A Saint Indeed

6. Help. it would much stay the heart under adversity to consider, that God by such humbling providences, may be accomplishing that, for which you have long prayed, and waited; and should you be troubled at that: say Christian, hast thou not many prayers depending before God upon such accounts as these; that he would keep thee from sin; discover to thee the emptiness and insufficiency of the Creature? that he would kill and mortify thy lusts, that thy heart may never find rest in any enjoyment but Christ? why now, by such humbling and impoverishing strokes, God may be fulfilling thy desire: wouldst thou be kept from sin? lo, he hath hedged up thy way with thorns: Wouldst thou •ee the creatures vanity; thy affliction is a fair glass to discover it; for the vanity of the creature is never so effectually and sensibly discovered, as in our own experience of it: wouldst thou have thy corruptions mortified? this is the way: Now God takes away the food and fuel that maintained them; for as ⟨p. 54⟩prosperity begat and fed them, so adversity when sanctified is a means to kill them. Wouldst thou have thy heart to rest no where but in the bosom of God? what better way canst thou imagine providence should take to accomplish thy desire, than by pulling from under thy head, that soft pillow of creature delights on which thou restedst before? and yet thou fret at this, peevish child how dost thou exercise thy Fathers patience! if he delay to answer thy prayers, thou art ready to say he regards thee not; if he do that which really answers the scope and main end of them, but not in the way thou expectedst, thou quarrellest with him for that; as if instead of answering he were crossing all thy hopes and aims: is this ingenious? is it not enough that God is so gracious to do what thou desirest, but thou must be so impudent to expect he should do it in the way which thou prescribest?

6. Help. it would much stay the heart under adversity to consider, that God by such humbling providences, may be accomplishing that, for which you have long prayed, and waited; and should you be troubled at that: say Christian, hast thou not many prayers depending before God upon such accounts as these; that he would keep thee from sin; discover to thee the emptiness and insufficiency of the Creature? that he would kill and mortifie thy lusts, that thy heart may never find rest in any injoyment but Christ? why now, by such humbling and impoverishing strokes, God may be fulfilling thy desire: wouldst thou be kept from sin? lo, he hath hedged up thy way with thorns: Wouldst thou ee the creatures vanity; thy affliction is a fair glass to discover it; for the vanity of the creature is never so effctually and sensibly discovered, as in our own experience of it: wouldst thou have thy corruptions mortified? this is the way: Now God takes away the food and fewel that maintain'd them; for as