Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's Letters

if your sense & apprehension be made judge of his love, there is a graven image made presently, even a changed God & a foe-God, who was once [when ye washed your steps with butter, & the rock poured you out rivers of oil, Job. 29. 6.] a friend-God: either now or never let God work; ye had never since ye was a man, such a fair field for faith: for a painted hell & an apprehension of wrath in your father, is faith's opportunity to try what strength is in it: now give God as large a measure of charity as ye have of sorrow; now see faith to be faith indeed, if ye can make your grave betwixt Christ's feet, & say, Though he should flay me, I will trust in him; his believed love shall be my winding-sheet, & all my grave-clothes; I shall roll & sow in my soul, my slain soul, in that web, his sweet & free love: & let him write upon my grave Here lieth a believing dead man, breathing out and making an hole in death's broad side, & the breath of faith cometh forth through the hole. See now if ye can overcome & prevail with God, & wrestle God's tempting to death & quit out of breath, as that renowned wrestler did, Hos 12. 3. And by his strength he had power with God. v. 4. Yea ⟨p. 506⟩he had power over the Angel & prevailed. He is a strong man indeed who overmatcheth heaven's strength and the holy One of Israel, the strong Lord: which is done by a secret supply of divine strength within, wherewith the weakest being strengthened, overcome and conquer. It shall be great victory to blow out the flame of that furnace year now in, with the breath of faith: & when hell, men, malice, cruelty, falsehood, Devils, the seeming glooms of a sweet Lord, meet you in the teeth, if ye then as a captive of Hope, as one fettered in Hope's prison, run to your strong hold, even from God glooming to God glooming, & believe the salvation of the Lord in the dark, which is your only victory: your enemies are but pieces of malicious clay, they shall die as men & be confounded. But that your troubles are many at once, & arrows come in from all airts, from country, friends, wife, children, foes, estate, & right down from God who is the hope & stay of your soul, I confess is more & very heavy to be born; yet all these are not more then Grace, all these bits of coals cast in your sea of mercy cannot dry it up:

if your sense & apprehension be made judge of his love, there is a graven image made presently, even a changed God & a foe-God, who was once [when ye washed your steps with butter, & the rock poured you out rivers of oyl,