our fecular affaires we truft those whom we have cause to think understand them better then our felves, and rely upon men in their own faculty. We put our estates in the Lawyers hand, our bodies into the Physicians, and submit to their advice tho it be against our humor, merely because we account them more competent judges, Yet this deference we cannot be perswaded to pay to God, but will still be prefcribing to him, and are very angry if his difpenfations do not exactly answer our fancies. And can we offer him a greater affront then thus to district him? What is it but interpretatively to deny either his wifdom, or his goodnefs, or both? and fo derogate from him in two of his effential attributes. For there can be no rational account given by any who believe thofe, why they fhould not remit their whole concerns to him. So that the fhort account is, that in our distrusts we either deny him to be God, or our felves to be men, by refifting the most evident dictates of that reason which distinguishes us from brutes. For certainly there is not in human difcourfe a more irrefragable Maxim, then that we ought for our own fakes to refign our felves

to

to him, who we are infallibly fure, can, and will chufe better for us then we for our felves.

7. THIS was fo apparent by mere natural light, that Socrates advifed men to pray only for bleffings in general, and leave the particular kind of them to Gods election, who best knows what is good for us. And fure this is fuch a piece of divinity, as extremely reproches us Chriftians, who cannot match a Heathen in his implicit faith to God. Nay indeed 'tis the vileft defamation upon God himfelf, that we who pretend to know him more, should truft him lefs. So that we fee our repinings do not terminate in their own proper guilt, but do in their confequences fwell higher, and our difcontents propagate themselves into Blafphemy.For while we impatiently complain of our wants, we do tacitly tax God to want either that wisdom, power, or love, whereby he should supply us. And fure he must be very Atheistical to whom this will not give a competent prejudice against this fin.

8. AND this very confideration will equally prejudg the other branch of our discontents, I mean those which repine

at

at the ills we fuffer. And not only our privative, but our pofitive afflictions may by it have their bitterness taken off for the fame goodness and wisdom which denics those things we like, because they are hurtful for us, do's upon the very fame reafon give us those diftaftful things which he fees profitable. A wife Phyfician do's not only diet, but if occafion be, purge his Patient alfo. And furely there is not fuch a purifier, fuch a cleanfer of the foul as are afflictions, if we do not (like disorderly Patients) fruftrate their efficacy by the irregular managery of our felves under them,

I.

SECT. VIII

Of the advantage of Afflictions.

Twere the work of a volume to give an exact and minute account of the benefit of Afflictions. I fhall only point at fome of the more general and obvious. And first, it is one of the moft awakening calls to repentance; and to this end it is that God most ufually defigns it. We fee the whole fcene of it, Hof.5.15.I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledg their offence, and feek my face: in their affliction they will feek me early and in the very next verse we find this voice of God echoed forth by a penitential note, Come and let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath fmitten, and he will bind us up. Thus we find the Brethren of Jofeph, tho there had a long interval paffed betwixt their barbarous ufage of him, and his feigned rigor to them, yet when they faw themselves diftreft by the one, then they begin to recollect the

other,

other faying, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, Gen. 42. 21. Profperity is an intoxicating thing, and there are few brains ftrong enough to bear it; it laies us afleep, and amufes us with pleasant dreams, whil'ft in the mean time Satan rifles our trefures, and spoils us, by the deceitful charms of fin, of our innocency and real happiness. And can there be a more friendly office don for a man in this condition, then to rouz him, and bring him to apprehend the defigns that are laid against him? And this is the errand on which afflictions are fent: fo that we have reason to look on them as our friends and confederates that intend our rescue, and to take the alarm they give us, and diligently feek out thofe inteftine enemies of which they warn us. And he that instead of this, quarrels at their interpofing, thinks them his enemies because they tell him the truth, Gal. 4.16. does miferably pervert the counsel of God against himself, Luk. 7.30. and may at last verify his ownjealoufies, and by fo provoking an ingratitude, convert thofe into the wounds of an enemy, which were originally meant as the corrections of a Father.