The works of the reverend and faithful servant of Jesus Christ M. Richard Greenham,…The workes of the reuerend and faithfull seruant af Iesus Christ M. Richard Greenham,…

If your present discouragement resist the comfort of these meditations, it is no new thing, that in our weakness we should after the manner of those that be sick, disadvantage our selves of that which might do us good: yet remember how injurious a thing it were, to esteem the children of God by their present agonies and conflicts of conscience, rather then by the comfort of that estate wherein the grace of God shined plentifully upon¹ them and in them. For as when men are diseased, it cannot thereof be concluded, that they were never in health: so the present discomforts of the children of God, though they take away the sense of his mercy for a time, yet they are no repeal of his former goodness² and favour towards them, nor deny them to have been, even in their own judgement and feeling dear unto the Lord, and still to be, though the storm and tempest of their present affliction suffer them not so lively and comfortably to enjoy the same, as before.^{3 4}For which cause they must with Job and David call to remembrance the comforts of times⁵ past, from thence to assure themselves of the return of the good hand of the Lord in due⁶ time. I doubt not, but you can be witness unto God, and to your own self, that the time hath been when your comfort and assurance of Gods favour was such, as Satan himself could not deny the testimony which then the spirit of God did bear unto your spirits.⁷ Now the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, and whom he loveth he⁸ loveth unto the end: neither doth our salvation depend upon any thing of our own, (for⁹ then we should a thousand times perish and fall before the enemy) but upon that eternal and everlasting love of God, wherewith he hath loved us in JESUS CHRIST, before the