504 .ña PAIN AMONG THE BLESSED. finse. Ix. and xxxix. and in J. cxix. 67. he confesses, " before I was afflicted I went astray ;" but when he had felt the scourge, he learned to obey, and tokeep the word of his God. But there. is no need of this discipline in heaven ; no need of this smarting scourge to make dead sinners feel their Maker's hand, in order to rouse them into life, for there are no such inhabitants in that world : Nor is there any need of such divine and paternal discipline of God in those holy mansions, where there is no drowsy christian to awakened, no wandering spirit that wants to be reduced tö duty : And where the designs of such smarting strokes have no place, pain itself must be for ever banished; for " God does not willingly afflict, nor take delight in grieving the children of men; without sub- stantial reasons for it;" Lam. iii. 33. 2. Another use of bodily pain and anguish in this world is, " topunish men for their faults and follies,, to make them .know what an evil and bitter thing it is to sin against God, and thereby to guard them against new temptations ;" fer. ii. 19. " Thy own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee ;" that is, by means ofthe smarting chastisements they bring upon men. When God makes the sinner taste of the fruit Of his own ways, he makes others also observe how hateful a thing every sin is in the sight of God, which he thinks fit so terribly to punish. This is one general reason why special diseases, mala- dies, and plagues are spread over a whole nation, viz. to punish the sins of the inhabitants, when they have pro- voked God by public and spreading iniquities. War and famine, withall their terrible train of anguish. and agony, and the dying pains which they diffuse over a kingdom, are rods of punishment in the hand of God, the Gover- nor of the world, to declare from heaven and earth his indignation against an ungodly and an unrighteousage. This indeed is one design of the pains and torments of hell, where God inflicts pain withoút intermission : And this is sometimes the purpose of God in his painful pro - vidences here on earth: Shall I rise yet higher and say, that this -was one groat design in the eye of God, " when it pleased the Father to bruise" his best beloved Son, and put him under the impressions'-of extreme pain;
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=