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

Fifthly, they must needs be sanctified to you: those that are the sufferings of Christ, are sanctified sufferings; ¹certainly Christ will not suffer them to go away unsanctified; Christ is so holy, that if they come near to him, he will make them holy: and therefore your bodies and souls having union with Christ, they come to be sanctified: so all your conditions and sufferings come to be sanctified by union with Christ: he is the blessed one of God, and therefore all your sufferings must be blessed from him.

Fifthly, they must needs be sanctified to you: those that are the sufferings of Christ, are fanctified sufferings; ¹certainly Christ will not suffer them to go away unsanctified; Christ is so holy, that if they come near to him, he will make them holy: and therefore your bodies and souls having union with Christ, they come to be sanctified: so all your conditions and sufferings come to be sanctified by union with Christ: he is the blessed one of God, and therefore all your sufferings must be blessed from him.

1. 15.

Sixthly, if they be the reproaches of Christ, then ¹you are not left to bear the burden of them alone, you have but the lighter end of the staff: if a burden be never so heavy at one end, and a strong man is under that, and the other be light, though a weak man be under that, he does not care: so the weight and burden of reproaches lie upon the shoulders of Christ: and therefore when you think it is hard for ⟨p. 415⟩one reproach thus to follow upon another, and for one evil to follow another, it will break my heart; ah, if you did bear it alone, but Christ bears the weight of our reproaches.