Sometimes God removes the outward grievance more fully. God helps many times altogether, as in sickness to health perfectly. But I speak not of that. Comfort is that which is opposite to misery, and it must be stronger, for there is no prevailing but by a stronger. When the agent is not above the patient, there is no prevailing. There is a conflict till one have got the mastery.
' The God of all comfort.' ' All,' that is, of all comfortable things, and of all divine reasons. It must be most substantial comfort. The soul in some maladies will not be comforted by philosophical reasons. Saith the
2 CORINTHIANS CHAP. I, ^^i:R. 3. 47
heathen, ' The disease is stronger than the physic,' when he considerB Plato's comforts and the like. So we may say of the reasons of philoso- phical men, Romanists, and moralists. When they come to terror of con- science, when they come to inward grievances, inward stings that are in a man, from a man's conscience (as all discomforts usually when they press hard, it is with a guilty conscience), what can all such reasons do? To say it is the state of other men, and it is in vain to munnur, and I know not what, such reasons as Seneca and Plato and others have, it will scarce still the conscience for a fit. They arc ignorant of the root. Alas ! how can they tell the remedy, when they know not the ground of the malady ?
It must be God, it must be his word, his truth. The conscience must know it to be God's truth, and then it will comfort. God is the God of comfort, of the things, and of the reasons. They must be his reasons.
And he also is the author of that spiritual presence ; he is with his children. When ' they are in the fire, he goes with them into the water,' as it is in Isa. xliii. 2. He is with them ' in the valley of death,' Ps. xsiii. 4. They shall find God with them to comfort them. So there is a kind of presence with God's comforts, and a banishing of all discomfort.
And this comfort is as large as the maladies, as large as the ills are. He is a God of comfort against every particular ill. If there be diverse ills, he hath diverse comforts ; if they be long ills, he hath long comforts ; if there be strong ills, he hath strong comforts ; if there be new ills, he hath new comforts. Take the ills in what extent and degree you wall, God hath somewhat to set against them that is stronger than they, and that is the blessed estate of God's children. He is the ' God of all comfort.'
St Chiysostom, an excellent preacher, yields me one observation upon this very place (h). It is the wisdom of a Christian to see how God de- scribes himself, there being something in God answerable to whatsoever is ill in the world. The Spirit of God in the Scripture sets forth God fitting to the particular occasions. Speaking here of the misery and the disgrace- ful usage of St Paul, being taught by the Spirit of God, he considereth God as a ' Father of mercies ' and a ' God of comfort.' Speaking of the ven- geance on his enemies, the psalmist saith, ' Thou God of vengeance, shew thyself,' Ps. xciv. 1. In God there is help for every malady.
Therefore the wisdom of a Christian is to single out of God what is fit- ting his present occasion. In crosses and miseries, think of him as a ' Father of mercies ;' in discomforts, think of him as a ' God of comfort ;' in perplexities and distress, think of him as a God of wisdom ; and oppres- sion of others, and difficulties which we cannot wade out of, think of him as a God and Father Almighty, as a God of vengeance ; and so every way to think of God appliable to the present occasion. And though many of us have no gi'eat affliction upon us for the present, yet we should lay up store against the evil day ; and therefore it is good to treasure up these descrip- tions of God, ' the Father of mercies, and God of all comfort.'
To explain the word a little. What doth he mean by ' God ' in this place ?
That he is the God of comfort, that hath a further comfort in it, in the very title that is called the God of comfort. In that he is called the God of comfort, it implies two things. ,
1. First, it shews that he is a Creator of it; that ho can work it out of what he will, out of nothing.
2, And then, that he can raise it out of the contranj, as he raised light out ot darkness in the creation, and in the government of this world he raiseth his childi-en out of misery. As he raised all out of nothing, order out of
48 COMMENTARY ON
confusion, so in his church ho is the God of comfort. He can raise com- fort out of nothing ; out of notliing that is Hkely to yield comfort. Put the case that there he neither medicine, nor meat, nor drink, nor nothing to comfort us in this world, as we shall have none of those things in heaven, ho is the God of comfort that shall supply all our wants. As he shall then bo all in all, so in this world, when it is by the manifestation of his glory. When Moses was forty days in the mountain, he wanted outward comforts ; but he had the God of comfort with him, and he supplied the want of meat and drink and all other comforts, because he is the God of all comfort. In him are all comforts originally and fundamentally ; and if there be none, he can create and make them of nothing.