if I could but have let my body have suffered alone in all the pining and paining sicknesses which God laid upon it, and not have foolishly added my own self-tormenting fears, and cares, and sorrows, and discontents; but have quieted and comforted my soul in the Lord, my Rock and Rest; I had escaped the far greater part of the afflictions. Why is this flesh so precious in our eyes; why are we so tender of these dusty carcasses; is flesh so excellent a thing; is it not our prison; and what, if it be broken down, is it not our enemy; yea, and the greatest that ever we had; and are we so fearful lest it be overthrown; is it not it that hath so long hampered and clogged our souls, and tied them to earth; and enticed them to forbidden lusts and pleasures; and stolen away our hearts from God; was it not it, that longed for the first forbidden fruit; and must needs be tasting, whatever it cost? And still it is of the same temper; it must be pleased, though God be displeased by it, and ourselves destroyed. It maketh all God's mercies the occasion of our transgressing, and draweth poison from the most excellent objects. If we behold our food, it enticeth to gluttony; if drink, to drunkenness; if apparel, or any thing of worth, to pride; if we look upon beauty, it, enticeth to lust; if upon money or possessions, to covetousness. It causeth our very spiritual love to the godly, to degenerate into carnal; and our spiritual zeal, and joy, and other graces; it would make all carnal like itself. What are we beholden to this flesh for, that we are so loth that any thing should ail it? Indeed, we must not wrong it ourselves, for that is forbidden us; nor may we deny it any thing that is fit for a servant, that so it may be useful to us, while we are forced to use it. But if God chastise it for rebelling against him and the Spirit, and it begin to cry and complain under this chastisement, shall we make the suffering greater than it is, and take its part against God? Indeed, the flesh is very near to us, we cannot choose but condole its sufferings, and feel somewhat of that which it feeleth. But is it so near as to be our chiefest part; or can it not be sore, but we must be sorry; or cannot it consume and pine away, but our peace and comfort must consume with it; what, if it be undone, are we therefore undone? or if it perish and be destroyed, do we therefore perish? O fie upon this carnality and unbelief, which are so contradictory to the principles of Christianity! surely, God dealeth the worse with this flesh, because we so overvalue and idolise it. We make it the greatest part of our

care and labour to provide for it, and to satisfy its desires; and we would have God to be of our mind, and to do so too. But as he hath commanded us "to make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the desires or lusts thereof;" (Rom. xiii. 14;) so will he follow the same rule himself in his dealings with us; and will not much stick at the displeasing of the flesh, when it may honour himself, or profit our souls. The flesh is aware of this, and perceives that the word and works of God are much against its desires and delights, and therefore is it also against the word and works of God: it saith of the word, as Ahab of Micaiah, "I hate it, for it doth not speak good concerning me, but evil." (1 Kings xxii. 8.) There is such an enmity betwixt this flesh and God, "that they that are in the flesh cannot please him, and the carnal mind is enmity against him; for it is not subject to his law, nor indeed can be:" so inconsistent is the pleasing of the flesh and the pleasing of God, that he hath concluded, "that to mind the things of the flesh, or to be carnally minded, is death; and if we live after the flesh, we shall die: but if by the Spirit we mortify the deeds of the body, we shall live." (Rom. viii. 4-8, 13.)

So that there is no likelihood that ever God's dealings should be pleasing to the flesh; no more than its works are pleasing to God. Why then, O my soul, dost thou side with this flesh, and say as it saith, and complain as it complaineth? It should be part of thine own work to keep it down, and bring it in subjection; (1 Cor. ix. 26, 27;) and if God do it for thee, shouldst thou be discontented? Hath not the pleasing of it been the cause of almost all thy spiritual sorrows? Why, then, may not the displeasing of it further thy joys? Should not Paul and Silas sing, because their feet were in the stocks, and their flesh yet sore with the last day's scourgings? (Acts xvi.) Why, their spirits were not imprisoned, not scourged ! Ah, unworthy soul, is this thy thanks to God for his tenderness of thy good, and for his preferring thee so far before the body! Art thou turned into flesh thyself by thy dwelling a few years in flesh, that thy joys and thy sorrows are most of them so fleshly? (Rom. viii. 12.) Art thou so much a debtor to the flesh, that thou shouldst so much live to it, and value its prosperity? Hath it been so good a friend to thee, and to thy peace; or, is it not

d Quis mortalium cui ullum superest hominis vestigium, per diem noctemque titillari velit, et de certo animo corpori operam dare?—Senec, de Vita Beat. c. 5.

thy enemy as well as God's? Why dost thou look so sadly on those withered limbs, and on that pining body? Do not so far mistake thyself as to think its joys and thine are all one, or that its prosperity and thine are all one, or that they must needs stand or fall together. (Heb. xii. 13.) When it is rotting and consuming in the grave, then shalt thou be a companion of the perfected spirits of the just; and when those bones are scattered about the churchyard, then shalt thou be praising God in rest. And, in the mean time, hast not thou food of consolation which the flesh knoweth not of; and a joy which this stranger meddleth not with? And do not think that, when thou art turned out of this body, that thou shalt have no habitation: art thou afraid thou shalt wander destitute of a resting place? Is it better resting in flesh than in God? Dost thou not know, that when this house of earth is dissolved, "thou hast a building with God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens?" (2 Cor. v. 1, 2.) It would, therefore, better become thee earnestly to groan, desiring to be clothed upon with that. (Ver. 3, 4.) Is thy flesh any better than the flesh of Noah was? and yet, though God saved him from the common deluge, he would not save him from common death. Or, is it any better than the flesh of Abraham, Job, or David, or all the saints that ever lived? yet did they all suffer and die. Dost thou think that those souls which are now with Christ do so much pity their rotten or dusty corpse, or lament that their ancient habitation is ruined, and their once comely bodies turned into earth? Oh! what a thing is strangeness and disacquaintance! It maketh us afraid of our dearest friends, and to draw back from the place of our only happiness; so was it with thee towards thy chiefest friends on earth: while thou wast unacquainted with them, thou didst withdraw from their society; but when thou didst once know them thoroughly, thou wouldst have been loth again to be deprived of their fellowship. And even so, though thy strangeness to God and another world do make thee loth to leave this flesh; yet, when thou hast been but one day or hour there, if we may so speak of that eternity, where is neither day nor hour, thou wouldst be full loth to return into this flesh again. Doubtless, when God, for the glory of his Son, did send back the soul of Lazarus into its body, he caused it quite to forget the glory which it had enjoyed, and to leave behind it the remembrance of that happiness, together with the happiness itself; or else it might have made his life a burden to him to think of the blessedness that he was fetched from, and

