sovereign plaister to my soul, while the wound is green; and suffer it not to fester inwardly, through any impenitent delay.

LXII.

BENEFICIAL WANT.

IT is just with thee, O God, when thou seest us grow wanton, and unthankfully neglective of thy blessings, to withdraw them from us; that, by the want of them, we may feel both our unregarded obligations, and the defects of our duty: so we have seen the nurse, when the child begins to play with the dug, to put up the breast out of sight. I should not acknowledge how precious a favour health is, if thou didst not sometimes interchange it with sickness; nor how much I am bound to thee for my limbs, if I had not sometimes a touch of lameness. Thirst gives better relish to the drink; and hunger is the best sauce to our meat. Nature must needs affect a continuance of her welfare; neither is any thing more grievous to her, than these cross interceptions of her contentments: but thou, who art Wisdom itself, knowest how fit it is for us, both to smart for our neglect of thy familiar mercies, and to have thy blessings more endeared to us by a seasonable discontinuance. Neither dost thou want to deal otherwise, in the managing of thy spiritual mercies. If thy Spouse, the faithful soul, shall, being pampered with prosperity, begin to grow secure and negligent; so as, at the first knock of her beloved, she rise not up to open to him, but suffers his head to be filled with dew, and his locks with the drops of the night, she soon finds her beloved withdrawn and gone: she may then seek him, and not find him; she may call and receive no answer; she may seek him about the streets, and, instead of finding him, lose her veil, and meet with blows and wounds from the watchmen ; Cant. v. 2-7. O God, keep thou me from being resty with ease hold me in a continual terderness of heart: continue me in a thankful and awful use of all thy favours: but, if, at any time, thou seest me decline to a careless obduration, and to a disrespective forgetfulness of thy mercies, do thou so chastise me with the fatherly hand of thy afflictions, and so work me to a gracious use of thy desertions; that my soul may seek thee with more vigour of affections, and may recover thee with more sensible comfort.

LXIII.

INTERCHANGE OF CONDITIONS.

It is not for nothing, O my God, that thou hast protracted my time so long, and hast given me so large experience of thy most wise and holy dealing with myself and others. Doubtless,

it is, that I might see, and feel, and observe, and teach the gracious changes of thy carriage towards thy poor sinful creatures upon earth. Thou dost not hold us always under the rod, though we well deserve a perpetual correction; as considering our miserable impotence, and aptness to a heartless dejection. Thou dost not always keep our hearts raised up to the jollity of a prosperous condition; as knowing our readiness to presume, and to be carried away with a false confidence of our unmoveableness: but graciously interchangest thy favours with our sufferings. When thou seest us ready to faint, and to be discouraged with our adversity, thou takest off thy hand, and givest us a comfortable respiration from our miseries when thou seest us puffed up with the vain conceit of our own worth or success, thou takest us down with some heavy cross. When thou findest us overlaid with an unequal match, and ready to be foiled in the fight, thou givest us breath, and puttest new strength into our arms, and new courage into our hearts: when thou findest us insolent with our victory, thou shamest us by an unexpected discomfiture. And, as for the outward estate of the nations and kingdoms of the earth, thou whirlest them about in a perpetual yet constant vicissitude: peace breeds plenty; plenty, wantonness and pride; pride, animosity; from thence follows war; war produces vastation and want; poverty causeth industry; and, when nothing is left to strive for, peace; an industrious peace brings plenty again: and, in this gyre, thou hast ordained the world still to turn about. Be not too much moved then, O my soul, when thou findest thyself hard pressed with afflictions, and conflicted with strong temptations; but bear up constantly, in the strength of thy faith, as being assured, that, having rid out this storm, thou shalt be blessed with a happy calm: neither be thou lifted up too much, when thou findest thyself carried on with a fair gale of prosperity; since thou knowest not what tempests may suddenly arise, and many a hopeful vessel hath been sunk in sight of the port. And, when thou seest the world every where full of woeful combustions, he not over-much dismayed with the sight and sense of these public calamities; but wait patiently upon that Divine Providence, which, after those revolutions of change, shall happily reduce all things to their determinate posture. To which purpose, O God, do thou fix my heart firmly upon thee: do thou keep me from the evil of prosperity, from dejectedness in affliction, from the prevalence of temptation, from misprision of thy Providence. Work me to that due temper, which thy Solomon hath prescribed me: In the day of prosperity, be joyful: but, in the day of adversity, consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him; Eccl. vii. 14.

LXIV.

THE RULE of devOTION.

THY will, O God, as it is always holy; so, in what thou hast decreed to do with us, is secret; and, in what thou wouldest have us do to thee, is revealed. It is thy revealed will, that must regulate both our actions and our prayers. It may be, that I may lawfully sue to thee, for what thou hast decreed not to grant as Samuel ceased not to pray for thy favour to that Saul, whom thou hadst rejected; and many an Israelite prayed for rain, in that three years and a half, wherein thou hadst commanded the clouds to make good the prophecy of thine Elijah; yea, thy holy Apostle prayed thrice to have the messenger of Satan taken off from him, and heard no answer, but, My grace is sufficient for thee; 2 Cor. xii. 9. So, Lord, we pray for the removal of thy judgments from this sinful and deplored nation, which for ought we know, and have cause to fear, thou hast decreed to ruin and devastation; and many a good soul prays for a comfortable sense of thy favour, whom thou thinkest fit to keep down for the time in a sad desertion; and I, thy unworthy servant, may pray to be freed from those temptations, wherewith thou seest it fit that my faith should be still exercised. O God, give me the grace to follow thy revealed will, and to submit myself to thy secret. What thou hast commanded, I know I may do: what thou hast promised, I know I may trust to: what thou hast, in a generality, promised to do, may, in some particular cases, by the just decree of thy secret counsel, be otherwise determined. If I ask what thou hast decreed to do, I know I cannot but obtain: if I ask what thou hast warranted, notwithstanding the particular exception of thy secret will, though I receive it not; yet I receive not pardon only, but acceptation. O God, give me grace to steer myself and my prayers by thy revealed will; and humbly to stoop to what the event shews to have been thy secret will.

