Sermons upon the Book of Job

Job complaineth here, as though God did men wrong too put them into the world, and to exercise them with store of miseries. And so he maketh his reckoning, that if God will have us to live, he should maintain us at our own ease, & §50not encumber us with many troubles. Thus we see briefly what is contained here. Verily Jobs intent was not too plead against God, as if he would go to law with him: but yet in the mean while, the grief that he sustained carried him so far forth, that these complaints passed out of his mouth. How now? Wherefore hath God set us in this world? Is it not to the end that we should know him to be our father, and that we should bliss him, because we be sure that he hath a care of us? But contrariwise §60it is to be seen, that many men are afflicted and tormented with many miseries. To what purpose doth God hold them at that point? It seemeth that he would have his name to be blasphemed. What can they do whom he handleth so rigorously? when they see death before their eyes, or rather have it between their teeth, they can not but fret and chafe at it. Thus we see an occasion of murmuring against God, and it seemeth that he himself is the cause of it. Here we have a very good and profitable lesson: which is that we should assure our selves, that when God scourgeth us, yet he ceaseth not to give us some taste of his goodness, in such wise as even in the middest of our afflictions we may still praise him, and rejoice in him. Yet notwithstanding it is true that he restraineth our joys, & turneth them into bitterness. But there is a mean betwixt blessing of Gods name, and blaspheming of it: which mean is to call upon him when we be oppressed ⟨p. 63⟩with adversity, and to resort unto him, desiring him to receive us unto mercy. But men can never keep this mean, except God have an eye to it of himself when he scourgeth us. Therefore let us mark first, that whensoever God sendeth us any troubles and sorrows, he ceaseth not to make us taste of his goodness therewithal, to assuage the anguish that might hold our hearts in distress. How is that? We have showed heretofore, that if men had an eye to Gods former benefits towards them (yea though it were but in that he hath sustained them §10from their childhood, after he had brought them out of their mothers womb, and given them life:)