A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

10 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGgistered in God's book as an unparalleled instance of extiaordinarj^sufferings and sorrows, calamities and conflicts,to all succeeding ages, no story being able to afford the like.The natural death of one dear child strikes sometimes soheavy to a man's heart, that for grief he falls into a consumption; but all Job's were suddenly taken away at onceby a violent stroke. Some petty cross upon his outwardstate, and cutting off but part of his goods, causes sometimesa covetous worldling to cut his own throat ; but Jobwas robbed of all, so that it is a proverb to this day, " aspoor as Job." Many wives are passionate and peevish intime of prosperity, whose hearts notwithstanding will meltin compassion and kindness over their husbands in anykind of misery ; but Job's wife, though dearly entreated byher most distressed husband even for their children's sake,the mutual common pledges of sweetest love, yet would i otcome near him. " My breath," saith he, " is strange to mywife, though 1 entreated for the children's sake of mine ownbody" f chap, xix, 17). Satan, 1 confess, is wont to roarand rage fiercely enough about God's blessed ones, to dothem ail the mischief he can possibly ; but rarely hath heso large a reach and his chain so lengthened as he hadaga.nst Job. 'J he painful anguish of some one part wouldnot only deprive a man of the pleasure of the world's monarchyif he had it in possession, but also make him wearyof his life. In what a taking then was Job, who from thesole of his foot unto his crown had no part free from sorebiles and horribly inflauied ulcers, exasperated and enragedwith the stinging smart of Satan's extremest malice, whohad power given him to inflict them. God himself frownsmany times, and withdraws the beams of his pleased facefrom the souls of his servants to their great grief, though fortheir spiritual good ; but seldom doth he set them up forhis mark, hunt them as a fierce lion, set his tenors in arrayagainst them, and command the poison of his arrows todrink up their spirit, as Job complains, chap, xix, 13 ; x,16; vi, 4.It is no strange thing, neither should it much move, butonly make us walk more watchfully, to hear men of theworld and drunken Belials to belch out from their rottenhearts upon the ale-bench such base slanders as these :" These professors, for all their fair shows, are certainly allof them notorious hypocrites. Though they look never sodemurely, they are not the men they are taken for," &c.But to have a man's nearest, familiar, understandingChristian friends to charge him with hypocrisy, is a mostcruel cut to a troubled conscience : and this was Job's case.