Seven sermons on several select subjects preached

Secondly, That a morning light ariseth to them in the midst of all their darkness.

First, The upright they have their night; it may be a very dark season. Godliness doth not exempt them from suffering; they may have a night of affliction; a cloud may set upon their Names and Estates. God may lay an Embargo upon all their outward comforts, Ruth 1.20.

First, The upright they have their night; it may be a very dark season. Godliness doth not exempt them from suffering; they may have a night of affliction; a cloud may set upon their Names and Estates. God may lay an Imbargo upon all their outward comforts, Ruth 1.20.

Secondly, The people of God, they may have a night of desertion: God may withdraw the smiling beams of his favour, and then it is night with them indeed, Job 6.4. The Arrows of the Almighty are within me: the poison thereof drinks up my spirits. It alludes, saith Grotius, to the Persians, who in their War, do dip their Arrows in poison, to make their wounds more deadly. Thus God sometimes shoots the poisonous Arrows of desertion at the godly, then they are in the dark; ⟨p. 132⟩they are benighted: tho' God hath the heart of a Father, yet sometimes he hath the look of an Enemy: he may cause darkness in the Soul, and shut up the beams of spiritual comfort.

Secondly, The people of God, they may have a night of desertion: God may withdraw the smiling beams of his favour, and then it is night with them indeed,