爱神之心如何生出忍耐How Love to God Works Patience

and tribulations, which are but the loss of things earthly, in exchange for which we receive this hope and beginning of glory. If thou hadst had all the brass and pewter that was in thy house, and hath been melted by this fire, therewithal turned into gold; and the stones that paved thy yards, or the bricks or lime that raised thy walls, all changed into precious stones; thy glass windows, that were dissolved, converted into diamonds,—thou hadst little cause to complain at the loss. Now read Isa. 54:11, 12, 'O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires; I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.' And if thou hast gotten any increase of grace by these losses, then hath much of this in Isaiah been truly and spiritually fulfilled in thee. And these repairs are in this life. But besides that, 'Thou

hast a building made without hands, eternal in the heavens,' 2 Cor. 5:1, which stands ready for thee. Those believing Hebrews might well suffer the spoiling of their goods with joy, whilst they found sealed, and put into their hearts, bills of exchange to receive all again in eternal treasures in heaven. But this was their very case: 'Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance,' Heb. 10:34. And this happy lot will come to be thine, if thou exercisest upon thy losses faith and patience. It follows in that Heb. 10, the following verses, 'Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.'— This for faith's working patience.

II. Our love to God works patience. Love to God in us works patience, or faith by love, as I shewed out of ver. 12. Love to God makes us cleave to God, and so to follow him through all weathers and endurances. That great convert, in whom at his conversion faith and love were so abundant, as 1 Tim. 1:14,—his heart, through love to the name of Christ, caused him in the highest passion to utter, 'What mean you to weep and break my heart? for I am not ready to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus,' Acts 21:13. It was love to that name that fired him; yea, his love was wrought up to such an intense degree as he could have wished to have been accursed from Christ for God's glory in the conversion of his brethren, Rom. 9. I wonder how he would have done for patience under that curse, if in hell. But that love which wished that curse would have wrought it; and so thought he, or he would never have wished this. Upon the like account of love to this name, those two apostles 'rejoiced to suffer shame for his name,' as Acts 5:41. Love makes the glorifying of God and Christ, and the will of God, which is always for his glory, dearer than all things to us. Yea, that God should have his will, for his own glory,—'if it be the will of God,' says the Apostle,—of our sufferings, abundantly stills the heart in all. It is true, I may be punished in my afflictions for my sin, and I humble myself for that But beyond that, it is the good pleasure of God so to have it; and I rejoice in that, says love, that his will is done, as truly that it is done upon me, as that by me. And good is the word of God in both; and hallowed be his name! In that Rom. 8, where, as you heard, 'we are more than conquerors in all these things

through him that loved us,' that love of his to us is alone indeed openly or expressly mentioned, yet withal it is our love to him that tacitly is insinuated to be a concurrent cause therewith; you must take that in too. For the intent of those very words is, that the soul apprehending his love who is that lover,—τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντος,—as that word imports, out of a reciprocated love to him again, doth hearten us in the conflict unto this conquest. And yet there is one small word put in that further argues this; it is in ver. 36, 'For thy sake we are killed all the day long,'—our lives being in jeopardy every hour,—and 'we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.' And this 'for thy sake' you have in Ps. 44, and he quotes it out from thence; 'As it is written,' says he, 'For thy sake,' &c. Now therefore it is evidently the love that is in us to him, and our cleaving to him therewith, that is there held forth as that which makes us willing to suffer and endure, in that it is for his sake. And although the Apostle in his discourse runs upon the magnifying God's love and Christ's love to us, as that which, apprehended and taken in by us, doth principally work this effect; yet the Psalmist, on the other side, sets out the love of the church to God as the concurrent cause: ver. 17, 'All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant.' And, ver. 18–22, 'Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy way; though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death. If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange god; shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart. Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.' If faith and love once but say, It is for thy sake, O God; Why then, says patience, I can bear it, yea, rejoice in it, for his sake that loved me. And look, as the Apostle says he could do all things through Christ that strengthened him, so love can do all things for Christ that loved him, and