Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

2dly, Christ supports his people under a weight of inward troubles and discouragements. Many times "heart and flesh fail them," but then, "God is the strength of their heart," Psal. lxxiii. 26. They may have a weight of guilt pressing them. This is a load that will make their back to stoop, and the spirits to sink: but he takes it off, and puts a pardon in their hand, while they cast their burden over upon him. Christ takes the soul, as one marries a widow, under a burden of debt: and so when the creditors come to Christ's spouse, she carries them to her husband, confesseth the debt, declares she is not able to pay, and lays all over upon him. The Christian sometimes, through carelessness, loseth his discharge; he cannot find it, ⟨p. 207⟩however he search for it. The law takes that opportunity; and bends up a process against him for a debt paid already. God hides his face, and the soul is distressed. Many arrows go through the heart now; many long accounts are laid before the man, which he reads and acknowledges. Often does he see the officers coming to apprehend him, and the prison door open to receive him. What else keeps him from sinking utterly under discouragements in this case, but that the everlasting arms of a Mediator are underneath him, and that he relies upon the great Cautioner? Further, they may have a weight of strong lusts pressing them. They have a body of death upon them. Death is a weight that presseth the soul out of the body. A leg or an arm of death (if I may so speak) would be a terrible load. (One lively lust will sometimes lie so heavy on a child of God, that he can no more remove it, than a child could throw a giant from off him.) How then are they supported under a whole body of death? Why, their support is from the root that bears them, from the everlasting arm that is underneath them. His grace is sufficient for them, 2 Cor. xiii. 9. The great stay of the believer is not the grace of God within him, that is a well, whose streams sometimes run dry: but it is the grace of God without him, the grace that is in Jesus Christ; which is an ever-flowing fountain, to which the believer can never come amiss. For the Apostle tells us in the same verse, it is the power of Christ.

2dly, Christ supports his people under a weight of inward troubles and discouragements. Many times "heart and flesh fail them," but then, "God is the strength of their heart,"