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

And the Reason, why Patience is required to every good work is because there is a difficult• that accompanies every duty, and ¹to the putting forth of every grace: that we need have Patience to perform the duty constantly and to continue in the practice o• that grace: There is a difficulty not only from our own corruption, unto which the Commands o• God are grievous; but from th• ⟨p. 33⟩circumstances of times, places, persons, we live in, and amongst, though they should not persecute. As not to run into the same excess of riot, to speak or do what, we know, doth not please the company we are in: Thus to be Chaste in Sodom, was to Lot a trial: to condemn the world, by a different carriage; as in being stricter then others on the Lords ²day, or in family duties, &c. to cross the stream: to be singular, and the like. Heb. 12. 12. Lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees: Wherein I observe, that in doing good in any kind, we are not only lame creatures, and walk as those that halt, which breeds an aukerness, unto any duty: but further, we are apt by reason thereof to turn out of the way (as there) if rugged: The members we should walk withal are feeble: our hands we should act with, are ⟨p. 34⟩hanging down: And so the performance hath a difficulty. To go up the hill of good duties (though private and personal) without weariness, to keep strait paths, not to pick and choose our way, and not to baulk the way, or work, which God finds us to do: especially not ³to faint, towards the end, when we come to the brow of the hill. These all have a wearisomeness in them. Now that which principally heartens and strengthens us to all this, is Patience, as in v. 1. he had prefaced, Let us run with Patience the Race that is set before us: we need Patience, for every step of it, in doing as well as in suffering; And in the verse immediately afore that exhortation now opened, ('tis verse 11.) the Apostle puts and devolves an even and quiet walking, upon Patience, obtained first by suffering, in these words. Now