sover your afflictions are, yet still, in the very nature of them, you may find ground enough for patience: if they be light and ordinary, it is but effeminacy and a weakness of spirit, to complain of what you may well support: if they be grievous and intolerable, a little time will serve to deliver you from the sense of them : and, as Antoninus said well *, Αφόρητον εξάγει, χρονίζον PориTо"That, which is intolerable, is not durable: that, which is lingering, is not intolerable:" thou mayest easily bear the one; and the other will soon wear out thee. And, what! cannot thy patience stand out one hard brunt; and endure a short shock, though it be fierce and violent? It is but a storm, that will quickly blow over: and thou mayest live to see serene and bright days again; if not in this world, yet then, when thou shalt be got above these clouds and this region of tempests, into that mansion of bliss and joy, where never sorrows nor sufferings durst appear. Indeed, impatience is a great prolonger of torment: it is not our pain, but our impatience, that makes the time seem long and tedious to us: both sense and reason tell us, that the sun riseth over a sick man's bed as over the healthy and vigorous, and that the hours roll away as fast over the miserable as the prosperous; yet, how swift are our days spent in ease and pleasure! the hours seem to overtake, and to crowd one into another. And yet, certainly, thy sad and thy cheerful days have both one and the same measure: the shadow creeps as fast about the dial of a miserable man, as of the happy. The odds lies only within thyself. Impatience, fretfulness, repining, a raw and eager spirit, fond hopes and impotent desires, make short afflictions seem long, and long ones endless. But, were these cured, thou wouldst find it altogether unreasonable to complain of the length of thy afflictions; when yet they are whirled away and pass with the same fleetness, which makes others complain that their pleasures and their lives are too short. However, here consider,

(1) Let thy afflictions be as grievous as thy passion can describe them, yet doth God afford thee no lucid intervals? Hast thou no intermission from thy sorrows? no breathing-space afforded thee?

This is mercy: and this time of thy ease and refreshment ought not to be reckoned into the suffering; as, commonly, it is. Indeed, men have got an art of making their sorrows longer

* Antonin. de Seipso. 1. vii. §. 23.

than they are: ask one, who labours under a chronical distem→ per, how long he hath been troubled with it: straight he will tell you, for so many months, or for so many years when yet, perhaps, the greater part of that time he enjoyed ease and freedom, between the returning periods of his disease. Certainly, the affliction can be no longer than it lies upon thee; and that, usually, is but a very inconsiderable time, compared to that, wherein God relieves and comforts thee. Job complains, that God brought his sorrows so thick and fast upon him, that he would not suffer him to take his breath: Job ix. 18: he was like a man shipwrecked in a tempest, where the surges and billows broke so fast upon him, that he had not time so much as to lift his head above water to take breath. But hath God dealt so with thee? hast thou not had a morning, as well as an evening, to make up thy day? Though the clouds return again after the rain, and the same pain or disease, or whatsoever affliction it be, recurs; yet, it is mercy, that God hath interrupted the course of it; that he hath given thee an interstitium of ease: and, then, thou canst no more, with truth, say, that thou hast so long had thy disease, than that thou hast had thy health. And,

(2) If thou hast been long under afflictions, yet, perhaps, they have been varied.

Even this is mercy, that he will not strike long upon one place, nor scourge thee where thou art sore already. But,

suppose,

(3) The affliction, that God brings upon thee, were to continue as long as thy life itself continues, without either change or intermission; yet consider, that it is most unreasonable to complain of thy sorrows, as long, when thou art still complaining of thy life, as short.

If thou art not relieved sooner, yet it cannot be long ere death will put an end to thy temporal miseries; and the last sigh and groan thou shalt give, will be that, which shall discharge thy soul from thy body, and thee from all thy present sorrows and sufferings. And, therefore, though the days of thy pilgrimage be evil, yet, since they are but few, this may recompense for the other, and persuade thee to bear patiently, what thou art not to bear long. Think with thyself, "It is but a

few days or a few years more, that I shall be in a suffering, in an afflicted condition. I am travelling through a vale of miseries, but my grave is within view: there I shall throw down all

this load of care and trouble; and sweetly take a profound rest, where none of the vexations of this life shall ever disturb me: There the weary be at rest: and, what! shall I faint under my burdens, when I am to bear them but so short a time? Take courage, O soul! that happy hour is hastening on, as fast as the wings of time can speed it, which shall give ease to thy pain, and rest to thy weariness. Death will shortly come in to thy relief, take off thy load, and lay thee to sleep in thy grave." But,

(4) All our troubles and afflictions are infinitely short, and nothing, in comparison with eternity.

