of despair; my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? faith speaks twice before sense can speak once. Again, faith speaks confidently and positively, thou art my God; sense speaks dubiously, why hast thou? as if sense durst. not call it a forsaking while faith dares say, my God: surely faith is never so much faith as in desertion. Faith's triumphs lie in the midst of de ́spair, and even in this sense also, Having not seen, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Godly sorrow, how it is enlarged by sanctified affliction while that stream, which was wont to run in the channel of worldly crosses, now is diverted into the channel of sin: I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I HAVE SINNED: any burden is light in comparison of sin, the very indignation of God. The soul that God teacheth by his chastisements, can stand under the burden of God's indignation for sin, when it cannot stand under sin, which hath kindled that indignation. Ah, crieth Job upon the dunghill, I have sinned, what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? He forgetteth his suffering in his sin; he saith not, I have lost all my substance; I am now upon the dunghill as naked as ever I was born (save that I am clothed with scabs): my friends reproach me, my wife curseth me, or, that which is worse, she bids me curse God. Satan persecutes me, and God himself is become mine enemy; all this is befallen me; What wilt thou do unto me, O thou preserver

of men? but I have sinned, what shall I do unto thee? Sufferings convict of sin, and sense of sin swalloweth up sense of sufferings. And what shall I say more? the time would fail to instance in other graces, love, fear, holiness, &c. By this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit to take away his

sin.

Grace is never more grace than when besieged with temptations. The battle draws forth that fortitude and bravery, which in time of peace lay chilled in the veins for want of opposition and exercise: Tribulation worketh patience.

12. Learn in the School of Affliction, THE NECES

SITY AND EXCELLENCY OF THE LIFE OF FAITH,

(1) The necessity of living by faith-Where sense endeth, faith begins; the vision is for an appointed time aye, but what shall we do in the mean time? why the just shall live by faith; live by faith, or die in despair: when God pulls away the bull-rushes of creature supports, the soul must either swim or sink. God teacheth this lesson, partly by the uncertainty of second causes, and the vicissitudes that are in creature expectations: a little hope to-day, to-morrow reduced to despair; good news to-day, Pharaoh says Israel shall go; bad news to-morrow, he rageth, and swears that if Moses see his face any more he shall surely die. O the ebbs and flows of sublunary hopes! one speaks a word of comfort, another words of terror; now a parcel of good words, anon a threatning. The sick

man is in hopes of reviving to-day, to-morrow at the point of death. What a woeful heart-dividing life, is a life of sense, a life that is worse than death itself; to be thus bandied up and down between hopes and fears; to be baffled to and fro between the may-be's of second causes! to be like mariners upon the billows and surges of the tempestuous sea! They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depth; their soul is melted because of trouble: they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits end. And partly, God teacheth the necessity of a life of faith by the disappointment of the creature: how often doth the creature totally fail, and abuse our expectation like the deceitful brook, to which Job most elegantly compares his brethren, which mocks the traveller, and when he comes for a draught of water to quench his thirst, sends him away with confusion and shame. Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: Men of low degree would help, but cannot-there is vanity; and men of high degree can help many times, but will not; no, not when they have promised and sworn-there is a lie: both disappoint, the one by the necessity, the other by deceit and disappointment is one of the greatest torments that a rational creature is capable of. David himself looked on his right hand, and beheld, and there was no man that would know him. Peter-like, they knew not the man; they made as if they had never seen him before. So that churl Nabal, who is David?

and who is the son of Jesse? and it was not Nabal only that stood at this distance from him, his nearest and dearest acquaintance cast him off: Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.-Refuge failed me, no man cared for my soul, or (as the Hebrew hath it) no man sought after my soul. St. Paul was in no better condition in the persecution which befel him at Rome; at my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me; not a man of all them that sat under the famous apostle's ministry, that would or durst appear to speak a word for him, or to him: oh bitter disappointment, had not he had faith to support him under it! Sorrow and shame are the fruits of creature-expectation. But now on the contrary, They looked unto the Lord and were enlightened, and their faces were not ashamed. Faith meets with no disappointment, God is always better than our expectation; Nevertheless the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me—and I was delivered from the mouth of the lion. By such experiences do we learn the necessity of living by faith; I had perished in my affliction, unless thy law had been my delight: i. e. unless David had learned to live by a promise, he had been a dead man. Surely he dieth oft whose life is bound up in the dying creature, as oft as the creature fails, his hope fails, and his heart fails; when the creature dieth, his hope giveth up the ghost: He only lives an unchangeable life, that by faith can live upon an unchangeable God.

We hear such things indeed in the word, but we believe them not till our own experience convinceth us of our infidelity. A long time do we stick totally in the creature, knowing no other life then that of sense and reason, sacrificing to our own nets, and burning incense to our own drags. And because the word tells us much of living by faith, we would fain patch up a life between faith and sense, which indeed is not a life of faith; though we may use means, we must trust God, and trust him solely; and therefore, to bring us to this, God suffers us to be tried and vexed with the mockery of second causes; and when we have spent all upon these physicians of no value, then, and never till then, we resolve for Christ. When David had experienced sufficiently the falseness and hypocrisy of Saul and his parasites, they delight in lies, they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly, then he resolves never to trust a creature more: My soul wait thou only upon God, he only is my Rock and my salvation. Unmixed trust in God is the fruit of our experience of the creature's vanity: we never resolve exclusively for God, till, with the prodigal, we are whipt home naked to our father's house. When the church had run herself barefoot in following her lovers, who answered her expectation with nothing but fear, and sent her away with shame instead of glory; then she can go home, and confessing her atheism and folly, gives up herself purely to divine protection; Ashur shall not save us, we will not ride