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Updated: September 26, 2025
No, alas! he's ever with us, And shakes the dart at us in all our actings: He lurks within our cup, while we're in health; Sits by our sick-bed, mocks our medicines; We cannot walk, or sit, or ride, or travel, But Death is by to seize us when he lists.
Yea, all these breathings are the very actings of grace, even of the grace of desire, of love, of humility, and of the fear of God within thee. Be of good courage, thou art on the right side. Thy desires are only good; for that thou hast desired against thy sin, thy sinful self; which indeed is not thyself, but sin that dwells in thee. Second.
For the first of these, it is a SINCERE pouring out of the soul to God. Sincerity is such a grace as runs through all the graces of God in us, and through all the actings of a Christian, and hath the sway in them too, or else their actings are not any thing regarded of God, and so of and in prayer, of which particularly David speaks, when he mentions prayer.
In some, this faith may have strong and perceptible actings, wrestling through much discouragement and opposition, and many difficulties; as in the woman of Canaan, Matt. xv.; running through with peremptory resoluteness, saying, with Job, chap. xiii. 15, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him;" and thus taking the kingdom of heaven with violence.
But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from natural causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated by natural means; nor is it at all the less a judgement for its being under the conduct of human causes and effects; for, as the Divine Power has formed the whole scheme of nature and maintains nature in its course, so the same Power thinks fit to let His own actings with men, whether of mercy or judgement, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes; and He is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means, excepting and reserving to Himself nevertheless a power to act in a supernatural way when He sees occasion.
Mark, first he acknowledgeth that God's way with the wicked is just and right, even then when yet he could not see the reason of his actings and dispensations towards them. The same reason is good as to our present case.
I have set this particular down so fully, because I know not but it may be of moment to those who come after me, if they come to be brought to the same distress, and to the same manner of making their choice; and therefore I desire this account may pass with them rather for a direction to themselves to act by than a history of my actings, seeing it may not he of one farthing value to them to note what became of me.
Fifthly He will avoid the mischiefs from their Visits, who by their shrugs, signs, or words, may diminish the Physicians reputation, and good opinion, whether in his skill, or Medicines, whereby good Medicines are neglected and the expectation of a good success upon the use of them taken away, or at least causing an averseness to them; which actings do exceedingly prejudice the Patient, in reference to his Cure.
And all this is from a Gospel spirit, and not from a legal, natural principle, for the soul hath these things as the fruits and effects of its being separated unto the Covenant of Grace, and so now possessed with that Spirit that doth attend, yea, and dwell in them that are brought into the Covenant of Grace from under the old covenant; I say, these things do spring forth in the soul from another root and stock than any of the actings of other men do; for the soul that is thus wrought upon is as well dead to the law and the righteousness thereof as the first covenant as well as to its sins.
I grant such as know not that they do believe, cannot draw comfort from these promises; yet it is true that one may, by reflecting on the actings of his own soul, see and know that really he is going out to Christ, forsaking himself, casting his burden on him, waiting and depending upon him; when yet he will not say that he doth believe.
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