Ohs. 1. Again from that ye have heard. We had never heard of Job had he not been brought so low. Affliction maketh saints emi- nent : 1 Job's poverty made him rich in honour and esteem ; stars do not shine but in the night ; the less we are made by providence, the greater.2 You may oppose this against the temptation of lowness and baseness : God's children never gain so much honour as in their troubles. Many whose names now do breathe forth afresh perfume in the churches would have lived and died obscurely, and their bones have been cast into some unknown charnel, undistinguished from other relics of mortality, but that God drew them forth into public notice by .eminent sufferings.
Obs. 2. Again from that the patie7ice of Job. Heshow^ed much im- patience and murmuring, cursing the day of his birth, &c. ; but not a word of all this : where the bent of the heart is right, the infirmities of God's people are not mentioned. So Heb. xi. 31, there is no men- tion of Kahab's lie, but only of her faith, and peaceable behaviour towards the spies. Where God seeth grace, he doth as it were hide his eyes from those circumstances that might seem to deface the glory of it : 60 in Sarah's speech, though the whole sentence be full of distrust and unbelief, God taketh notice of her reverence to her husband i^ she called Abraham lord, 1 Peter iii. G. Wicked men watch for our halting, and feed their malice with our failings ; they can oversee a great deal of good, and pitch only upon what is evil. But the Lord, where the heart is sincere, pardoneth the defects. Job murmured ; but the word saith. Ye have heard of the patience of Job. There was patience in the man. Job often submitteth to God, sometimes blesseth God, disliketh those murmurings extorted from him by the sense of his sufferings, often correcteth himself as soon as he had spoken any unbecoming word of God and providence, when he was reproved of God, chap. xli. ; he humbled himself, chap. xlii.
Obs. 3. Again observe, we should often in our afflictions propound Job's pattern and exami)le ; he was famous for miseries, various in their kind; now Chaldeans, then Sabeans, now wind, then fire, &c. When afflictions come like waves, one in the neck of another, and you
' ''Airb riji nevias \d/j.TrpoTcpos iy^vero.' — C'/wys. - ' Cicuta Socratem magnum fecit.' — Seneca. ■^ See the notes ou chap. ii. 2.").
JaS. V. 11.] UPON THE EPISTLE OF JAMES. 431
are put upon divers trials, think of Job. They light upon all his com- forts, his goods ; a life is no life without a liveliliood : his children, those dear pledges of affection ; you lose one, Job many ; when you lose all, it is but as Job : then upon his own body ; he was rough- cast with sores. God's afflictions usually come closer and closer till they touch our very skins. In the plague, you may remember liow Job's body was smitten with sores ; nay, his soul was exasperated with the censures of his friends ; this goeth closer and closer. God's immediate hand silenceth the spirit : we take injuries from man very unkindly, espe- cially injuries from friends ; these were stabs to the very heart. Perils among false brethren was Paul's sorest trial ; it is grievous to suffer from an enemy, worse from a countryman, worse than that from a friend, and worst of all from godly friends. But yet this was Job's case ; he .complaineth that they were miserable comforters. Thus you i^ee Job was famous for misery, and as famous for patience ; it would be too long to survey it. In all the expressions of it, two are notable, which run through every vein of the whole book : his advancing God and debasing himself ; good thoughts of God, and low thoughts of him- self: ' Blessed be God,' &c.. Job i. 23 ; and ' I have sinned,' Job vii. 20. Well, then, in all your afflictions, look upon this spectacle of misery and example of patience.
And have seen the end of the Lord. — It may be applied to Christ or Job. Some apply it to Christ for these reasons : — (1.) Otherwise the main pattern of patience will be left out ; (2.) The change of the verb, ' ye have heard of Job, and ye have seen the end of Christ.' The adding of this new word seen, seemeth to be done by way of contradistinction to heard. These reasons, when I first glanced upon this text, inclined me to that opinion, especially when I afterward saw the same reasons urged by learned Parteus. Many of the ancients go this way, as Austin, Beda, Lyra, Aquinas ;^ which last improveth it more than I have seen any. Job and Christ, saith he, the two famous instances, are well coupled — Job in the Old Testament, Christ in the New ; in the one we have a pledge of a temporal, in the other of an eternal recompense ■ you have heard of the one and seen the other ; Job suffereth, but not to death; therefore, that they might have a complete pattern, he mindeth them of the end of the Lord. Thus far Aquinas. If this were the sense, the point would be, that Christ's death is the great spectacle and glass of patience. But modern divines go another way, and with good reason : — (1.) Because the drift of the context (see ver. 6, 7) is to propound not only a perfect pattern of miseries, but a happy end out of miseries : he had spoken of Job's patience, but if the former sense were true, nothing of his happy issue, a thing most suitable to his pur- pose and most remarkable in the story. (2.) The apostle in the former verse showeth he would instance in some prophets and holy men of God, not in the Lord himself. (3.) The Syriac translation hath lAsLinly ^7iem quern ei fecit Dominus — the end which the Lord made to him. (4.) The latter clause in the text cannot so commodiously