A50157:78
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
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.
II Those things which you conclude to be against you, are the things by which the most High designs to promote your VIRTUE also.
II Those things which you conclude to be against you, are the things by which the most High designs to promote your VERTUE also.
The interest of Holiness will be marvellously befriended in your Souls and Lives, by the influence of Affliction; we are told in Heb. 12. 10. That God chastens us, to make us partakers of his Holiness; that Holiness which he does like, and which is like to himself: These Three will the Holy Effects of your Affliction be.
§. Your Afflictions will, First, Help your Disorders. Your Souls are depraved with, or exposed to dangerous deadly Disorders and Distempers: By Afflictions your Heavenly Father will Prevent them; by Afflictions he will Redress them. What are you Afflicted for? See a short and a sweet account given of this Physic, in Isa. 27. 9. By this the iniquity of Jacob shall be purged, and all the Fruit shall be to take away his Sin. The first ways of David were his best ways. Why so? Truly, it was because the first days of David were his worst days: He doth himself assign this reason of it, Psal. 119. 67. Before I was Afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept thy word. Usually men Sin least when they Suffer most. God will have thy ways too to be good ways; they shall therefore be ways Hedged with Thorns, that thy Soul may not step awry: Thy way must be incommoded by Thorns, that it may not be over-run with Weeds. There are great Sins which thy wild Lusts would hurry thee on unto; there is a Madness in thy Heart that would produce all manner of Mischief in thy Life, if restraint be not laid upon it; now the Iron Chains of Affliction are clapped upon thee to keep thee from thy Exorbitancies. What is said concerning the good Subjects of the Ancient