Four useful discourses viz. ... /Four usefull discourses viz. ... /

Another evidence that it is so difficult, is this; When do you find throughout all the Book of God, that ever a full condition did ever turn any soul to God, or was the means of it, that was not turned to God before. I can find in Scripture that an afflicted condition hath been blest so by God, as it hath been an occasion to turn some to God: As you know Manasseh in his affliction he sought the Lord. And so God speaks once and twice, and men hear not; but then he opens their ears by correction: And in their affliction they will seek me early: But do you ever find it, that those that did not seek God before, were drawn to God by a full condition. Truly I know no certain example of any, where the prosperous estate of a man was any occasion to his conversion: therefore that shows that there is a great deal of danger in a fuller condition.

Another evidence that it is so difficult, is this; When do you find throughout all the Book of God, that ever a full condition did ever turn any soul to God, or was the means of it, that was not turned to God before. I can find in Scripture that an afflicted condition hath been blest so by God, as it hath been an occasion to turn some to God: As you know Manasses in his affliction he sought the Lord. And so God speaks once and twice, and men hear not; but then he opens their ears by correction: And in their affliction they will seek me early: But do you ever find it, that those that did not seek God before, were drawn to God by a full condition. Truly I know no certain example of any, where the prosperous estate of a man was any occasion to his conversion: therefore that shews that there is a great deal of danger in a fuller condition.

Yea further, Where do you find that any of Gods children that were brought into a full condition, but were rather worse for it than better. I confess there is one or two examples, that we read not that they were worse for their prosperity; as Nehemiah and Daniel: but where have you an example else, but almost all of them, when they were full, they forgot God. When they were afflicted, they would learn; David had learned to be content in his afflicted condition, and to get abundance of good by his afflicted condition; O but he could not learn so well to be full. And therefore you shall find that the most excellent Psalms that ever David penned, it was in his afflicted condition: There was a fullness of the spirit of God in him then, then in a more especial manner: And therefore I remember that it's said in one place, That Solomon did not do according to the first works of his Father David. The first works of David were the works