But why doth he join ' afflicted and poor' together ? Because poverty is affliction, and because affliction goes with poverty ? Poverty brings affliction. It brings abasement with it, and it is an affliction itself. For the poor man is trod on at all hands. Men go over the hedge where it is lowest. It is an afiliction, and it goes with affliction. Therefore the apostle St Paul, Philip, iv. 12, he joins them together : ' I have learned to want and to be abased.' Why ? Because a man that is in want in the world is usually abased. Every man scorns him that is in want. They look haughty and high over a man that hath any use of them. So that affliction and poverty usually go together.
Those that God doth abase in this kind, let them consider that it is no otherwise with them than it hath been with God's people before. And let them labour for true riches : take advantage from their outward estate to be rich in a better way.
In the next place, we may observe hence, that
Doct. God sanctifies outward affiiction and poverty, to help inward poverty of spirit.
Poverty in outward condition helps poverty in the inward disposition. In their state and condition is implied their disposition : poor for condition, and likewise in inward disposition, for that is implied here. The prophet doth not mean he will leave poor people that shall only be poor, for we see a world of poor and proud. A man, as he goes along in the streets, shall hear a company of poor that are the greatest rebels in the world against God ; that blaspheme and swear, that rail against magistrates and gover- nors. They are the most unbroken people in the world, the poorest and beggarliest, the refuse of mankind. As they are in condition, so they are in disposition. The Scripture speaks here of God's poor, not of the devil's poor, such as are poor every way, outwardly and inwardly, and have their poverty as a just punishment of their wicked lives, and continue in that wicked life, having it not sanctified to them to make them desire better riches. Doth God esteem such poor ? No. But such poor and afflicted as, together with the meanness of their outward condition, have it sanctified to them ; so as they grow to be low and poor in their own esteem of them- selves, they grow to inward poverty of spirit, and so to seek to God, to seek for better riches, ' to be rich in faith,' as the Scripture speaks, James ii. 5 ;
THE POOR man's RICHES. 239
especially such, and only such, are here meant. So then, mark the point here, that
God sanctifies ajffliction and poverty for the inward good of the souls of his children.
Reason 1. This is the reason of it : outward poverty and affliction takes away the fuel that feeds pride, that is an opposite to spiritual poverty and humility, and sight of our wants. That which pride feeds upon, it is some outward thing, some outward excellency, that the flesh takes occasion by to swell, to over-ween itself, and to overlook all others. Now, when the fuel is taken away, the fire goes out. When the fodder and nourishment is taken away, those wanton steeds, you know, that grew fierce with pamper- ing, they grow more tractable. So it is with the nature of man. Take away that that makes him fierce, and then, when his fierce and high con- ceits are taken away, he will be tame. Take away that that feeds his carnal disposition, and he grows tractable and gentle. Thus then, affliction and poverty, outward in our condition, it helps to inwai'd poverty of spirit and disposition ; for it takes away that which inflames the fancy of a carnal man. A carnal man thinks himself as great and as good as he hath pos- sessions of the things of this life ; and the devil enlargeth his conceit more upon the imagination, to think these things to be a great deal greater than they are. We come afterward, by experience, to see them nothing but vanity. But this is in man without grace : we are prone, as I said, to surfeit of them. They are too strong for us to digest and overcome ; and therefore God takes them away, that he may help the inward disposition of our souls.
Afflictions and poverty sanctified, they have a power to bring us to God, and to keep us in and to recover us when we are fallen. They bring us in, as we see in Manasseh and in the prodigal son. Affliction and poverty they brought him to know himself. They brought him home. He was not himself before. They brought him to inward poverty. When he could not be satisfied so much as with husks abroad, it was time for him to look home again. So when we are in the state of grace, it keeps and pales us in: 'God hedgeth us in with thorns,' Hosea ii. 6, that we may not run out. And then, if we fall, it recovers us, and fetcheth us in again, by embittering sinful courses to us. We see, then, affliction and poverty is sanctified to God's children, to work an inward sight of their spiritual wants.