.7)08 BAXTER'S FAREWELL SERMON. dealt with you in the time that is past? .Hath notyour suffering done you good? If it have not, you may thank yourselves; for I am sure God's rod hath a healing virtue, and others have received a cure by it. How much is mankind beholden to the cross ! When David went weeping up mount Olivet, he was in a safer case than when.he was gazing on Bathsheba from his battlements. And when Christ was sweating blood upon mount Olivet, (Luke xxii. 44.) it was a sign that man's redemption was in hand ; and when he was bleeding on the cross, and drinking vinegar 2nd gall, it was almost finished. And if the cross bath borne such happy fruit, what reason have we to be so much against it? If it have proved good for you that you were afflicted, and no part of your lives have been more fruitful, why should your desires so much contra- dict your own experience ? If bitter things have proved the most wholesome, and a full and luscious diet hath caused your disease, what need you more to direct your judgment, ifyou will judge as .men, and not as brutes? Obj. But (you will say) it is not all sorrow that foretelleth joy : some pass from sorrow unto greater sorrow. How, then, shall we know whether our sorrows tend to worse or untobetter ? Answ. It is true that there are sorrows which have no such prom- ise as these have in the text. As, 1. The mere vindictive pun- ishment of the wicked. 2. The sinful sorrows which men keep up in themselves, proceeding from their sinful love of creatures. 3. And the corrections which are not improved by us to our amendment and reformation. But the promise belongeth, 1. To those sorrows which in sin- cerity we undergo for the sake of Christ and righteousness. 2. To those sorrows which we ourselves perform as duties, either for the dishonor of God, or the sins or miseries of others ; or our peniten- tial sorrows for our own offenses. 3. And to those sorrows of chastisement which we patiently submit to, and improve fo a true amendment of our hearts and lives. For though sin be the mate- rial cause, or the meritorious cause, yet loge, which maketh ref- ormation the effect, will also make the end to be our comfort. Use 2. If this be God's method, condemn,not, then, the genera- tion of the just, because you see them undermost in the world, and suffer more than other men. Think it not a dishonor to themto be in poverty, prisons, banishment, or reproach, unless it be for a truly dishonorable cause. Call not men miserable, for that which God maketh the token of his love, and the prognostic of their joy. Methinks he that hath once read the Psalms xxxvii. and lxxiii. ; and Matt. v. 10-12 ; and Job xiii. and xv. ; and 2 Thess. i., and well believeth them, should never err this old condemned error any snore. And yet it is common, amongcarnal men, to do as some
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