Two sermons tending to direction for Christian carriage [sic] both in afflictions incumbent, and…Two sermons tending to direction for Christian cariage [sic] both in afflictions incumbent, and…

^gThat that is hardly earned, is wont to be more carefully kept. A man will not in haste or unadvisedly spend his penny, that he hath laboured hard and taken much pains for; especially if he know not how to get so much again, but with the like difficulty when that is gone: But lightly come, we say, and lightly gone; young Gallants that never knew what the getting of money meant, are ready when they come to it, to let all fly abroad, as if they could have it again with a wish or a word, when they would. If God, when (for just causes best known to himself, and for the most part for evil desert and bad demeanour on our part) he hath turned his face away from us, and carried himself strangely toward us, he should by and by suddenly upon the first and least bend of our ham, or formal sob, or superficial sigh, or a forced tear or twain, or some faint and heartless prayer turn it again toward us, and look kindly again on us; ^hit is to be feared that even the best of us would be over-much careless of retaining it when we had it. But now when we shall find by woeful and dreadful experience in the bitterness of our spirits, that Gods face being once clouded toward us, or turned from us, it must, or may at least cost us many a deep sigh, and a salt tear, long looking, and much longing, even ^*till our heart faint, and our eyes fail, much anguish of mind and perplexity of spirit, much striving and struggling with our own corruption and weakness, and much straining and wrestling by earnest suit ⟨p. 36⟩and supplication, by fasting and instancy of prayer, ere we can come to prevail so far with God, as to have those thick clouds of his wrath dispelled, and that loving and amiable aspect of his vouchsafed us again; this cannot but make us (if we be not desperately reckless) exceeding careful of all good courses that may keep and retain it with us, when we have it, and no less fearful of ought that may again estrange it away from us. The Spouse in the Canticles, when after long search, with much ado, she had at length lighted on her beloved, ⁱwhom by her neglect of him, she had unadvisedly given occasion to withdraw himself from her: