mine eiioniy ; shoot tliy darts, iny breast is open to receive them, but let them not be envenomed arrows, headed with thy pimitive justice. Without the sting, all sufFei-ing is innocent and liarmless ; but if the creature does fear (though without just cause) that they are shot out of justice's bow, then they drink up his spirits. ' When thou witli rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth,' Psa. xxxix. II. That holy woman, 1 Kings xvii. 18, was not so much distressed for her son's death, as for the reflection this sad providence made upon her conscience, — 'Art thou come to call my sin to remembrance, and slay my son?' Thou canst not there- fore be too passionately importunate in deprecating this. Thirdly, Deprecate the snare and temptation that suffering may expose thee to. Satan commonly finds it easy to make some sinful impression upon the saint when his ' heart is made soft,' as Job phraseth it, ' in the furnace of affliction.' He is a rare Chris- tian in whom the stream of his grace runs clear under such circumstances. Job was a man of a thousand, — ' None like him in all the earth, a pei'fect and an upright man ;' yet he betrayed many weaknesses in his troubles, and would have done more, had not God, in pity to his poor servant, taken the devil off, before he had quite run him down. Christ teacheth us to pray against suffer- ing under the notion of temptation, — ' Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil :' that is. Let us not be led into sin when we fall into suffering ; let us not fall into thy hands and Satan's together. This discovers a holy frame of heart, to be more tender of our conscience than of our skin ; not so much to fear affliction from God, as, lest in it we should behave ourselves unseemly toward him. Agur is not so much ashamed to beg, as afraid to steal, and so take the name of his God in vain, upon which account he chiefly prays against poverty, Prov. xxx. 8, 9. Self-denial is the best self-seeking, for by neglecting ourselves for God's sake, we oblige him to take the care of us upon himself; and he is the only happy man, whose sole dependence is upon God. Fourthly, Deprecate the excess of suffering, that thou be not overladen. This is promised ; thou mayest therefore present it in faith; Jer. xlvi. 28 : ' I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee ; but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure.' The patient doth not intrench upon the physician's art, by desiring him torproportion his dose according to the weak- ness of his body, if, when he hath done, he acknowledgeth his skill and faithfulness. Indeed, to desire God to consider our weakness, and then not to rely on his wisdom and care, but continue jealous and suspicious, or to mur- mur at his prescriptions, as if the physic he gave were too strong, is to make a dishonourable reflection upon him. Sometimes the physician exceeds the proportion that his fearful patient thinks enough, but withal tells him. You are not so weak as you take yourself to be ; yoiu- body may bear so many grains more in the composition ; leave me to my art and all shall be well. Thus God, who knows our frame, deals with his people, and is highly pleased to see them satisfied with what he orders them : ' Li all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly,' chap. i. 22 ; he did not impute folly to God. The meaning of the place is, Job did not make any unworthy reflection upon God for the evils he suffered by his providence, as if anything were wanting in his care or wisdom. Fifthly, Thou mayest not only deprecate these evils in thy afflictions, but pray believingly for a happy issue out of them. The darkest lane of suffering shall, to the saint, have a liglitsome end. ' Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord ; that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy,' James v. 11. This is what God intends in all his saints' troubles, and he takes pleasure in thinking of it beforehand ; ' I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace,' Jer. xxix. 11. And that petition comes in a happy time to court, which finds the king thinking of the very business.
Section II. — The second kind of suflTering is eternal; this is the centi-e in which all the lines of sin and misery meet, the common shoal into which they all disgorge themselves, as rivers do their streams into the ocean ; and as rivers when they are fallen into the sea, lose their several names in one that compre- hends them all, the ocean ; so all the evils of this life, when resolved into this, forget their private names, — sickness, pain, poverty, &c., and are called hell ; not that these are all formally and literally there, but virtually, in that the tor-
WITH ALL PRAYER AND SUPPLICATION. 7^7