A50157:35
Right thoughts in sad hours representing the comforts and the duties of good men…
Right thoughts in sad hours representing the comforts and the duties of good men under all their afflictions; and particularly, that one, the untimely death of children: in a sermon delivered at Charles-town, New England; under a fresh experience of that calamity.Right thoughts in sad hours representing the comforts and the duties of good men under all their afflictions; and particularly, that one, the untimely death of children: in a sermon delivered at Charls-town, New England; under a fresh experience of that calamity.
London: printed by James Astwood, 1689
Right THOUGHTS IN Sad Hours, › Doctrine. › Proposition II. › Question.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Question.
Whence do's this come to pass?
One reason of this Misprision is; The best people of God are not without bad remainders of Flesh: Now every Affliction will grate hard upon That; the galled Flesh of Afflicted Men, cannot forbear that shriek, I am hurt. This Flesh of ours will cloud our understandings, and beget in us very false Conceptions of our sharp Afflictions. The methods wherein the great God pursues our good, are very Certain, and very Glorious; but they are also very Obscure. Silly shallow Creatures, who dwell in Houses of Clay, cannot fathom the Mysterious proceedings of the God whose Way is in the Deep, and whose Judgments are a great Deep; and when we go to Contemplate these deep things, then our Flesh offers unto us very injurious Glasses to view them in; ⟨p. 12⟩listen to this misjudging Flesh, and it will tell us, If thou dost not live surrounded with the Pleasures, and Riches, and Honours of this World, and leave a good Portion of them unto Children of thy own; when thy time shall come to Dye, thou art a Miserable Man. The moan of Jacob in our Text is by some Englished so, All these things are Above me: Truly, 'tis above the Reach, above the ken of our Flesh to imagine, That what impairs our Worldly greatness and glory, is no real Detriment unto us; our Sense, our carnal perverse dim-sighted Sense, will not easily make sense of that Riddle, in Judg. 14. 14. Out of the Eater came forth Meat.