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Look upon my affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins.

BOTH work and strokes? both lash and labour too? What more could Edom, or proud Ashur do? Stripes after stripes; and blows succeeding blows! LORD, has thy scourge no mercy, and my woes

No end? my pains no ease? no intermission?
Is this the state, is this the sad condition

Of those that trust thee? will thy goodness please
T'allow no other favours? none but these?
Will not the rhet'ric of my torments move?
Are these the symptoms, these the signs of love?
Is't not enough, enough that I fulfil

The toilsome task of thy laborious will?
May not this labour expiate and purge
My sin, without the addition of a scourge?
Look on my cloudy brow, how fast it rains
Sad show'rs of sweat, the fruits of fruitless pains:
Behold these ridges, see what purple furrows
Thy plough has made; O think upon those sorrows
That once were thine; O wilt thou not be woo'd
To mercy by the charms of sweat and blood?
Canst thou forget that drowsy mount, wherein
Thy dull disciples slept? was not my sin
There punish'd in thy soul? did not this brow
Then sweat in thine? were not these drops enow?
Remember Golgotha, where that spring-tide
O'erflow'd thy sov'reign sacramental side:
There was no sin, there was no guilt in thee,
That caus'd those pains; thou sweat'st, thou
bledd'st for me.

Was there not blood enough, when one small drop
Had pow'r to ransom thousand worlds, and stop
The mouth of justice? LORD, I bled before
In thy deep wounds; can justice challenge more?
Or dost thou vainly labour to hedge in

Thy losses from my sides? my blood is thin,

And thy free bounty scorns such easy thrift;
No, no, thy blood came not as loan, but gift.
But must I ever grind? and must I earn
Nothing but stripes? O wilt thou disaltern
The rest thou gav'st? hast thou perus'd the curse
Thou laid'st on Adam's fall, and made it worse?
Canst thou repent of mercy? Heav'n thought good
Lost man should feed in sweat; not work in blood:
Why dost thou wound th' already wounded breast?
Ah me! my life is but a pain at best:

I am but dying dust: my day's a span;

What pleasure tak'st thou in the blood of man? Spare, spare thy scourge, and be not so austere : Send fewer strokes, or lend more strength to bear.

S. BERN. Hom. lxxxi. in Cant.

Miserable man! who shall deliver me from the reproach of this shameful bondage! I am a miserable man, but a free man; free, because a man ; miserable, because a servant: in regard of my bondage, miserable; in regard of my will, inexcusable: for my will, that was free, beslaved itself to sin, by assenting to sin; for he that committeth sin is the servant to sin.

EPIG. 4.

Tax not thy GOD: thine own defaults did urge
This twofold punishment: the mill, the scourge.
Thy sin's the author of thy self-tormenting:
Thou grind'st for sinning; scourg'd for not re-
penting.

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Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as
the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?
THUS from the bosom of the new-made earth
Poor man was delv'd, and had his unborn birth;
The same the stuff, the selfsame hand doth trim
The plant that fades, the beast that dies, and him :

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