with very much Thankfulness to him; for He is the root and fountain of all the good you do, or can receive. Tenthly. Bear all afflictions and crosses patiently: it is your duty; for afflictions come not from the dust. The great God of heaven and earth is He, that sends these messengers to you; though, possibly, evil occurrences may be the immediate instruments of them. You owe to Almighty God an infinite subjection and obedience, and to expostulate with Him is rebellion; and as it is your duty, so it is your wisdom and your prudence: impatience will not discharge your yoke; but it will make it gall the worse, and sit the harder. Eleventhly. Learn not only patience under your afflictions, but also profitably to improve them to your soul's good. Learn by them, how vain and unprofitable things the World, and all the pleasures thereof are, that a sharp or a lingering sickness renders utterly tasteless. Learn how vain and weak a thing Human Nature is, which is pulled down to the gates of death, and clothed with rottenness and corruption, by a little disorder in the blood, in a nerve, in a vein, in an artery. And since we have so little hold of a temporal life, which is shaken and shattered by any small occurrence, accident, or distemper; learn to lay hold of Eternal Life, and of that Covenant of peace and salvation, which Christ hath brought for all, that believe and obey the Gospel of peace and salvation: there shall be no death, no sickness, no pain, no weakness, but a state of unchangeable and everlasting happiness. And if you thus improve Affliction, you are gainers by it; and most certain it is, that there is no more probable way, under heaven, to be delivered from affliction (if the wise God see it fit) than thus to improve it: for affliction is a messenger, and the rod hath a voice; and that is, to require mankind to be the more patient, and the more humble, and the more to acknowledge Almighty God in all our ways. And if men listen to this voice of the rod, and conform to it, the rod hath done his errand; and either will leave a man, or at least give a man, singular comfort, even under the sharpest af fliction. And this affliction, which is but for a moment, thus improved, will work for us an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Twelfthly. Reverence your minister: he is a wise and a good man, and one that loves you, and hath a tender care and respect for you. Do not grieve him, either by neglect or disrespect. Assure yourselves, if there be any person who sets any of you against him, or provokes or encourageth any of you to despise or neglect him, that person, whoever he be, loves not you, nor the office he bears. And therefore, as the laws of the land, and the Divine Providence, hath placed him at Alderley, to have a care of your souls; so I must tell you, I do expect you should reverence and honour him, for his own, for your, and for his office' sake. And now I have written this long epistle to you, to perform that office for me that I should have done in person, if I could have taken this journey. The epistle is long; but it had been longer, if I had had more time. And though, perchance, some there may be in the world, that when they hear of it, will interpret it to be but the excursions and morose rules of old Age, unnecessary, and such as might have been spared; yet I am persuaded, it will find better acceptation thereof from you that are my Children. I am now on the shady side of three-score years: I write to you what you have often heard me in substance speak. And possibly when I shall leave this world, you will want such a remembrancer as I have been to you. The words that I now, and at former times have written to you, are words of truth and soberness; and words and advices that proceed from a heart, full of love and affection to you all. If I should see you do amiss in any thing, and should not reprove you, or if I should find you want counsel and direction, and should not give it, I should not perform the trust of a Father; and if you should not thankfully receive it, you would be somewhat defective in the duty you owe to God and me, as Children. As I have never spared my purse to supply you, according to my abilities, and the reasonableness of occasions, so I have never |