lutions and penitential prayers, with returns to God and to fober counfels ?

And if this be true, that God fends forrow to cure fin, and affliction be the handmaid to grace; it is alfo certain, that every fad contingency in nature is doubly recompenfed with the advantages of religion, befides thofe intervening refreshments which cherish and fupport the fpirit. I fhall need to inftance but once more in this particular.

God hath fent no greater evil into the world, than that in the fweat of our brows we shall eat bread. But fee how God hath outdone his own anger, and defeated the purposes of his wrath, by the overflowings of his mercy; for this labour and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse, that without it our very bread would not be fo great a bleffing. It is labour that makes an humble fare to be relishing and pleafant. If it were not for labour, men could neither eat with fo good an appetite, nor fleep fo foundly, nor be fo healthful nor fo ufeful, fo ftrong nor fo patient, fo R 4 noble

noble nor fo untempted. And as God hath made us beholden to labour, for the purchase of many good things; fo the thing itself owes to labour many degrees of its worth and value. And therefore I need not reckon, that, befides these advantages, the mercies of God have found out proper and natural remedies for labour; nights to cure the sweat of the day, fleep to ease our watchfulness, reft to alleviate our burdens, and days of religion to procure our reft; and things are fo ordered, that labour is become a duty, and an act of many virtues, and is not fo apt to turn into fin as the contrary to it; and is therefore neceffary, not only because we need it for making provifion for our life, but even to ease (as it were) the labour of our reft; there being no greater tedioufnefs of fpirit in the world, than want of employment, and an unactive life and the lazy man is not only unprofitable, but also accurfed, and he groans under the load of his time; which yet paffes over the active man, light as a dream; whilst the unemployed is a disease, and like a long fleepless night unto himself,

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and a load unto his country. And therefore although in this particular, God hath been fo merciful in the infliction, that from the sharpness of the curfe a very great part of mankind are freed, and there are numbers of people, good and bad, who do not eat their bread in the sweat of their brows; yet this is but an over-running and an excefs of the divine mercy. God did more for us than we did absolutely need; for he hath fo difpofed of the circumstances of this curfe, that man's affections are fo reconciled to it that they defire it, and are delighted in it; and fo the anger of God is ended in loving-kindness, and the drop of water is loft in the full cup of the wine, and the curfe is gone out into a multiplied bleffing.

4thly, Another inftance of the divine mercy is, that not only in nature, but in contingency and emergent events of providence, God makes compensation to us for all the evils of chance and hoftilities of accident, and brings good out of evil; which is the triumph that mercy maketh oyer justice,

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God fuffered Joseph to be fold a bondflave into Egypt; but it was to procure a greater blefling to himself and his family. David would have been miferable, unless he had been afflicted: He understood it well, when he said, It is good for me that I have been afflicted..

They who love to recount the mercies of the Lord, cannot but have obferved, that he delights to be described by fuch expreffions, as relate to miferable and afficted perfons: He is the father of the fatherless, and an avenger of the widow's caufe; he ftandeth at the right hand of the poor, to fave his foul from unrighteous judges; and be is with us in tribulation. And upon this ground, let us account whether mercy be not the greater ingredient in that death and deprivation, when we lofe a parent, and get God to be our father and when our weak arm of flesh will not fupport us, God becomes our patron and guide, our advocate and defender. And if in our greatest misery, God's mercy is fo confpicuous; what can we fuppofe him to be in the endearment of his lovingkindness?

In fhort; God intends every accident fhould minifter to virtue, and every virtue is the parent and the nurfe of joy, and both of them the offspring of the divine goodness. And therefore if our forrows do not pass into comforts, it is befides. God's intention; it is because we will not comply with the act of that mercy which would fave us by all means and by all varieties, by health and by fickness, by the life and by the death of our dearest friends, by what we chufe and by what we fear; that as God's providence rules over all chances of things, and all defigns of men, fo his mercy may rule over all his providence.

5thly, God having by these means fecured us from the evils of nature and contingencies, and reprefented himself to be our father, which is the great endearment and expreffion of a natural, unalterable, and effential kindness; he next makes provifion for us to supply all thofe neceffities which himself bath made. Even to make thofe neceffities and defires was a great instance of mercy; for the relish is not in

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