Gods husbandry

and there is scarce any one of all the Saints of God, but may from his own experience affirm, that it hath been a great part of his happiness, to take and drink these potions from ⟨p. 114⟩the hand of his wise and loving Father: for they have purged out of his soul those noisome, and evil humours, which would otherwise have made him little less then deadly and desperately sick.

and there is scarce any one of all the Saints of God, but may from his owne experience affirme, that it hath been a great part of his happinesse, to take and drinke these potions from ⟨p. 114⟩the hand of his wise and louing Father: for they haue purged out of his soule those noysome, and euill humours, which would otherwise haue made him little lesse then deadly and desperately sicke.

But moreover,¹ the Lord doth make the devil himself an unwilling instrument of pruning his servants, by means of those fierce tentations wherewith he doth mightily assault them. Even Satan's violent buffetings are, by Gods goodness, turned into most excellent purgations. When the devil is let loose upon a Christian man, (as the shepherds dog upon the sheep) and with fury and craft strives to bring him to utter despair, making him believe, that the very pit of hell it self stands gaping before him, ready to swallow him up; or when he doth work mightily upon his sinful affections, with a kind of excessive violence, haling him to the practice of those detestable sins which his soul hateth, and making none end to lye at him with unceasing and vehement solicitations to commit such and such foul deeds: Oh this cuts, this woundeth, this vexeth and tormenteth; this sets them on praying, on weeping, on crying, on bleeding; this doth so shame him and disgrace him to himself; this makes him so far out of love and conceit with himself, and so extremely vile and odious in his own eyes, that he thinks no name nor usage bad enough for himself; this also maketh him, with a blushing and confounded face, and with a most dejected and a broken spirit, to