have made him ready to break down the prison doors of his flesh, that he might return to that happy state again. O, then, impatient soul, murmur not at God's dealings with that body; but let him alone with his work and way. He knows what he doth; but so dost not thou: he seeth the end; but thou seest but the beginning. If it were for want of love to thee, that he did thus chastise thy body, then would he not have dealt so by all his saints. Dost thou think he did not love David and Paul, or Christ himself? or, rather, doth he not chasten because he loveth; and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth? (Heb. xii. 4-8, 10, 11; Matt. vi. 23; Rom. viii. 6-8; 1 Cor. ii. 2, 10-14.) Believe not the flesh's reports of God, nor its commentaries upon his providences. It hath neither will nor skill to interpret them aright: not will; for it is an enemy to them. They are against it, and it is against them. Not skill; for it is darkness: it savoureth only the things of the flesh; but the things of the spirit it cannot understand, because they are spiritually discerned. Never expect then that the flesh should truly expound the meaning of the rod. It will call love, hatred; and say, God is destroying, when he is saving: and murmur, as if he did thee wrong, and used thee hardly, when he is showing thee the greatest mercy of all. Are not the foul steps the way to rest, as well as the fair? yea, are not thy sufferings the most necessary passages of his providence? And though, for the present, they are not joyous, but grievous; yet, in the end, do they bring forth the quiet fruits of righteousness to all those that are exercised thereby. (Heb. xii. 11.) Hast thou not found it so by former experience, when yet this flesh would have persuaded thee otherwise? Believe it then no more, which hath misinformed thee so oft; for, indeed, there is no believing the words of a wicked and ignorant enemy. Ill-will never speaks well; but when malice, viciousness, and ignorance, are combined, what actions can expect a true and fair interpretation? This flesh will call love, anger; and anger, hatred; and chastisements, judgments. It will tell thee, that no man's case is like thine; and if God did love thee, he would never so use thee. (Psalm exvi. 11.) It will tell thee, that the promises are but deceiving words, and all thy prayers and uprightness are vain. (Psalm lxxiii. 13-15.) If it find thee sitting among the ashes, it will say to thee, as Job's wife, "Dost thou yet retain thine integrity?" (Job ii. 8-10.) Thus will it draw thee to offend against God, and the generation of his children. It is a party,

and a suffering party, and therefore not fit to be the judge. If your child should be the judge when and how oft you should chastise him, and whether your chastisement be a token of fatherly love, you may easily imagine what would be his judgment. If we could once believe God, and judge of his dealings by what he speaks in his word, and by their usefulness to our souls, and reference to our rest, and could stop our ears against all the clamours of the flesh, then we should have a truer judgment of our afflictions.

6. Lastly, consider, God doth seldom give his people so sweet a foretaste of their future rest as in their deep afflictions.e He keepeth his most precious cordials for the time of our greatest faintings and dangers. To give them to such men that are well and need them not, is but to cast them away: they are not capable of discerning their working or their worth. A few drops of divine consolation in the midst of a world of pleasure and contents, will be but lost and neglected, as some precious spirits cast into a vessel or river of common waters. The joys of heaven are of unspeakable sweetness; but a man that overflows with earthly delights is scarce capable of tasting their sweetness. They may easilier comfort the most dejected soul, than him that feeleth not any need of comfort, as being full of other comforts already. Even the best of saints do seldom taste of the delights of God, and pure, spiritual, unmixed joys, in the time of their prosperity, as they do in their deepest troubles and distress. God is not so lavish of his choice favours as to bestow them unseasonably. Even to his own will he giveth them at the fittest time, when he knoweth that they are needful, and will be valued, and when he is sure to be thanked for them, and his people rejoiced by them. Especially, when our sufferings are more directly for his cause, then doth he seldom fail of sweetening the bitter cup. Therefore have the martyrs been possessors of the highest joys, and therefore were they in former times so ambitious of martyrdom. I do not think that Paul and Silas did ever sing more joyfully, than when they were sore with scourgings, and were fast in the inner prison, with their feet in the stocks. (Acts xvi. 24, 25.) When did

e Cum videris bonos viros acceptosque Deo laborare, sudare, per arduum ascendere; malos autem lascivire, et voluptatibus fluere; cogita, filiorum nos modestia delectari, vernularum licentia; illos disciplinâ tristiori contineri, horum ali audaciam. Idem tibi de Deo liqueat. Bonum virum in deliciis non habet, experitur, indurat, sibi illum præparat.-Senec. de Provid. c. 1 ; John xiv.-xvii. xx.