The crucifying of the world

Answ. 1. But your perverse affections do provoke God to multiply such afflictions. Had you not rather bear a smaller measure, and taste of a cup that hath less of the ga••? 2. And if you were but Crucified to the world, the same Afflictions would be as nothing to your mind, which now seem so grievous to you, and cast you into such vexations and discontents. If it did as much to your flesh, it could not reach the heart; and if all be sound and well within, its no great matter how it is without. The very same kind of affliction, whether it be poverty, sickness, ⟨p. 146⟩slanders or other wrongs, are as nothing to a man that is dead to the world, which seem intolerable to unmortified men. For the heart and soul of the unmortified are the seat and subject of them; when the mortified Christian hath a Garrison within, and blots the door, and keeps them from his heart. What great trouble will it be to any man to part with that which he doth not care for? especially while he keepeth that which hath his heart. Its no great trouble to a worldling to want the love of God or communion with him, nor to be without the life of grace, nor to lie under the burden of the greatest sins, and to be the slave of the Devil: because he is dead in sin, and dead to God, and the things of the Spirit; and therefore he perceiveth not the excellency of them, but is well content to live without them; And if spiritual death can make men so contented without the great unvaluable treasure, and can make men set light by God and Glory; What wonder if they that are dead to the world do set as light by such in inconsiderable vanities? And if the dead in sin can bear so easily the greatest misery that man on earth is ordinarily capable of, as the slavery of the Devil, the guilt of sin, the curse of the Law, the danger of damnation, &c. what wonder then if they that are Crucified to the world can bear a little poverty, or sickness, or reproach? which is to the other, but as the prick of a pin, or the scratch of a thorn, to a deadly poison, or a stab at the very heart.

Answ. 1. But your perverse affections do provoke God to multiply such afflictions. Had you not rather bear a smaller measure, and taste of a cup that hath less of the ga••? 2. And if you were but Crucified to the world, the same Afflictions would be as nothing to your mind, which now seem so grievous to you, and cast you into such vexations and discontents. If it did as much to your flesh, it could not reach the heart; and if all be sound and well within, its no great matter how it is without. The very same kind of affliction, whether it be poverty, sickness,