A Saint Indeed

3. Season. The third Season calling for more than ordinary diligence to keep the heart is, the time of Scions trouble: when the Church like the ship in which Christ and his disciples were, is oppressed, and ready to perish in the waves of persecution, then good Souls, are ready to sink and be shipwrecked too upon the billows of their own fear. I confess most men rather need the spur ⟨p. 59⟩than the reins in this case, and yet some sit down as overweighed with the sense of the Churches troubles; the loss of the Ark cost old Eli his li•e, the sad posture Jerusalem lay in, made good Nehemiahs countenance change in the midst of all the pleasures and accommodations of the Court Neh. 2. 2. ah this goes close to honest hearts! But though God allow, yea, command the most awakened apprehensions of these calamities, and in such a day call to mourning, weeping, and girding with sackcloth, Isa. 22. 12. and severely threatens the insensible, Amos 6. 1. yet it will not please him to see you sit like pensive Elijah under the Juniper tr•e, 1 King 19. 4. Ah Lord God! it is enough, take away my life also: no, mourners in Zion you may, and ought to be; but self tormentors you must not be: complain to God you may, but to complain of God (though but by an unsuitable carriage and the language of your actions) you must not.

3. Season. The third Season calling for more than ordinary dilligence to keep the heart is, the time of Sions trouble: when the Church like the ship in which Christ and his disciples were, is oppressed, and ready to perish in the waves of persecution, then good Souls, are ready to sink and be shipwrackt too upon the billows of their own fear. I confess most men rather need the spur ⟨p. 59⟩than the reyns in this case, and yet some sit down as overweighed with the sence of the Churches troubles; the loss of the Ark cost old Eli his li•e, the sad posture Ierusalem lay in, made good Nehemiahs countenance chang in the midst of all the pleasures and accommodations of the Court