A fourth volume containing one hundred and fifty sermons on several texts of Scripture…

3. Then there is Joy, or an high and sensible Comfort: Rom. 15.13. Now the God of Hope fill you with all Joy and Peace in believing, that ye may abound in Hope through the Power of the Holy Ghost. This abides not always, it is a Festival Dispensation, wherewith God entertains the Soul in the Day of his Royalty and Magnificence, he useth it but now and then. We have this high Joy, either after the Pangs of the new Birth, when deep Sorrows were occasioned by the Spirit of Bondage. When David's Bones were broken, then make me to hear Joy and Gladness, Psal. 51.8. Then we have the highest Comfort. John 16.21. A Woman, when she is in Travel, hath Sorrow, because her Hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of a Child, she remembereth no more the Anguish, for joy that a Man is born into the World. Then our Apprehensions of Christ are most fresh; Comfort, being a strange thing, is most welcome. Trouble makes way for more Comfort; for as our Trouble is most vehement, so is our Comfort enlarged. Or upon the solemn Exercise of Grace, when we are carried on in high Assistance, in Meditation, Prayer, receiving the Supper, and the Word is revived upon the Conscience: Or else in times of Suffering and Self-denial, for God will always be even with a Believer; 2 Cor. 1.5. For as the Sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our Consolation also aboundeth by Christ. A Man is no loser by Christ; but according to the Ebb of outward Comforts, so is the Tide and Overflow of inward Comforts: And when we have Experience of Christ's Sufferings, we also have Experience of Christ's Comforts, that at the same time God may have an Experience of our Faithfulness, and we of his. So that Comfort is a middle degree of Assurance between Peace and Joy; a temperate Confidence and Support, though we do not feel Ravishment and actual Sweetness; as a Child doubteth not of his Father's Affection, tho he doth not actually smile upon him.

3. Then there is Joy, or an high and sensible Comfort: Rom. 15.13. Now the God of Hope fill you with all Ioy and Peace in believing, that ye may abound in Hope through the Power of the Holy Ghost. This abides not always, it is a Festival Dispensation, wherewith God entertains the Soul in the Day of his Royalty and Magnificence, he useth it but now and then. We have this high Joy, either after the Pangs of the new Birth, when deep Sorrows were occasioned by the Spirit of Bondage. When David's Bones were broken, then make me to hear Ioy and Gladness,