210 INIPOItTANCE OF I:EADING A Silas can be in heaven, even when they are thrust into the inner prison, their bodies scourged with many stripes, and their feet fast inthe stocks. The martyrs find more rest in their flames, than their persecutors in their pomp and tyranny, because they foresee the flames they escape, and the rest which. their fiery cha- riot is conveying them to. If the Son of God will walk with us, we are safe in the midst of those flames, which shall devour them that cast us in. Abraham went out of his country, not knowing whither he went, because he looked for a city which bath foundations, whose builder and maker is .God. Moses esteemed the re- proach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt ; because he had respect unto the recompense of reward. He forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; because he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. Others were tortured, not accepting de- liverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Even Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, for the joy that was set before him, .endured the cross, despis- ing the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. This is the noble advantage of faith, it can look on the meansand endtogether. This is the great reason of our impatience, and censuring of God, be- cause we gaze on the evil itself, but fix not our thoughts in what is beyond it. They that saw Christ Only on the cross or in the grave, do shake their heads, and think him lost : but God saw hini dying, buried, rising, glorifying, and all this at one view. Faith will in this imitate God, so far as it hath the glass of promise to help it. We see God burying us under ground, but we foresee not the spring, when we shall all revive. Coïûld we but clearly see heaven, as the end of all God's deal- ings with us, surely none of his dealings could be grievous. If God would once raise us to this life, we should find, that though heaven and sin are at a great distance; yet heaven and a prison, or banishment, hea- ven and the belly of a whale, or a den of lions, heaven and consuming sickness, or invading death, are at no such distance. But as Abraham saw Christ's day and rejoiced ; .so we in our most forlorn "state, might ,see
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