sP1HÍTItAL PEACE AND COM,'OHI'. 247' is a life not pleasing to God, so it is the opportunityfor melancholy thoughts to be working, and the chiefest season for Satan to tempt you. Never let the devil find you unemployed, but see that you go cheerfully about the works of your calling, and follow it with dili- gence; and that time which you redeem for spiritual exercises, Iet it bemost spentin thanksgiving, and praises and heavenly conference. These things may do much for prevention and abating your dis- ease, if it be not gone too far ; but if it be, you were best have re- course to the physician, and expect God's blessing in the use of means; and you will find, when your body is once cured, 'the dis- quietness ofyour mind will vanish of itself. 2. The second part of this direction was, that you take notice how much of your disquietness may proceed from outward crosses ; for it is ordinary for these to lie at the root, and bring the heart irito disquiet and discontent, and then trouble for sin doth follow after. Alas, how oft have I seen verified that of the apostle ; 2 Cor. vii. 10. " The sorrow of the world worketh death." How many, even godly people, have I known, that through crosses in children, or in friends, or losses in estates, or wrongs frommen, or perplexities that through some unadvisedness they were cast into, or the like, have fallen into mortal disease, or into such a fixed melancholy, that some of them have gone beside themselves; and others have lived in fears and doubting everafter, by the removal of the disquietness to 'their consciences ! How sad a thing is it, that we should thus add to our own afflictions ! And the heavier we judge the burden, the more we lay on ! As if God had not done enough, or would not sufficiently afflict us. We may more comfortably bear that whicltGod layeth on us, than that which we immediately lay upon ourselves. Crosses are not great or small, according to the bulk of the matter, but according chiefly to the mind of the sufferer. Or else, how could holy men " rejoice in tribulation, and be exceeding glad that they are accounted worthy to suffer for Christ ?" Reproaches, wrongs, losses, are all without you ; unless you open them the door willfully yourself, they cannot come into the heart. God bath not put the joy or grief of your heart in any other man's power, butin your own. It is you there- fore that do yourselves the greatest mischief. God afflicts your body, or men wrong you in your state or name, (a small hurt if it go no further,) and therefore you will afflict your soul ! But a sadder thing yet is itto consider of, that men fearing God should so high- ly value the things of the world. They who, in their covenants with Christ, are engaged to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil! They that have taken God in Christ for their portion, for their all; and have resigned themselves and all that they, have to Christ's dispose! Whose very business in this world, and their
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=