PREFACE.

I HERE offer to others the same which I have prepared for myself, and find necessary for my daily use. All men most savour that which they find most suitable to them. When I was young and lay under the sad suspicions of my own heart, and the doubts of my sound conversion and justification, I was far more pleased with a sermon that opened the nature of saving grace, and helped me against such doubts, than with a sermon of affliction, and its use; yea, though I began to be afflicted. But now this is the subject of my daily necessary thoughts: man's implacable enmity maketh them somewhat necessary; but God's more immediate corrections on my body, incomparably more. And while every day almost fills my ears with the sad complaints of weak, melancholy, afflicted, impoverished, sick, pained or otherwise distressed persons, and the weekly newsbooks tell us of foreign wars, persecutions, ruins, implacable contentions, malignant combinations against the church, pursuing conscience and obedience to God with diabolical rage, to drive it out of the world, and of the successes of blood-thirsty men, and deluge of atheism, idolatry, Sadduceeism, infidelity, Mahometanism, hypocrisy, sensuality, ambition, worldliness, lying, perjury, malignity and gross ignorance which hath even drowned the earth, while there is little but doleful tidings, complaints and fears from kingdoms, churches, cities, families, and God in judgment permitteth mankind to be worse than serpents, toads or wolves, if not than devils, to one another; and while wit and learning, reverend error and hypocrisy, are every day as hotly at work, as any smith in his flaming forge, to blow the coals of bloody malice; and hating and destroying others, even those whom they pretend to love as themselves, seemeth to multitudes the most honourable and necessary work, and the killing of love, and of souls and bodies, is

taken for meritorious of everlasting happiness: I say, while all this is so in the world, and while all flesh must look for pain, sickness and death, and all men are yet worse to themselves, and greater burdens than all their enemies are, I cannot think a Treatise of Patience needless or unseasonable.

OBEDIENT PATIENCE.

CHAPTER I.

What true Patience is, and is not, towards God and man. How we possess our Souls in Patience. What Impatience is worst? Wherein lieth the Sinfulness of Impatience towards God. Sect. 1. To what I have said for Patience from the sufferings of Christ, in another book for my own use, my condition calleth me to add some more, especially on the consideration of these texts of Scripture: "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;" Heb. v. 8, 9. "In your patience possess ye your souls;" Luke xxi. 19. Heb. xii. 1-14. Rom. v. 3, 4. xv. 4, 5. "Ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye may inherit the promise;" Heb. x. 36. “Let patience have her perfect work;" James i. 3, 4. v.7—12. 1 Pet.ii. 19-25. iii.9. Matt. v. 10-12. 1Pet.iv.12-19. "Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well-doing, as to a faithful Creator;" Heb. vi. 15.

Sect. 2. What is Patience, 1. Towards God. 2. Towards man.

physically, as mere sufferDevils, and malefactors,

1. Patience considered only ing, is no virtue or moral good. and all men must suffer whether they will or not. 2. Stupidity, or natural dulness is not patience. 3. Nor to bear the loss of any mercy because we undervalue it, as bad men can easily bear the loss of God's grace, and all the means thereto. 4. Nor is it patience, but selfishness, and want of love, in those that easily bear the loss or sufferings of friends, (yea, and of the church or commonwealth) so they be but well themselves, because they care not much for any but themselves. 5. Much less is it patience, desperately to despise and dare God's judgments, like men that are mad or drunk, and take it to be valour to defy the gallows. 6. And

it is not holy patience when men restrain their passions, only lest they thereby afflict themselves, and not in obedience to God. 7. Nor when it is but the sufficiency of the worldly prosperity which yet is left, which maketh them bear some diminution. He that hath still enough to gratify his flesh, may bear the loss of that which it can spare, yea, though it a little pinch him. 8. Yea, if a man be in greatest want, or pain and misery, and bear it quietly only because he hopeth for deliverance in this world, it is but prudent forbearance of self-afflicting, and not the obedient patience of faith. 9. Yea, a presumptuous, false hope of heaven itself, and of God's approbation of some bad cause for which men suffer, may somewhat alleviate the sufferings of ungodly men. Some poor men, and sick men think that they shall be saved from sufferings hereafter, merely because they have their sufferings in this life; as if affliction without hath holiness would serve. And many an erroneous person suffered the more easily for ill-doing, by thinking that it was martyrdom for the cause of God. Clement, Ravilliac, Guy Faux, Garnet, and many such murderers, Knipperdolling, and others at Munster, endured much by such presumption.

Sect. 3. But true patience is, when both body and mind, having a natural and due sense of the suffering, we yet res train inordinate passion, (grief, fear and anger,) and their ill effects, especially repining thoughts or words of God, and use no sinful means for our deliverance; but still acknowledge the sovereignty, justice, wisdom and love of God, and obediently do submit our wills to God's, and love his holiness and justice, though we love not suffering itself, and comfortably hope for a happy issue, even amend, ment and increase of holiness here, and heaven hereafter, where all our sufferings will end in everlasting joy. This is patience.

approve

and

Sect. 4. Patience towards men, is not, 1. To take hurt or wrong for none.

2. Nor to be indifferent towards men's sins, as if they were a small and tolerable evil: nor to let them alone in the way to hell, and make our pretence of patience and quietness, an excuse for unbelief, and unmercifulness to souls; especially when they are public or common sins, which are defended as well as committed by men pretending to learning and piety, endangering the church or land, either by their in