Sermons upon the Book of Job

If it be summer, and that we be overhot (for we must take their familiar examples) it seemeth one of the painfullest troubles that a man can endure: specially if ⟨p. 59⟩a man be so overladen that he faint, and be not able to hold out any further, he would have a frost that should cleave the stones, and he thinks he should be well refreshed, and that he should be the more at his ease. And if it be winter, we will think that no heat can be to great for us. Lo how the present passions carry us away, and this befalleth too all men: Yet notwithstanding some are much more tender and nice to suffer adversity, than other some be. Therefore according as each mans nature and complexion is, thereafter §10doth he torment himself with the adversity that he endureth, and thereafter doth he martyr himself to the uttermost. Forasmuch as we see such experiences, we know that men are carried away by their affections, in such wise as they think upon nothing but the thing that grieveth and tormenteth them. And the same thing is to be seen here in Job. For he is so overpressed with his misery: that he lo••eth most unto that which should befall him after his death, and thinketh nothing at all of the second life. I say he §20thought nothing at all of it when he spake after that sort at adventure. True it is that he had the knowledge and belief of it printed in his heart: but it lay as a covered fire, which is as it were choked with ashes. And let us not think it strange, that our evil, and sinful affections, should cause us so to forget the things that we knew and were sure of afore. For we see how good zeal hath had the same property both in Moses and in saint Paul. When Moses desired God too be stricken out of the book of life, to the end that the people might §30be saved: we see there a good and holy mind, even such a one as God allowed of: and yet was there somewhat too be gainsaid in it. Doth Moses think that God can root out his own chosen? Is God changeable in his purpose? Moses knew well that God had chosen him and accepted him too be one of his children. Howe doth he then desire to be wiped out of the book of life? It was as much to say, as if he had never been reckoned in the number of them that must obtain everlasting life. Doth he demand it of God §40