316 DIRECTIONS POR GETTING AND KEEPING Direct. XVII. My next advice to you is this: 'For the strength- ening your apprehensions of the probability of your. salvation, gather up and improve all your choicest experiences of God's good will and mercy to you; and observe also the experiments of others in the same kind.' We do God and ourselves a great deal of wrong by. forgetting, neglecting, and not improving our experiences. How doth God charge it on the Israelites, especially in the wilderness, that they forgot the 'works of God, by which he had so often manifested his power andgoodness ! Psalm lxxviii. cvii. See cv. cvi. WhenGod had by one miracle silenced their unbelief, theyhad forgotten it in the next distress. It was a sign the disciples' hearts werehardened, when they forgot the miracles of the loaves, and presentlyafter were distrustfuland afraid ; Mark vi. 52. , God doth not give ùs his mer- cies only for the present uSe, but for the future; nor only for 'the body,but for the soul. I would this truth were well learned bybe- lievers. You are in sickness; and troubles, and dangers, and pinch- ing' straits, in fears and anguish of mind.: in this ease you cry to God for help, and he doth in such a manner deliver you as silenc- eth your distrust, and convinceth you of his, love ; at least, of his readiness todo you good. What .a wrong is it now to God and yourself, to forget this presently, and in the.next temptation to re- ceive no strengthening by the consideration of it! Doth God so much regard this dirty flesh, that he should do all this merely. for its ease and relief? No, he doth it to kill your unbelief, and con- vince you of his special providence, his care of you, and love to you, and power to help you,, and to breed in you more loving, honorable and thankful thoughts of him. Lose this benefit, and you lose all.' 'You may thus use one and the same merry an hundred times ; though it be gone as to the body, it is still fresh in a believing, thankful, careful soul. You may make as good use of it at your very death, as the first hour. But O, the sad forget- fulness, mutability and unbelief of these hearts ofours ! What a number of these choice experiences do we all receive ! When we forget' one, God giveth another, and we forget that too. When unbelief doth blasphémously suggest to us, Such a thing may come once or twice by chance, God addeth one experience to another, till it evenshame us opt of our unbelief, as Christ shamed. Thomas, and we cryout, "My Lord and my God." . Hath it not been thus oft with you? Have not mercies come so seasonably, so unex- pectedly, either by small means, or the means themselves unex- pectedly raised up, without your designing or effecting, and plain- ly in answer to prayers, that theyhave brought conviction along with them, and you have seen the name of God engraven on them? Sure it is so, with us, when, through our sinful negligence; we are
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