Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity,…

For he feels his own tender compassions yearning over them; he foreseeth, and is no way willing to gratify the insulting pride of his and their Enemies, Deut. 32.26, 27. I said I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men, were it ⟨p. 7⟩not that I feared the wrath of the Enemy, lest their Adversaries should behave themselves strangely, &c.

For he feels his own tender compassions yerning over them; he foreseeth, and is no way willing to gratifie the insulting pride of his and their Enemies, Deut. 32.26, 27. I said I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men, were it ⟨p. 7⟩not that I feared the wrath of the Enemy, lest their Adversaries should behave themselves strangely, &c.

Yet all this notwithstanding, it often falls out by the provocations of his Sons and Daughters, that the Lord gives them up into the hands of their Enemies, for the correction of their evils, and the manifestation of his own glory. Seneca (though a Heathen) could say, that God loves his people with a Masculine love, not with a Womanish Indulgence and Tenderness: If need require, they shall be in heaviness through manifold temptations, 1 Pet. 1.6. He had rather their hearts should be heavy under adversity, than vain and careless under prosperity; the choicest Spirits have been exercised with the sharpest sufferings, and those that now shine as Stars in Heaven, have been trod under foot as Dung on the Earth, 1 Cor. 4.11. Unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked and buffeted, and have no certain dwelling places, and labour, working with our hands; being reviled we bless, being persecuted we suffer it, being defamed we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and the off-scouring of all things unto this day. The eleventh Chapter to the Hebrews is a Compendium of the various and grievous sufferings of the Primitive Saints: They were tortured, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the Sword, they wandered about in Sheepskins and Goat-skins, being afflicted, destitute, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy; they wandered in Deserts, and in Mountains, in Dens and Caves of the Earth. And since the Earth had dried up those Rivers of precious blood, whereof the Sacred Records make mention, what