And withal, let us be good husbands now in the interim. Between the threatening and the execution of the judgment, let us store up comforts from the promises of God, and store up the comforts of a good life. We shall have more comfort of the means we have bestowed wisely than of that we shall leave behind us. Thus if we do, come what will, we are prepared. Many holy and heavenly men have been visited with pestilential sickness. Hezekiah was a king, and his was a pestilential sickness ; and many holy divines of late, and other Christians, have been swept away by the sickness — Junius, and other rare men of excellent use in the church [h). Therefore let us labour to get into the favour of God ; make use of our renewing our covenant for the time to come. That is one end of fasting now, to renew our covenants, to remake them for the time to come. And then come what will, and welcome, life or death ; for there is a blessing hid in the most loathsome sickness and death. If we come to heaven, it is no matter by what way, though the body ' be sown in dishonour.' We may die of a noisome disease, that we cannot have our friends near us, yet * the body shall rise again in honour,' 1 Cor. xv. 43. What matter, saith St Paul, ' if by any means I may come to the resurrection of the dead ; ' by fair death or foul death, it is no matter. And if so be that God makes not good his promise of particular protection of our bodies from contagion, &c., it is no matter. We have a general promise ' that he will be our God.' * He is the God of Abraham,' the God of the dead as well as of the living. Mat. xxii. 82. He is a God that is everlasting in the covenant of grace, in life and death, and for ever. If we be entered into the covenant of grace, it holds for ever. And when all other promises fail, and all things in the world fail, stick to the main promise of forgiveness of sins, ' and life everlasting.' * That is, ' conscientious.' — G.
228 god's inquisition.
"When all things in the world will fail, we must leave them shortly, wealth and whatsoever, what a comfort is in that grand promise that God will for- give us our sins, and give us life everlasting for Christ ! Therefore, when all things else are gone, let us wrap ourselves in the gracious promises of Christ, and then we shall live and die with comfort.
NOTES.
(a) P. 213. — ' Tlicreforo iiu ancient saitli, " He that is good only under the cross is never good." ' Qu. Bernard ?
(h) P. 227. — ' Junius.' The allusion to the ' plague' shews that Sibbes siieaks of Francis Du Jou or Junius of Leyden, an eminent theologian who was swept off by the plague there in 1602. He is sometimes confounded with a contemporary Baldwinus Junius, and sometimes with his own son and namesake. There are others of the sauie luinie more or less distinguished. G.
THE RICH POVERTY.
THE RICH POVERTY.
NOTE.
' Ilich Poverty ' forms the last of the four treatises included in ' Light from Heaven ' (4to, 1638). The title-page is given below.* For general title-page see Vol. IV. p. 490. G.
* THE
RICH POVERTY: OR THE
POORE MANS RICHES.
B)/ the late Learned and Reverend Divine,
RICHARD SIBBS,
D"". in Divinity, Master oi Katharine Hall in
Cambridge, and sometimes Prcaclier at
GRAIES-INNE.
Matth. 5. 3. Blessed are the poore in spirit. lames 2. 5. llath not God chosen the poore of this world, rich in faith ?
LONDON,
Printed by R. Badger for N. Bourne at the Royall
Excliange, and R. Harford at the gilt Bible in
Queenes-head Alley in l-'aler-Noster Row.
16 38.
THE RICH POVERTY;
OB,
THE POOE MAN'S KICHES.
1 will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor jiieoj^le, and they
shall trust in the name of the Lord. — Zeph. III. 12.
Before the captivity in Babylon, God sent prophets to his people, a3 Jeremiah ; and among the rest Zephaniah likewise, who lived in the time of Josiah, to forewarn and forearm them against worse times. And as the contents of all other prophecies are for the most part these three, so of this : they are either such expressions and prophecies as set forth the sins of the people ; or, secondly, the judgments of God ; or, thirdly, com- fort to the remnant, to God's people. So these be the parts of this pro- phecy : a laying open of the sins of the time, under so good a prince as Josiah was ; and likewise the judgments of God denounced ; and then in this third chapter especially, here is comfort set down for the good people that then lived. The comfort begins at the ninth verse.
This particular verse is a branch of the comfort, that however God dealt with the world, he would be sure to have a care of his own : ' I will leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord.' The whole Scripture is for consolation and com- fort. When God ' pulls down,' it is that he may build up ; when he purgeth, it is that he may cure and heal. He is ' the father of comfort,'