The divine life in three treatises

Have you not perceived that this is the design and meaning of his afflicting and disappointing providences? even to leave you no comfortable entertainment or converse but with himself, and with his servants, and with those means that lead you to himself? If you begin to ⟨p. 289⟩desire to lodge abroad in strange habitations, he will uncover those houses, and will not leave you a room that's dry to put your head in; or he will throw open the doors, and leave all open to the lust of ravenous beasts and robbers. He will have thy heart, and he will have thy company, because thou art his child, and because he loveth thee. He will allow thee neither thy carnal Delights or Hopes. If he perceive thee either taking that Pleasure in thy Prosperity which thou shouldest take in him alone, or Hoping at least that the world may hereafter prove more amiable and delightful to thee; the more he loveth thee, the more his Providence shall conspire with his Grace, to change thy mind, by depriving thee of thy unwholesome dangerous delights, and of all thy Hopes of such hereafter. Use the world as a traveller, for the ends to which it was ordained, to the service of God, and the furtherance of thy salvation, and then thou shalt find that God will furnish thee with all that is necessary to these necessary ends: But if the world must have your Love and Care, and must be your chiefest business and delight, and your excuse for not attending upon God, murmur not, nor marvel not if he dispose of it and you accordingly. If you are yet too healthful to think with seriousness on your eternal state; If you are too Rich to part with all for Christ, or openly to own his Cause; If you are too much esteemed in the world to own a scorned slandered Religion; If you are so busy for Earth, that you cannot have time to think of Heaven; If you have so much delight in House or Land, or in your employments, or recreations, or friends, that God and Godliness can have little or none of your delight: Marvel not then if God do shake your Health, or waste your Riches, or turn your Honour into contempt, and suffer men to slander and reproach you, and spit in your face, and make you of no reputation: Marvel not if he turn you out of all, or turn all to your grief and trouble, and make the world a desert to you, and the inhabitants as wolves and bears.

Have you not perceived that this is the design and meaning of his afflicting and disappointing providences? even to leave you no comfortable entertainment or converse but with himself, and with his servants, and with those means that lead you to himself? If you begin to