The works of George Swinnock, M.A

There is a threefold burden that Christians must bear for each other.

I. The civil burdens of their miseries and sufferings; Have a fellow-feeling with them in their afflictions; Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is afflicted, and I burn not? ¹saith holy Paul. Herod and his men of War, will set a persecuted Christ at naught; The Chief Priests and Elders will mock him when he hangs upon the Cross, Luk. 23. 11. Mat. 27. 4. Edom rejoiced in the day of Jerusalem's trouble, they cried Aha, so would we have it; But the true seed of Jacob, sigh for others sorrows, they weep with them that weep;² Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them, and them that suffer adversity; If one part of the natural body be in pain, the other parts are sensible of it; When one branch of a Tree is torn and mangled in Summer, the other branches are affected with it, and out of Sympathy (as it were) will not thrive so well as formerly. If one person of a family be sick, how much do his relations from a principle of nature, lay to heart his pain and illness! Christians are all members of the same body, branches of the same vine, children of the same family, and it would be monstrous and unnatural for them, not to feel each others miseries, and suffer in each others sufferings.

I. The civil burthens of their miseries and sufferings; Have a fellow-feeling with them in their afflictions; Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is afflicted, and I burn not? ¹saith holy Paul. Herod and his men of War, will set a persecuted Christ at naught; The Chief Priests and Elders will mock him when he hangs upon the Cross,