The Institution of Christian Religion

This I thought good to speak to this end, to call godly minds from despair: that they should not therefore altogether forsake the study of patience, because they can not put of the natural affection of sorrow: which must needs happen to them, that make of patience a senseless dullness, and of a valiant and constant man, a stock. For the Scripture giveth to the holy ones the praise of patience, when they are so troubled with hardness of adversities, that yet they be not overcome nor thrown down with it: when they be so pricked with bitterness, that they be also delighted with spiritual joy: when they be so distressed with grief, that yet they receive courage again being cheered with the comfort of God. Yet in the mean time that repugnancy abideth still in their hearts, that natural sense escheweth and dreadeth those things that it knoweth to be against it: but the affection of godliness travaileth even through all those difficulties to the obeying of Gods will. This repugnancy the Lord expressed when he said thus to Peter:¹ When thou waste young thou didst gird thy self, & didst walk whether thou wouldest: But when thou art old, an other shall gird thee and lead thee whither thou shalt not be willing. Neither is it likely that Peter, when the time came that he must glorify God by his death, was drawn unwillingly and resisting unto it. Else his martyrdom should have but small praise. But how so ever he did with great cheerfulness of heart obey the ordinance of God, yet because he had not put of the nature of man, he was doubly strained with two sorts of wills. For when he did by himself consider the bloody death that he should suffer, being stricken with horror thereof, he would gladly have escaped it. On the other side, when it came in his mind, that he was called unto it by the commandment of God, then conquering and treading down fear, he gladly, yea and cheerfully toke it upon him. This therefore we must endeavour if we will be the Disciples of Christ, that our minds be inwardly filled with so great a reverence and obedience to God, as may tame and subdue to his ordinance all contrary affections. So shall it come to pass, that with whatsoever kind of cross we be vexed, even in the greatest anguishes ⟨p. 167⟩of mind, we shall constantly keep patience. For adversities shall have their sharpness, wherewith we shall be bitten: