A cabinet of choice jewels, or, A box of precious ointment being a plain…A cabinet of choice jevvels, or, A box of precious ointment being a plain…

being in this very like to many weak, crazy, distempered and diseased Patients, that are more ready to fancy every new Medicine and new Doctor they hear of, and to be tampering with them, than to expect a recovery, by going through a course of Physic prescribed by the Physician that best understands their diseases, and the most proper and effectual means for their recoveries. You know when Naaman the Assyrian came to the Prophet Elisha to be cured of his Leprosy, he only sent out a Messenger to him, who bid him go and wash seven times in Jordan, and his flesh should come again unto him, and he should be clean, 2 Kings 5.10. but Naamans blood rises, and his heart swells, and he grows very wrath, and all because he did not like the means prescribed by the Prophet, and because he thought in his own heart, that the Prophet would have used more likely means to have wrought the cure, ver. 11, 12. So many Christians when they lye under great agonies and sore perplexities of soul, and are encouraged to act faith upon the promises, and to rest their weary souls upon the Word of grace, they are ready to think and say, that these things, these means will never heal them, nor comfort them, nor be a relief or support unto them, unless the Lord does from heaven, by extraordinary Revelations, Visions, Signs and Miracles, confirm his promises to them; and hereupon they make light of the blessed Scriptures, which are the springs of life, and the only bottom upon which all our comforts, peace and happiness is to be built; yea, they relinquish that more sure word of prophecy which shines as a light in a dark place.¹ Certainly the acting of faith on the precious promises, and ⟨p. 22⟩the cleaving of the soul unto those blessed truths declared in the Gospel of grace, is the most sure, ready and compendious way of obtaining a blessed assurance,² and a full establishment of heart,³ in all sound, solid and abiding joy and peace; and therefore Luther, though (as he confesseth) he was often tempted to ask for Signs, Apparitions and Revelations from heaven to confirm him in his way, yet tells us how strongly he did withstand them, Pactum feci cum Domino Deo meo, &c.