A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse…

By afflictions the Lord teaches his People to sit loose from this world, and to make sure the great things of that other world. By affliction God shows his People the vanity, vexation, emptiness, weakness, and nothingness of the Creatures; and the choiceness, preciousness, and sweetness of communion with himself, and of inte•est in himself. Christ though he knew yet learned he obedience, by the things which he suffered, that is, he ¹showed obedience more than before; Not as if Christ were to go to School to learn, or as if by certain acts he were to fit himself for obedience; he did not learn that which he knew not before, but did that which he did not before; he that was put upon the trial of his obedience, he came to know by experience, what a hard matter it was thus to obey God. By Gods favourable presence a man comes to learn many lessons in a time of adversity, which he never learned in a day of prosperity: for we are like idle boys and bad scholars, that learn best when the rod is over us. Hezekiah was better ²upon his sick bed, than when he was showing of his treasures to the Ambassadors of the King of Babylon; and David was a better man, when he was in his wilderness ³condition, than when he set upon his Royal throne; the Jews are ever best, when in the worst condition; the Athenians would never mend tell they were in mourning. When Munster lay sick, and his friends asked him how he did, and how he felt himself? he pointed to his ⟨p. 24⟩sores and ulcers (whereof he was full) and said, These are Gods gems and jewels wherewith he decketh his best friends, and to me they are more precious than all the gold and silver in the world. Here, as that Martyr phrased it, we are but learning our A. B. C. and our lesson is never past Christs Cross, and our walking is still home by weeping cross. Usually men are worst in a prosperous condition; in a prosperous condition God speaks to us, ⁴and we mind him not. I spoke to thee in thy prosperity, but thou wouldest not hear: and this hath been thy manner from thy youth upwards. Pope Martin reported of himself, that whilst he was a Monk, and lived in the Cloister, he had some evidences for Heaven, when he was a Cardinal, he began to fear and doubt, but after he came to be Pope, he utterly despaired.