Moses his choice with his eye fixed upon Heaven, discovering the happy condition of…

Eighthly, by afflictions, decayed grace comes to be recovered: These are Gods files, that file off the rust ¹of security. Physicians use to cure a Lethargy, by putting their patient into a fever: the spiritual Lethargy of security, is often cured by hot and strong afflictions. When men are in a swoon, we use to nip and pinch them, and strike them, and cast cold ²water upon their faces: Gods strokes, and the cold water of afflictions being sanctified by him, recover many from spiritual swoons: many who have so far decayed in their spiritual vigour and activeness, that they have seemed to be even dead, yet they have been recovered this way. Job 36. 15. God opens their ears in oppression; many mens ears are clogged up with the world, but when God gives them up for a while to the oppressions of men, then their ears are opened. It is good for me, saith David, that I was afflicted, for before I went astray, but now have I learned thy word. In the 2. Hosea, God threatens the Church to strip her naked, and to set her as in the day that she was born, and to make her as a wilderness, to hedge her way with thorns; and thus the Lord did to that Church: but mark what he says shall be the fruit of all, verse 7. Then shall she say, I will go and return unto my first husband, for then was it better with me then it is now. When Absalom sent for Joab once and again, yet he came not unto him, until Absalom caused his corn fields to be set on fire, and then he comes: God speaks and calls to his people who are grown secure, once and again, but they neglect God, until God comes with the fire of afflictions, and then they come. Afflictions are like the prick at the Nightingales breast, that awakes her, ⟨p. 56⟩and puts her upon her sweet and delightful singing. Gulielmus Parisensis saith of Musk, when it hath lost ³its sweetness, if it be put into the sink amongst filth, it recovers it; this he applied to decayed grace in the times of afflictions, in afflictions it revives, and recovers.

Eightly, by afflictions, decayed grace comes to be recovered: These are Gods files, that file off the rust