will of God, ye might receive the promise;" as if God had made no promise to those who are not patient to expect his performance. The truth is, God cannot so well know, that is, we do not so well and clearly manifest, that we have done his will out of piety and devotion to him, as by our patience to wait his pleasure when we have done it. There may be design in the practice of all external duties of Christianity for our advantage in this world: the formal outward profession of religion may be, and we see too often is, to get so much reputation and interest and dependence with men, as may enable us to destroy religion; our exercise of charity may have pride and vanity to be recommended and magnified, and even covetousness in it, that we may get credit enough to oppress other men, and upon the stock of that one public virtue, be able to practise twenty secret wickednesses. But our patience (I speak of that Christian patience of waiting God's own time for the receiving those blessings we pray for, and is an internal submission of the mind to him) can have no stratagem upon this world, nor do us credit and advantage with ill men, being all that time subjected to their insolence, reproach, and tyranny; and therefore St James makes it the end and complement and crown of all that we do: "Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may

be perfect and entire, wanting nothing," James i. 4. Which though Tremellius renders, Et in nulla re sitis destituti, as if patience so supplied all wants and defects, that we are not over sensible or grieved with those wants, yet the Vulgar (and with that Beza concurs) hath it, Ut sitis integri, in nullo deficientes, that you may be entire, wanting in nothing; which seems most agreeable with the original: as if it were impossible we could be defective in any thing, if we were indued with patience, which can proceed only from the conscience of having done our duty, or the reasonable confidence that God hath accepted us as if we had; for the bold habitual wicked man, pretend what he will to temper and sobriety, never had, never can have patience. Though this incomparable sovereign virtue is of great use and comfort to us in the whole course of our life, be it never so pleasant and prosperous, without any interruptions of nature, by infirmities, sickness, or diseases, or accidents of fortune in the casual interruptions in our very conversation and commerce with men, yet the most signal and glorious use of it is in our adversity and calamity, when the hand of God is heavy upon us, by the perfidiousness of friends, the treachery of servants, the power, injustice, and oppression of those men with whom we are to live ; and in those afflictions, which deprive us of the

comfort of our families, the supply of our estates, the joy of our liberty, and all those particulars which render life pleasant to us; and in lieu thereof expose us to want and poverty, and to the insolence and contempt which usually attends that miserable condition. And truly, in this case, if we could give ourselves no other argument for patience, methinks it should be enough that never any man found ease, benefit, or relief by impatience, but improves and extends and multiplies the agony and pain and misery of whatsoever calamity he undergoes by it; whereas patience lessens and softens the burthen, and by degrees raises the con`stitution and strength to that pitch, that it is hardly sensible of it. And if we would but deal faithfully with ourselves and the world, and report and acknowledge how much we have found ourselves the better for our adversity; how by it we have corrected the follies and infirmities of our nature, improved the faculties of our mind and understanding, mended ourselves towards God and man; we should be so far from needing patience to bear it, that we should even thirst and long and desire to undergo it: "It is good for me that I have been afflicted (says the man after God's own heart) that I might learn thy statutes," Psal. cxix. 71. He that had been brought up from his cradle in the knowledge of God, and lived suitable to that edu

cation, learned more from his affliction than he had done all his life before: that presented all his infirmities to him in a true mirror; he discerned his pride and his passion in their own colours, which appeared before to him only in the dress of majesty and power. The greater and the higher we are in place, the more we want this sovereign remembrancer. Mean and inferior people have their faults as often objected to them as they commit them, it may be oftener; the counsels of friends, the emulation, envy, and opposition, of equals, the malice of their enemies, and the authority and prejudice in their superiors, will often present their defects to them, and interrupt any career of their passion and vanity; but princes and great men, who can have few friends, (because friendship presupposeth some kind of equality) whose counsellors are commonly compliers with their humours, and flatterers of their infirmities, who are seldom checked by want of success in what they propose to themselves, have little help but their own observation and experience to cure their follies and defects; and that observation and experience is never so pregnant and convincing, as under adversity, which refreshes the memory, makes it revolve that which was purposely laid aside that it might never be remembered; reforms and sharpens the understanding, and faithfully collects all that hath

been left undone, or hath been done amiss, and presents it to the judgment; which, now the clouds and fumes and mists of pride, ambition, and flattery, that used to transport and intoxicate and mislead it, are dispersed, discerns what misfortunes attended those faults, what ruin that wickedness, the gradation and progress each error hath made, and how close the punishment had attended the transgression: every faculty of the mind does its office exactly, so that how disturbed and disquieted soever the body is, without doubt the mind was never in better health than under this examination. Besides, if there were no other good to be expected from it, than what keeps it company; if we were not sure by well bearing it to be freed from it, and rewarded for it; the very present benefit and advantages it gives us, and gives us title to, renders it most ambitiously to be desired; it entitles us to the compassion and pity of all good men ; "To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend," says Job, vi. 14. Nay, it gives us a title to salvation itself; "For thou wilt save the afflicted people," says holy David, Psal. xviii. 27. Yet notwithstanding all these invitations and promises, all the examples of good men, and the blessings which have crowned those examples, all our own experience of ourselves, that we have really gained more understanding and more piety in one