him ;' and, ver. 21, we have the fruit of unbelief, and that is no less than blasphemy: 'And it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward.' Faith keeps the believer in a waiting posture; and unbelief sets the sinner cursing both God and man. None escapes his lash that crosses him in his way ; no, not God himself. Fourthly, Faith quenches this fiery dart by purifying the heart of that enmity against God which, in man's corrupt natm-e, is fuel for such a temptation. ' Backbiters, haters of God,' and 'despiteful,' are joined together, Rom. i. ,'30. No wonder that a man whose spirit is full of rancour against another should be easily persuaded to revile him whom he hates so much. Every unbeliever is a hater of God, and so he is in a disposition to blaspheme God when his will or lust is crossed by God ; but faith slays this enmity of the heart, yea, it works love in the soul to God, and then works by this love. Now, it is one property of love ' to think no evil,' 1 Cor. xiii. .5 ; that is, a man will neither plot any evil against him whom he loves, nor easily suspect any evil to be plotted by him against himself. Love reads the actions of a friend through sucli clear spec- tacles of candour as will make a dark print seem a fair character ; she interprets all he doth with so much sweetness and simjilicity, that those passages in his behaviour towards her, which to another would seem intricate and suspicious, are plain and pleasing to her, because she ever puts the most favourable sense upon all he doeth. The believer dares not himself plot any sin against God, whom he loves so dearly. And as love will not suffer him to turn traitor against a good God, so neither will it suffer him to harbour any jealous thoughts of God's heart towards him ; as if he who was the first lover, and taught the soul to
494 ABOVE ALL, TAKING THE SHIELD OF FAITH.