214 BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. offtheir duty, or venture on forbidden things for safety, because theywere not prepared for it ! The loss of goods, or imprisonment and want, seem tomany almost insufferable trials. But b can tell such, by some experience, that bodily pain and torment is a far greater trial, which none of them are secured from, and requireth greater strength of faith obediently to accept it at the hand of God: and others can tell them that the violence of temptations, and the terrors of God on a wounded conscience, and troubled -soul, are yet far harder than all these: and these are the saddest, because they make the mind unfit, at present to improve them, and to refer them to holy ends and uses. Christ, in all his agony, and even when he cried out on the cross, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" had his intellectuals free and perfect, to know the nature, the reason, the uses, and end of all his sufferings: but so have not many poor, distressed, troubled, distracted souls. O, how great a part of Christianity is it to understand and rightly bear the cross ! Most of our care is how to escape it, or to be de- livered from it, rather than obediently to bear it. 12. Experience of a suffering, painful state is a great help to our understanding of the gospel. It taketh off from me the scan- dal of Christ's cross, and helpeth me to perceive the great use and reasons of it, when I am under sufferings. O ! what need have 'I of such an example as Christ's ! All the parts of his sufferings are as useful to teach me how to suffer, as the ten commandments to teach me what, to do. That he was put to fly from proud, domineering Pharisees, false teachers, and worldly rulers, and to converse most with the poor, in wildernesses, or various obscure places; that he was hated and persecuted for doing good, and ac- counted a sinner for neglecting men's ceremonies and traditions; that he was hardly believed, even by them that saw his miracles ; and his own disciples were so slow in learning ; and that, in his suf- fering, they all forsook him and fled ; and one denied him with oathsand curses ;all these are instructing instances. That Christ's natural, though sinless aversation to death andsuffering and his fear, should be so powerful, and the senseof God's punishing justice so terrible, as to make his soul sorrowful, even to the death, and cast him into an agony, where he sweat water and blood, and to pray thrice that the bitter cup, if possible, might'pass from him, which he came into the wórld to drink ; -all these, also, are teaching-parts of the sufferings of Christ, that rulers and priests, and soldiers, and the rabble, should agree to scorn him, clothe him in derision, spit on him, buffet him, scourge hire, make him their jest that came to save them ; that they should make a singer of him that never sin- ned, but came to destroy it, and save men from it; yea, to make him no less than a deceiver,'a blasphemer, and an usurping rebel
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