DOD. 3 Here, also, he felt the iron rod of the prelates ; and, as in the three former situations, he was for a time suspended from his public ministry.° Mr. Dod was a pattern of patience. He bore his numerous trials with great meekness of spirit and holy resignation to the will of God. He used to say, " Sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions." In the sixty-third year of his age, he laboured under extreme bodily affliction, and was brought to the very brink of the grave : but when the physician, who gave a check to his complaint, told him he had then some hope of his recovery, the good old man replied, " You think to comfort me by what you say ; but you make me sad. It is the same as if you had told one who had been sorely weather-beaten at sea, and was expect- ing to enter the desired haven, that he must return to sea, to be tossed by fresh winds and waves." Having a comfort- able assurance of heaven, he was desirous to leave the world, and to " be with Christ." And as he enjoyed much divine consolation in his own mind ; so, in numerous remark- able instances, he administered the same to others. This venerable divine used to say, " I have no reason to complain of any crosses, because they are the bitter fruit of my sin. Nothing shall hurt us but sin ; and that shall not hurt us, if we can repent of it. And nothing can do us good but the love and favour of God in Christ; and that we shall have if we seek it in good earnest. Afflictions are God's potions, which we may sweeten by faith and prayer; but we often make them bitter, by putting into God's cup the ill ingredients of impatience and unbelief. There is no affliction so small but we shall sink under it, if God uphold us not : and there is no sin so great but we shall commit it, if God restrain us not. A man who bath the spirit of prayer bath more than if he hath all the world. And no man is in a bad condition, but he who bath a hard heart and cannot pray." During the civil wars,+ when some of the king's party came to his house, and threatened to, take away his life, this heavenly divine, with holy confidence replied, " If you do, you will send me to heaven, where I long to be ; but you Fuller's Worthies part i. p. 181. -1 The first ill blood between King Charles and his subjects, which afterwards led to all the horrors of civil war, was occasioned by the severe proceedings in the high commission court, and thecruel censures in the star-chamber ; in both of which the court clergy were allowed too much power.-Biog. Briton. vol. i.p. 572.
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