WE XXI. I HEN a child, I loved to look on the pictures in the Book of Martyrs. thought that there the martyrs at the stake seemed like the three children in the fiery furnace,* ever since I had known them there, not one hair more of their head was burnt, nor any smell of the fire singeing of their clothes. martyrdom was nothing. This made me think But oh, though the lion be painted fiercer than he is, the fire is far fiercer than it is painted. Thus it is easy for one to endure an affliction, as he limns it out in his own fancy, and represents it to himself but in a bare speculation. But when it is brought indeed, and laid home to us, there must be the man, yea, there must be God to assist the man to undergo it. TR XXII. RAVELLING on the plain (which notwithstanding hath its risings and fallings), I discovered Salisbury steeple many miles off; coming to a declivity, I lost the sight thereof; but climbing up the next hill, the steeple grew out of the ground again. Yea, I often found it and lost it, till at last I came safely to it, and took my lodging near it. It fareth thus with us, whilst we are wayfaring to heaven, mounted on the Pisgah top of some good meditation, we get a glimpse of * Dan. iii. 27. our celestial Canaan.* But when, either on the flat of an ordinary temper, or in the fall of an extraordinary temptation, we lose the view thereof. Thus, in the sight of our soul, heaven is discovered covered, and recovered; till, though late, at last, though slowly, surely, we arrive at the haven of our happiness. L XXIII. ORD, I find myself in the latitude of a fever: I am neither well nor ill; not so well that I have any mind to be merry with my friends, nor so ill that my friends have any cause to condole with me. I am a probationer in point of my health. As I shall behave myself, so I may be either expelled out of it, or admitted into it. Lord, let my distemper stop here and go no farther. Shoot not thy murdering pieces against that clay castle, which surrendereth itself at thy first summons. O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength. I beg not to be forgiven, but to be forborne my debt to nature. only crave time for a while, till I am better fitted and furnished to pay it. XXIV. And I T seemed strange to me when I was told, that IT aqua-vitæ, which restores life to others, should itself be made of the droppings of dead beer; and that strong waters should be extracted out of the * Deut. xxxiv. 1. dregs (almost) of small beer. Surely many other excellent ingredients must concur, and much art must be used in the distillation. Despair not then, O my soul ! No extraction is impossible where the chemist is infinite. He that is all in all, can produce anything out of anything; and he can make my soul, which by nature is settled on her lees,* and dead in sin, to be quickened by the infusion of his grace, and purified into a pious disposition. HOW XXV. OW easy is pen and paper piety for one to write religiously! I will not say it costeth nothing, but it is far cheaper to work one's head than one's heart to goodness. Some, perchance, may guess me to be good by my writings, and so I shall deceive my reader. But if I do not desire to be good, I most of all deceive myself. I can make a hundred meditations sooner than subdue the least sin in my soul. Yea, I was once in the mind never to write more; for fear lest my writings at the last day prove records against me. yet why should I not write? that by reading my own book, the disproportion betwixt my lines and my life, may make me blush myself (if not into goodness) into less badness than I would do otherwise. That so my writings may condemn me, and make me to condemn myself, that so God may be moved to acquit me. And * Zeph. i. 12. |