thee of them, for thou knowest all things, and the secretest imaginations are not hid from thee: but I lament my danger and my own disability, that thou, my Judge, mayest see how sensible I am of both, that thy compassion may come in to my assistance, and disappoint our enemy and thine, and save those souls whose strength thou art alone.

Our enemy is wondrous crafty, and his contrivances are so disguised, that except thou open Our eyes, we cannot easily discover what it is he aims at, nor distinguish this deadly foe from a very affectionate friend. He watches all our motions, observes what posture our affairs are in, and accommodates his temptations to the humour, the occasions, the events and fortunes of each person; he considers the times, the places, the critical junctures, in which these are most likely to prevail, and is sure to fall in with those, that are most favourable to his mischievous purposes. He counterfeits melancholy, that he may delude the sorrowful and and dejected; and mirth, that he may betray the sprightly and gay; he wears sheeps' clothing, that he may deceive the secure; and all the savage fierceness of the wolf, that he may terrify the fearful. Thus does he manage matters with such fatal address, that some are scared with terrors by night, and others wounded with the arrows that fly by day, others tainted with the secret pestilence of lusts that walk in darkness, and others destroyed by the open profaneness and impudent vices that waste at noon day. And who is sufficient for these things? What prudence, what caution can be a match for such intricate impostures? Who can discover the face of his garment, or bridle up the teeth of this tyrannical Leviathan?

Behold he hides his arrows secretly in his quiver, and hits us suddenly, when we are least in fear. While he covers his hook with specious baits, and sets his traps out of sight, he draws us into misery and death, by false appearances of happiness, and under the pretence of kindness and friendship: and these things pass upon us very easily, unless thou, Lord, help us to pull off the mask, and detect the slight of hand with which the crafty juggler deludes our credulous sight. Were we in danger only from acknowledged vice, and the works of the flesh, the matter were not so hard to guard ourselves against him. But, alas! he turns our own artillery upon us, and hath a thousand ways of compassing his ends and our destruction, by our very virtues and graces, by our devotions and most spiritual exercises. And this is properly to transform himself into an angel of light, when he makes us ten times more the children of hell, by perverting those very methods which seem to have the most direct tendency to heaven. These, and innumerable other stratagems, to me unknown, this son of Belial finds out, and in some or other of them is perpetually exercising himself to our eternal mischief; but do thou, O Lord, hew the snares of the ungodly in pieces, and let him not triumph over us; let him fall into his own nets, and let me ever escape them; that he may gnash with his teeth, and consume away with envy and rage, at the perishing of his own desires, and thou mayest be glorified in our preservation, O thou who art the Saviour of all that put their trust in thee, thou that savest by thy right hand.

MEDITATION XLIX.

Improvement of God's goodness.

I CALL upon thee for help, O God, with greater confidence upon every remembrance of thy favours already vouchsafed to me. And therefore behold thy servant and son of thy handmaid, acknowledging with all humility, and thankfully recounting the many mercies, with which thou hast prevented, preserved, and particularly blessed me from my youth up to this very day. Herein I exercise myself the rather in a due sense and detestation of ingratitude, a sin so odious in itself, and so very displeasing to thee. For this is the ruin of all that is good: the dam that stops the current of thy mercy, else ever overflowing upon mankind. The seeds of vice though killed, by this revive and sprout up afresh in our hearts, and the most thriving virtues, where this baleful quality enters, are immediately poisoned and stinted, grow sickly, fade away and die. Therefore I will give thanks to my God, that I fall not into this miserable state, nor lie under the dangerous influence and indelible reproach of a sin, so malignant in its quality and effect as that of ingratitude.

O Lord my deliverer! how often hath the roaring lion opened his mouth upon me, and thou hast drawn me from between his teeth, by quashing the temptation! How often have I wickedly complied, and done the fact, and he stood ready to carry off his prey, but thou hast defended me from the hell I

have deserved: thus my offences against thee were repaired by the manifestations of thy power and goodness in the defence of me. I was not afraid, nor stood in awe of thee, and thou didst keep a strict and impregnable guard for my preservation. I departed from thee, and surrendered myself to the enemy: thou wouldest not suffer him to take the advantage, nor me to be ruined; even by my own act and deed. These benefits my gracious God conferred, and yet so blind was I, as not to see them. For after this manner hast thou snatched my soul from him, that would have torn it in pieces, and rescued me from eternal destruction, when I was not in the least sensible how near I was to it. I have ventured to the very brink of the precipice, and thou hast plucked me back when dropping into it. I was at the very gates of death, and thou hast restrained the grave from shutting her mouth

upon me.

Nor hath the care of this kind providence been confined only to my soul, my body also hath felt its good effects. For often hast thou, my God and Saviour, restored me from the bed of languishing, healed those diseases which had baffled all human skill, preserved and protected me by sea and land, in perils of fire and sword, shielding me from many a sore thrust, and putting by deaths innumerable, which were levelled at my head: standing over, and covering me with the shadow of thy wings, from all manner of hurt and danger. And this thou didst, as I have reason to believe, in great compassion to my poor soul, considering how unprovided I was for so important a change; and that, had I been then hurried out of the world, hell and eternal misery must have been my portion. So that

thy grace and mercy, thus preventing me, have rescued me from a two-fold death, and secured body and soul at once, by the same suspension of the fatal stroke; and by thus lengthening out my life, laid a foundation for my living to all eternity. These, and many other benefits I have received at thy bounteous hand, and I, stupid wretch, regarded not; nay, was so blind as not to see them, till the light from above opened my eyes. But now, thou God of my life, by whom I live; thou light of my eyes, by which I see; I have received the influence of thy bright beams, and am brought to a due sight and sense of thee and thy goodness; and most heartily return my thanks the best I can, though most disproportionate to the mercies for which they are due. For thou only art my God and most merciful Creator, a lover of souls, and hating nothing that thou hast made: and I, alas! with shame confess myself the chief of sinners, in whom thou hast shown all long-suffering for a pattern to them, whose sinful and miserable state shall hereafter render them objects of thy clemency and compassion.

I acknowledge thy mercies to be unspeakably great, for delivering my soul from the nethermost hell; not once, or twice, or thrice, but hundreds, and thousands, and millions of times. I was perpetually driven thither, and thou as constantly checking my furious career, and turning me back again. And had not thy own goodness loved me better than I loved myself, thou hadst, ere this, sunk me into the bottomless pit ten thousand times over. But such is thy tenderness, that thou wilt not suffer us to undo ourselves, and makest as though thou sawest not our offences, that thy forbearance