An exposition with practical observations continued upon the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of…An exposition with practicall observations continued upon the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of…

This also contributes to the proof of the general Observation before given: For the more pleasure any one takes in afflicting, the more severity he shows in afflicting. A Father chastiseth his Child with tears in his eyes; every stroke which a wise Father gives his Child, is as a wound to himself, and this abates the smart of the blow; but for Fathers to do it as the Apostle speaks (Heb. 12.) For their pleasure, or when it pleaseth a Father (in that sense) to do it, this increaseth the smart. The sufferer feels most pain when it is a pleasure to another to make him suffer. Now, what is shooting at a mark? No man shoots at a mark for toil, to make a labour, and a business of it, but men shoot at a mark for their recreation, and pleasure.

This also contributes to the proofe of the generall Observation before given: For the more pleasure any one takes in afflicting, the more severity he shewes in afflicting. A Father chastiseth his Childe with teares in his eyes; every stroake vvhich a vvise Father gives his Childe, is as a wound to himselfe, and this abates the smart of the blow; but for Fathers to doe it as the Apostle speakes (Heb. 12.) For their pleasure, or vvhen it pleaseth a Father (in that sense) to doe it, this encreaseth the smart. The sufferer feeles most paine vvhen it is a pleasure to another to make him suffer. Now, vvhat is shooting at a mark? No man shoots at a marke for toyle, to make a labour, and a businesse of it, but men shoot at a mark for their recreation, and pleasure.

God delights not properly in the sorrows and sufferings of his people; he is not like those cruel Tyrants, who fasten their Captives to a Post, and then shoot them dead for sport: ⟨p. 295⟩God doth not willingly, much less sportingly, afflict the Children of Men (Lam. 3.33.) yet it pleaseth him to afflict them; yea, as Job speaks (Chap. 9.) He laughs at the trial of the innocent; that is, He carries himself (as to their sense) as if he did not regard what they suffered, though indeed he be infinitely tender of them in all their sufferings; yet because they do not always understand the language of this laughter, it makes them cry out as if God had forsaken them, and were either really turned an Enemy against them, or at least, did not use them as his Friends; from which near relation, nothing appears more remote, then to be set up and shot at as a mark.