Correction, instruction or, a treatise of afflictions

A seventeenth Lesson which God teacheth by his chastisements, ¹is that which Christ taught Martha: sc. what is the one thing necessary; affliction discovereth how much we are mistaken about our must bee's, our necessaries. In our health ⟨p. 100⟩and strength and liberty; we think this thing must be done, & that thing must be done: we think Riches necessary, Honours necessary, and a Name in the World necessary; we must get Estates, ²and we must lay up large portions for our Children, and we must raise our Families, and call our Lands after our own names, and the like; But in the day of adversity, when death looks us in the face, when God causeth the horror of the Grave, the dread of the last judgment, and the terrors of eternity to pass before us, then we can put our mouths in the dust, smite upon our thigh, and sigh with the breaking of our loins, oh how have I been mistaken? how have I fed upon ashes, and a deceived heart turned me aside, ³so that I could not deliver my soul, nor say is there not a lie in my right hand? Fool, how have I been deceived, and made the By the main, and the main the By. Then we can see that pardon of sin, interest in Christ: evidence of that interest, sense of Gods love, a life of Grace, ⟨p. 101⟩and assurance of glory, &c. are the only indispensables. In a word, that Christ alone, is the Unum necessarium the one thing necessary, and that all other things, at the best, are but may-bees: yea, but loss and dung in comparison of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, ⁴and of interest in him, and in his righteousness: without which the soul is undone to all eternity. And therefore oh that Christians would be wise, that they would not spend their money for that which is not bread, ⁵nor their labour for that which satisfieth not; ⁶