554 SAFETY IN THE- GRAVE; tDISG. ?y; Old, and to fetch out the glories and treasures which are concealed there? Let us dwell á while upon each of these, and endea- vour to improve them by a particular application. Observation L "' This world is a place wherein good men are exposed to great. calamities, . and they are ready to think the anger or wrath of God appears in them." This mortal life, and this present state of things, as sur- rounded with crosses and disappointments; the loss of our dearest friends, as well as our own pains and sicknesses, have ,so much anguish.and.misery-, attending them, that they seem to be the seasons of divine wrath, and they grieve and pain the spirit of many a pious man, under a 'sense of the anger of his God. It must be confessed 'in general that misery is the effect of sin, for sin and sor- row came into the world together. It is granted also, that God sometimes afflicts his people in anger, and cor- rects them in his hot displeasure, when they have sinned against him in a remarkable manner : but this is not al- ways the case. The great God was not really angry with Job when he suffered him to fall into` such complicated distresses; for it is plain, that while he delivered him up into the hands of Satan to be afflicted, he vindicates and honours him with a divine testimony concerning his . piety : Job i. 8. " There is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and avoideth evil." Nor was he angry with his Son Jesus Christ, when " it pleased the Father to bruise him and put hirn to grief, when he made his soul sn offering for sin, and he was stricken, smitten of 'God and afflicted ;" Is. liii. 4. -10. To these we may add Paul the best of the apos- tles, and the greatest of christians, who was abun- dant in labours and sufferings above all the rest. See a dismal catalogue Of his calamities." 2 Cor. xi. 23-27. What variety of wretchedness, what terrible persecutions frommen, what repeated strokes of distress carne upon him by the providence ofGod, which appeared like the effects Of divine wrath dr armerì But they were plainly designed for more divine. and blessed purposes, both with regard to God, with regard to himself, and to all the succeeding ages of the christian church. God does not always smite his own people to punish
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