Patience and its perfect work under sudden & sore trialsPatience and its perfect work under sudden & sore tryals

And this passage you may set upon the score of those eminent speeches, wherein he expressed his Patience, which the Scripture commends it for; and in the issue of his worst fits, we find him still adoring, and submitting to God.

§. Secondly, He humbles himself to the dust [falls down to the ground.] First, as himself was a Creature, poor and emptied of all. Alas! What am I (says he) or what have I to challenge, or assume to my self as mine? What have I, or am I, that I have not received? A poor naked thing, I came into the world at first; and but as poor and naked am I now, when bereft of all my goods; and as naked I must return: I had nothing at first, and I have but nothing now, and I shall carry nothing with me into the other World. Thus spake He.

When Jacob was in hazard of, and thought he should lose his goods, and children, and all, (as Job here, actually lost both,) see how aforehand he humbles and debaseth himself, (as you read 32 Gen. 10.) and how greatly, before ⟨p. 108⟩the Lord, I am less then the least of thy mercies: I am not worthy of a bit of bread, and thou gavest me all I have. And what was I once? He considers (as Job) his original condition, both as to matter of estate, and children. I came over Jordan but with this staff. I had no more (says he) and now I have two bands, both of Cattle and Children: And if God take all, I am but where I was, and where he once found me. And truly Jacob his best Policy, and design was to have compounded the matter, and if he could but save half of either, v. 8. if he might have half his estate, and half his children, he should have been, considering the hazard of all, something well appeased: but now he puts in with God for the whole. His thus Humbling of himself was afore he had lost any thing, to the end to preserve it; and Jobs