If, at any time, the greatness, and soreness, and long continuance of them tempt thee to impatience, cast but thine eye upon eternity, and they will all so shrink and vanish under that comparison, that they will scarce deserve the name of afflictions. This great ball of earth on which we live, if we consider it in its own dimensions, how huge a mass and globe is it! but, yet, if compared to the vast expansion of the heavens, it is but a small, invisible point; and bears no more proportion to it, than one poor drop of water to the whole ocean. And, so, take all the long flux of time, from the creation of the world to this present moment, and we reckon it by hundreds and thousands of years it seems to us a mighty while: but, then, lay all this time, which is stretched out thus long, lay it to eternity, and it presently shrinks up to nothing: it is lost and swallowed up in that bottomless gulf. Yea, the smallest drop of water is infinitely more considerable to the great ocean, than thousands of years, though they should be multiplied again by thousands of thousands, are to an eternal duration.

Thou, therefore, who complainest of thy long and endless troubles, consider,

[1] That these take up but a very small and inconsiderable part of thy life.

Most of thy days have been crowned with mercy, and God's candle hath shone upon thy tabernacle almost as often as the

sun.

[2] Consider, that thy life takes up but a very small and inconsiderable part of time.

It is but like a little pattern cut thee off from the great piece. And,

[3] Consider also, that time itself, though it should be

stretched out to as many ages as there have been minutes in it, yet bears no proportion to eternity.

And art thou not ashamed, then, to complain of the length and continuance of thy afflictions, since they are as nothing, in comparison with the rest of thy life; and thy life itself nothing, in comparison with the rest of time; and time itself nothing, in comparison with eternity? And, certainly, could our meditations dwell more upon that eternal state that awaits us, either of joy unspeakable or of unsufferable woe and torments, the consideration of this would enable us to bear our present short afflictions with a heroic and generous patience; and we should scorn to think them either long or grievous. For,

1st. What is it for us to suffer a few short days, when we consider the bitter and the eternal torments, that thousands of wretched creatures suffer in hell?

Look but into that great Shop of Woe: observe all the instruments and engines of torture that are there prepared, which God will use against them with his greatest skill and his almighty power: Their worm never dies, and their fire never goeth out: they have no rest day nor night, but the smoke of their furnace ascends up for ever and ever: and, when they have felt more exquisite and racking tortures than you can now fancy, for millions of millions of years, yet still it is but the beginning of their sorrows; still it is as far to the bottom of eternity, as it was the very first moment. These, indeed, are sufferings that might well make a man impatient: but, for you to vex, and fret, and be impatient, whose sufferings are but for a few days or hours, who have so many mercies and comforts mingled with all your afflictions, it shews a weak, sordid, low spirit: for you to be impatient under those little crosses that God lays upon you here, whereas he might righteously have plunged you into hell, and there have given you cause indeed to roar, and howl, and toss in eternal flames and never-ceasing woes, it argues a base, disingenuous, and ungrateful spirit. And,

2dly. What is it for us to suffer a few short days, when we consider that everlasting bliss and joy, which is prepared for us in heaven?

The happiness of heaven may well comfort us, in respect of all our miseries here upon earth. What saith the Apostle, Rom. viii. 18? I reckon, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. Christians! think but seriously with yourselves,

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that, though your way be rugged and tiresome, yet it is a way that leads unto your Father's house: and, though you come there all wet and weary, wet with your tears and wearied with your burdens; yet there you shall be surely welcome, and enjoy an eternity of rest: there, you shall sit down; and, with everlasting joy, recount to your brethren, a whole ring of surrounding saints, all the wonderful methods of Divine Providence, which brought you thither; and, with infinite satisfaction, see the necessity and mercy of those afflictions, which you have here endured: there, your garments of heaviness shall be changed into garments of praise, and your crown of thorns into a crown of glory there, you shall for ever rest your tired souls in the bosom of Jesus Christ; and for ever enjoy so great a felicity, that it were infinitely worth suffering all the miseries and afflictions which this life can bear, to have but one momentary taste and relish of it. Didst thou know what the glory of heaven is, thou wouldst be content to lie upon the rack, to endure the sharpest paroxysms of the most torturing and cruel pains all thy life long, and account them easy and short, if these could purchase for thee one hour's enjoyment of the ineffable glory and happiness of heaven. And, wilt thou then be fretful and impatient under thy present sufferings, when these are prepared to be the inlet into thy eternal reward? when thou shalt be for ever confirmed in the possession of all good? when thou shalt never more be in a possibility of suffering; nor know, what a sad thought, or a sad moment, means? And, canst thou think any affliction long, when thou thus reflectest upon the everlasting recompence that shall be made thee? Certainly, did we more dwell upon the thoughts and meditations of eternity, we should not be so irrational, as to judge that long, which takes up but a very little part of that time, which, of itself, is nothing, compared to an eternal duration.

(5) Consider, again, what brief measures the Scripture gives us, of our temporal afflictions.

It is called a Season: 1 Pet. i. 6. Now, for a Season, if need be, ye are in heaviness: and seasons, you know, are of no long continuance, but have their periods and revolutions. Yea, to cut it shorter yet, the Scripture calls it a Day of Adversity: Prov. xxiv. 10. If thou faint in the Day of Adversity, thy strength is small: small, indeed, if it cannot weather out one bad day! and so, likewise, a Night of Weeping: Ps. xxx. 5.