AND SMOKING FLAX. 7 we are by nature. VIe love to wander from ourselves, and to be strangers at home, till God bruiseth us by one cross or other, and. then we bethink ourselves, and come home to ourselves with the prodigal. A very hard thing it is, to bring a dull, and a shifting heart to cry with feeling for mercy. Our hearts, like malefactors, until they be beaten from all shifts, never cry for the mercy of. the judge. Again; this bruising maketh us set a high price upon Christ. The gospel then is the gospel indeed: then the fig.-leaves of morality will do us no good; and it maketh us more thankful, and from thankfulness more fruitful in our lives. For what maketh many so cold and barren, but that bruising for sin never endeared God's grace unto the1n? Likewise this dealing of God cloth establish us the more in his ways, having had often bruisings in our own ways. This is the cause of relapses, and apostasies, because n1en never smarted for sin at first; they were not long enough under the lash of the law; hence this inferior work of the Spirit, in bringing down high thoughts, is
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