Christ crucified, or, The marrow of the gospel, evidently holden forth in LXXII sermons,…

Ninthly, If it be considered, that often when in any more than ordinary spiritual and lively frame of Soul, ye have in Prayer desired the Lord that he would take any way, and make use of any means he pleased (wherein your sin might not be) to make you more serious in the exercise of Godliness, more effectually to mortify your Corruptions, and to further your conformity to his Image in Holiness; And ye should through his Grace be content, putting, as it were, a blank in his hand, to be filled up as himself in his own infinite wisdom should think fit, declaring that ye were satisfied on the terms proposed by Jesus Christ, to be his Disciples, and to take up not only a Cross, or the Cross in general, but your Cross in particular,¹ the Cross that should be shaped out for you however circumstantiated: And when under some very sad affliction he on the matter bespeaks you thus, I am now about to grant you your own desire, though it may be in such a way, and by such a mean, as either would have been none of your own choosing, had it been left to your choice, or possibly such as ye did not think of; Will ye be displeased with me, or mistake my hearing of your Prayers, fulfilling your Petitions, and granting you according to your own hearts desire, because I do it in mine own way, and by means of my own choosing, wherein also ye left and allowed to me a latitude, and not in your way and by your means, which ye then renounced as not thinking your ⟨image 9⟩selves competent Judges thereof? Alas! here we are often sound at best to border upon a practical rewing, retracting, and lifting up again of the Blank-Submission which we professed to lay down before him; and to say by our fretting, repining, dissatisfaction, immoderate heaviness, and despondency of Spirit, that we were somewhat rash, and not so well advised when we Subscribed and gave in such a Submission and Surrender of our selves to him; That we did not think he would have taken such advantage of us, or would have put us thus sore to it, and, that if we had thought he would have done so, we would have been better advised before we had thus submitted to him, and with our own consent put our selves in his reverence; and that if it had been any thing but this we could have born it (whereas he saith nothing but this;)

Ninthly, If it be considered, that often when in any more than ordinary spiritual and lively frame of Soul, ye have in Prayer desired the Lord that he would take any way, and make use of any means he pleased (wherein your sin might not be) to make you more serious in the exercise of Godliness, more effectually to mortifie your Corruptions, and to further your conformity to his Image in Holiness; And ye should through his Grace be content, putting, as it were, a blank in his hand, to be filled up as himself in his own infinite wisdome should think fit, declaring that ye were satisfied on the tearms proposed by Jesus Christ, to be his Disciples, and to take up not only a Cross, or the Cross in general, but your Cross in particular,