The devils banquet described in four sermons [brace], 1. The banquet propounded, begun, 2.…The deuills banket described in foure sermons [brace], 1. The banket propounded, begunne, 2.…

2. As Israel did not judge from the cause to the effects, so nor from the effects to the cause. For though she was now grievously pained and pined with misery, she forgot to go down by the boughs to the root, and dig out the ground of her calamity. Ill she was, and that at hart. Gods sword from heaven had stroke their very flesh and sinews in several judgements: which came on them by short incursions, before God joined the main battle of his wrath. Israel cries out of her bow•ls, she is pained at the very heart. ¹Her children went with clean teeth, lank cheeks, hollow and sunk eyes: Could she not guess at the cause of this bodily languishment? So Paul schooled his Corinths: For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, ²and many sleep. There is no weakness, but originally proceeds from wickedness. As Mephibosh•th caught his l•m•nesse by falling from his Nurse, so every one taketh his illness by falling from his Christ. Though sickness may be eventually a token of love, yet it is properly and originally a stroke of Justice. For every Disease God inflicts on us, is a Sermon from Heaven; whereby God preacheth to us, the vileness of our sins, and his wrathful displeasure for them. That those, whom Gods vocal Sermons cannot move, his actual and real may pierce. Indeed,³ all things shall work to their good, that are good. ⟨p. 257⟩And the rough Rocks of afflictions shall bring them (as Jonathan to the Garrison of the Philistines) by fit stairs to glory. Miseries do often help a man to mercies.⁴ So the Lepers incurable Disease brought him to the Physician of his soul; where he had both cured by one plaster, the saving word of Christ. A weak body is a kind of occasion to a strong faith. It was good for me, saith the Psalmist, that I was in trouble. ⁵