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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 to
keep
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,
"
to
punish
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
of
the 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, with
all
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
unrighteous
age.
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;