332 DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING cured the smart of a cut finger by casting them into a lethargy or stupefaction by his opium. To go to Antinomian receipts to cure a troubled soul, is as going to a witch to cure the body. 3. I would have you sensible of God's goodness to you, in these very troubles that you have so longlaid under. Your blessed Physician knew your disease, and the temperature of your soul. Perhaps he saw that you were in some danger of being carried away with the honors, profits, or treasures of this world ; and would have been entangled in either covetousness, pride, voluptuousness, or some such desperate sin. And now, by these constant and extraordina- ry apprehensions of your danger, these sins have been much kept under, temptations weakened, and your danger prevented. Ifyou have found no such inclinations in yourself, yet God might find them. Had it not been far worse for you to have lain so many years in pride, sensuality, and forgetfulness of God, andutter neg- lect of the state of your soul, than to have lain so long as you have done in the apprehensions of your danger ? O love and admire your wise Physician ! Little do you know now what he hath been doing for you ; nor shall you ever fully know it in this life; but hereafter you shall know it, when your sanctification, and con- solation, and his praises, shall be perfected together. 4. If you should, for the time to come, expector desire that God should set you out ofall apprehension of danger, you know not what it is that you desire. It were to desire your own undoing. Only see that you apprehend not your danger to be greater than it is; nor so apprehend it as to increase it, by driving you from Christ, but as to prevent it by driving you to him.. Entertain not fancies and dreams of danger, instead of right apprehensions. Apprehend your happiness and grounds of hope and comfort, and safety in Christ, and let these quite exceed your apprehensions of the dan- ger. Look not on it as a remediless danger, or as greater than the remedy. Do not conclude that you shall perish in it, and it will swallow you up. But only let it make you hold fast on Christ, and keep close to ,him in obedience. Shall I lay open all the matter expressed in this section, by familiar comparison? A king having many subjects and sons, which are all beyond sea, or beyond some river, they must needs be brought over to him before they can live or reign with him. The river is frozen over at the sides, till it come almost to the middle. The foolish chil- dren are all playing on the ice, where a deceiving enemy enticeth them to play on, till they come to the deep, where they drop in one by one and perish. The eldest son, who is with the father on' the other side, undertaketh to cast himself into the water, and swim to the further side, and break the ice, and swim back with them all that will come with him and hold him. The father bids
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