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

Again, it is a greater mercy that God keeps you from the evil of the hands of wicked men, if God beat out the teeth of wicked men, that they only can ¹bark and not bite, that their tongues and not their hands can only reach you. The complaint of Job might have been thine, ch. 16. 11. God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked; this would have been grievous indeed. Although they send a flood of reproaches after you, as Rev. 12. 15. the Dragon cast out of his mouth a flood ⟨p. 394⟩after the Church, yet thou art far from their reach as she was, therefore be patient under reproaches. It is ²through the wantonness of our hearts that we are so sensible of the evil of reproaches, because we are not accustomed to suffer greater evils; those who are in danger of greater evils, have no leisure to think on these things, says Seneca, but minds weakened with too much idleness, and wanton and effeminate through want of sufferings.

Again, it is a greater mercy that God keeps you from the evil of the hands of wicked men, if God beat out the teeth of wicked men, that they onely can ¹bark and not bite, that their tongues and not their hands can onely reach you. The complaint of Job might have been thine, ch. 16. 11. God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked; this would have been grievous indeed. Although they send a flood of reproaches after you, as Rev. 12. 15. the Dragon cast out of his mouth a flood ⟨p. 394⟩after the Church, yet thou art far from their reach as she was, therefore be patient under reproaches. It is ²through the wantonness of our hearts that we are so sensible of the evil of reproaches, because we are not accustomed to suffer greater evils; those who are in danger of greater evils, have no leisure to think on these things, says Seneca, but mindes weakned with too much idleness, and wanton and effeminate through want of sufferings.