An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

First, They are a special means to humble us, to bring us low in our own eyes, to repent of all the evil we have done, and to turn unto God. As mad men are cast into prison, kept in the dark, and under all hardship, to bring them to their mind again: Thus doth God with those that are his. So that it is an effect of his love to bring us into tribulations. It is his love, ⟨p. 230⟩that maketh him to chastise us, Heb. 12. O beatum cui Deus dignatur irasci. (Tertul. lib. de patientiâ.) O blessed is he to whom the Lord vouchsafeth to be angry! And this is true, not only in afflictions merely for sins, but also in our sufferings for Christ. For though the motive be thy faithfulness in owning of Christ and his way, though it be not for thy sins principally, but thy graces, that thou art thus exercised, yet God hath some respect to thy sins also. Therefore such tribulations they are of a mixed consideration, thy gracious love to Christ provoketh the adversary, yet thy sins also God looketh at in this fiery trial to purge them away. Hence 1 Pet. 4: 16, 17. the Apostle encouraging believers to suffer as Christians, and that by many arguments, he bringeth one amongst the rest, that relateth to their sins, For judgement must begin at the house of God. These persecutions he calls them judgements, and that in respect of the godly, which denoteth, That although God did honour them, as suffering for his truth, yet he did also judge them in those sufferings for their sins. It is then the duty of all Champions and sufferers for Christ, as to rejoice, because they are accounted worthy to suffer for him: So also by those tribulations to humble themselves, to condemn and judge every sin that they can discover. It is a false and sinful opinion of some, mentioned by Raynardus (Lib. de Martyrio.) that affirmed, Whosoever did suffer for the faith of Christ, his very Martyrdom was enough to cleanse him; so that he was not bound in, or before his sufferings to repent for such sins, as his conscience might re-mind him of. No, were it possible for a man to give his body to be burnt for the truth, and yet not to mourn for, and bewail the sins he was guilty of, such Martyrdom would not profit him. So that as God commands the Israelites, when they went to war, that they should cleanse the Camp of unclean things: