home, could despise the rich and well furnished table of his father; when God sent him to school to the swine-trough, could value the bread that the hinds did

cat.

How many of my fathers hired servants have BREAD enough, and to spare! He would have been glad of the reversion of broken meat that was cast into the common basket.

I do not believe David ever slighted the ordinances, yet certainly he never knew so well how to estimate them, as when he was banished from them; then the remembrance of the company of saints, the beauty of the ordinances, and the presence of God, fetched tears from his eyes, and groans from his heart, in his sorrowful exile. Oh how amiable are the assemblies of the saints, and the ordinances of the sabbath, when we are deprived of them! In those days the word of the Lord was precious. When was it not precious? It was always precious in the worth of it; but now it was precious for the want of it: prophets and prophecies were precious, because rare; so it followeth, there was no open vifion. Want will teach us the worth of mercies. Our liberties and dearest relations, how cheap and common things are they while we possess them without any check or restraint? While we have the keeping of our mercies in our own hands, we make but small reckoning of them. Oh, but let God threaten a divorce by death or banishment; let taskmasters be set over us and our comforts, who fhall measure out unto us at their own pleasure; let us be

locked up a while under close imprisonment, and there be kept fasting from our dearest 'enjoyments; then the fight of a friend, (though but through an iron grate) the exchange of a few common civilities with a yoke-fellow under the correction and controul of a keeper, how sweet and precious! When months and years of free enjoyments are past through, and we scarcely sit down to take one serious view of our mercies, seldom spread them before the Lord in prayer, or send up one thankful ejaculation to God by night upon your beds; but pass by mercies as common things, scarce worth the owning; whereas in the house of bondage, in a land of captivity, the lees and dregs of those mercies will be precious, which while the vessel ran full and fresh we could hardly relish ; in famine the very gleanings of our comforts are better than the whole vintage in the years of plenty.

And as God teacheth us to prize our mercies, so he doth teach us moderation in the use of them, while we value not to surfeit And indeed it is the inordinate use of outward comforts which renders us unfit to prize them; we lose our esteem of mercies in excess; surfeits do usually render those things nauseous, which formerly have been our delicacies: by our excesses in creature enjoyments, reason is drowned in sense, judgment extinguished in appetite, and the affections being blunted by common exercise, even pleasures themselves become a burden.

Now this distemper God doth many times cure by

the sharp corrosive of affliction; and by hardship teacheth us moderation. Partly by inuring us to abatements and wants, whereby that which at first was necessity, afterwards grows to be our choice; hence saith the apostle, I have learned to want; how? why God hath taught him to live of a little: by feeding us sparingly, God abates and slackens the inordinacy of the appetite. But especially, God takes off our hearts from inordinate indulgencies in a suffering condition, by discovering richer and purer satisfactions in Jesus Christ. It is God's design by withdrawing the creature, to fix the soul upon himself; the voice of the rod is, O taste and see how good the Lord is; which when the soul hath once perceived, thrusting the creature away with contempt and indignation, it opens itself to God, saying Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of thee. Surely it was in the school of affliction that David learned that lesson, even when the wicked prospered, and himself, with the rest of the godly, were plagued all the day long, and chastened every morning.

3. God teacheth by his chastisements, SELF-DE NIAL and obediential SUBMISSION to the will of God.

In our prosperity we are full of our own wills, and usually we give God counsel when he looks for obedience; and so we dispute our cross when we should take it up; but now by bearing a little we learn to bear more; the trial of our faith worketh patience: the more

we suffer, the more God fits us for suffering; partly by working us off from our own wills: folly is bound up in the heart of God's children; but the rod of correction driveth it from them.-Partly by inuring us to the cross. The bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, is very impatient under the hand of the husbandman; but after it is inured to labour, it willingly puts its neck under the yoke; and so it is with Christians; after a while the yoke of affliction begins to be well settled; and by much bearing we learn to bear with quietness: a new cart maketh a great noise and squeaking; but when once used, it goeth silently under the greatest load. None, murmur so much at sufferings as they who have suffered least: whereas on the contrary, we see many times that they are most patient who have the heaviest burden upon their backs. He sitteth alone, and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him; i. e. he is patient because he is acquainted with sorrows. When people cry out, Oh, never such sufferings as mine!" it is an argument they are strangers to afflictions.Partly also because by chastisements God works out, by degrees, the delicacy of spirit which we contract in our prosperity Prosperity makes us tender: they who are always kept in the warm house, dare not put their head out of doors in a storm: none so unfit for sufferings as they that have been always dandled upon the knee of providence; the most delicate constitutions. are most unfit for hardship.—But lastly and chiefly, this comes to pass, because by sufferings we come to

taste the fruit of sufferings. No chastening for the present seems joyous, but grievous: but afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

Thus, one way or other, God works his children into a sweet obediential frame by their sufferings. Even of Christ himself, it is said, He learned obedience by the things which he suffered. He experimentally came to know what it was to be subject to the will of his Father. It is equally true of the adopted chil dren, they learn obedience by the things which they suffer; and that not only in a passive, but in an active sense. By suffering God's will we learn to do God's will: God hath no such obedient children as those whom he nurtures in the school of affliction. At length God brings all his scholars to subscribe, what God will, when God will, how God will: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. A blessed lesson.

4. God teaches HUMILITY and MEEKNESS OF SPIRIT by affliction.

It is one of God's designs in affliction, to hide pride from man: to spread sackcloth upon all his glory; that so man may see no excellency in all the creature wherein to pride himself. God led Israel forty years in the wilderness to humble them. By the thorns of the wilderness God pricked the bladder of pride, and let out the windiness of self-opinion which was in their hearts. Prosperity usually makes men surly and supercilious towards their poor brethren; The rich answers C