LXV.

HELL'S TRIUMPH.

THOU hast told us, O Saviour, that there is joy in the presence of thine angels for a sinner's repentance; Luke xv. 10. Those blessed spirits are so far from envying our happiness, that, as they endeavour it here, so they congratulate it in heaven: and, we well know, that these good spirits do not more rejoice in the conversion of a sinner, than the evil spirits do in the miscarriage of a convert. The course of the holy obedience of thy servants here, is doubtless a pleasing object to thine angels; neither are those malignant spirits less pleased

with the wicked practices of their vassals: but the joy arises to both, from the contrary condition of those parties, over which they have prevailed. The allegiance of a good subject, though well-accepted, yet is no news to a gracious sovereign; but the coming in of some great rebel is happy tidings at the court: on the contrary, where there is a rivality of sovereignty, for a professed enemy to do hostile actions, is no other than could be expected; but, for a subject or a domestic servant to be drawn into the conspiracy, is not more advantage than joy to the intruder. O God, thou hast mercifully called me out of the world to a profession of thy Name: I know what eyes those envious spirits have ever upon me: Oh, do thou lead me in thy righteousness, because of mine enemies; Psalm v. 8. If thine angels have found cause to joy in my conversion, Oh, do thou keep me from making music in hell by my miscarriage.

LXVI.

DUMB HOMAGE.

How officious, O God, do I see thy poor dumb creatures to us! how do they fawn, or crouch, as they see us affected! how do they run, and fetch, and carry, and draw at our command! how do they bear our stripes with a trembling unresistance! how readily do they spend their strength, and live theirs in our service! how patiently do they yield us their milk and their fleeces, for our advantage; and lie equally still, to be shorn, or slain, at our pleasure! expecting nothing from us, in the mean time, but a bare sustenance, which, if it be denied them, they do not fall furiously upon their cruel masters; but meekly bemoan themselves in their brutish language, and languish, and die: if granted them, they are fattened for our use. I am ashamed, O God, I am ashamed to see these thy creatures so obsequiously pliant unto me, while I consider my disposition and deportment towards thee my Creator. Alas, Lord, what made the difference betwixt me and them, but thy mere good pleasure? thou mightest have made them rational, and have exchanged my reason for their brutality. They are my fellows, by creation; and owe both their being and preservation, to the same hand with myself. Thou art the absolute Lord of both, to whom I must be accountable for them: they are mine, only by a limited substitution from thee: why then should they be more obedient to my will, than I am to thine; since they have only sense to lead them in their way, I have both reason and faith to teach me my duty? Had I made them, I could but require of them their absolute submission: why should I then exact of them, more than I am ready to perform unto thee? O God, thou, that hast put them under my hand, and me under

thy own; as thou hast made me their master for command, so let me make them my masters to teach me obedience.

LXVII.

INDIFFERENCY OF EVENTS.

THOU givest us daily proofs, O God, of the truth of that observation of wise Solomon, that all things come alike to all, and that no man knows love or hatred by all that is before them; Eccl. ix. 2. In these outward things, thy dearest friends have not fared better, than thine enemies: thy greatest enemies have not suffered more, than thy beloved children. When, therefore, I look abroad, and see with what heavy afflictions thou art pleased to exercise thy best favourites upon earth, I cannot but stand amazed to see, that horrible torments of all kinds have been undergone by thy most precious martyrs, whose patience hath overcome the violence of their executioners and to see those extreme tortures, which some of thy faithful servants have endured in the beds of their sickness; one, torn and drawn together with fearful convulsions; another, shrieking under the painful girds of an unremovable stone; one, wrung in his bowels with pangs of cholic, and turning of guts; another, possessed with a raging gout in all his limbs ; one, whose bladder, after a painful incision, is ransacked; another, whose leg or arm is cut off, to prevent a mortal gangreen: I cannot but acknowledge how just it might be in thee, O God, to mix the same bitter cup for me; and how merciful it is, that, knowing my weakness, thou hast forborne hitherto to load me with so sad a burthen. What thou hast, in thine eternal council, determined to lay upon me, thou only knowest. If thou be pleased to continue thy gracious indulgence to me still, make me truly thankful to thee for health and ease, as the greatest of thy outward favours; but, let me not build upon them, as the certain evidences of thy better mercies: and, if thou think fit to interchange them with the vicissitude of sickness and pain, let me not misconstrue thy severe chastisements as arguments of thy displeasure. But, still teach me to fear thee, in my greatest prosperity; and to love thee, in my greatest sufferings and to adore thine infinite wisdom, justice, and mercy in both.

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LXVIII.

THE TRANSCENDENT LOVE.

How justly do I marvel, O God, to see what strength of natural affection thou hast wrought in poor brute creatures towards their masters, and towards their own mates, towards their dams and their young! We have plentiful instances of