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…

1. There are troubles, such as we bring upon our selves by our own folly and sins. We have provoked God to be angry, and to take away many outward mercies from us. Now because our sins, and our iniquities have done all this, therefore it is that we may justly expect that God will deny all comfort. We might think it is true, when we suffer for Gods sake, when we are persecuted for righteousness sake, then Christ will take us into his wine-cellar, and bid us, Drink abundantly. But it is my vile heart, my proud heart, my loose and negligent walking that hath brought all this evil upon me, and what comfort then can I expect from God? But even in this condition, such is the grace and mercy of God, that although our sins have brought evil upon us, yet if humbled under them, and bewailing of them, we shall find God for to comfort us. When David, Psal. 4. had that overflowing joy which he saith, God put into his heart, more than all harvest joy, yet he was at that time in very sad exigencies, pursued by his son, and driven out of Jerusalem, and this God threatened as the fruit of his sin; but behold all this, God giveth him comfort: And the truth is, when humbled for our sins, then the nature of these afflictions are altered, they become paternal and medicinal chastisements, they are arguments of Gods love to us; we may rejoice in them ⟨p. 169⟩as testimonies thereof; for so Heb. 12. and Rev. 3. it is said, Whom God loveth he chasteneth. God makes as the Physician an excellent antidote of that which is poison, and so the fruit of thy sins becometh great matter of thankfulness, as David acknowledged, when he said, Out of very thankfulness thou hast afflicted me. And as for the second kind of afflictions, which are only for the exercise of graces, when we are persecuted not for the evil in us, but the good appearing, as the case of the Martyrs was; then God giveth us comfort with full measure, pressed down, and yet flowing over; witness the Apostles, who went away rejoicing, because they were accounted worthy to suffer all things for Christs sake. The Martyrs also had more joy in their troubles then ever they had in their prosperity, and it is of those tribulations the Scripture speaketh of.