Sermons upon the Book of Job

And yet if he be fornummed with cold, the same passion also will be grievous too him to bear, and as bitter as the heat that he shall have endured afore. Yea verily. If a man have either heat or cold, or any other thing that troubleth him in his body: ye shall see him so overtaken, as he shall think that all the contrary miseries would be an ease unto him: and that is because our passions carry us away. Lo how Job hath spoken. Let us mark then, that when we fancy reliefs and easements, it is not that they would be so, though God should send us all our desires: we should find that we did ⟨p. 121⟩but fall out of one misery into another, and that there is none other ease, but to have god favourable unto us. And for proof hereof, if it please him to give us patience when we lose but a finger: he can also well give it us when we lose the whole hand, yea and even when we shall be fain to lose the whole body. Then must we not think that the misery is in the thing it self: but rather in our own frailty. For if we be weak & left up to our selves: no doubt but we shall be utterly confounded. But if God have strengthened us with his grace: although we have §10a huge mountain to bear: yet shall we well bear it out. And why? For Gods power shall be enough in that behalf. There needeth but one foot of water to drown a man, & one other will draw him out of the sea. Therefore if God reach us his hand, although we were plunged over head and ears: ere might we scape. But if it please not him to deliver us: we shall not fail to come to utter ruin. Sith the case standeth so: let us not think too have case when God shall have changed the kind of misery: but let us assure our selves that we cannot be eased,§20 except God be merciful & favourable to us, and except he have pity upon us, & show us that he hath forgiven our sins. See here the true rest. Otherwise we must be fain to live in continual unquietness, like as when a sick man turneth and tumbleth hither and thither, he thinketh he hath some relief, or if he be suffered to shift from one bed to another, behold too his own seeming he is half whole. But when he hath tossed and turmoiled himself throughly, he seeth that his malady is fiercer upon him: so little or nothing at all is he mended §30by it. Even so is it with all of us.