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troubled at the pain and anguish, which he himself causes his child to feel by necessary operation, does notwithstanding apply the burning irons, and suffer those plasters to afflict him for a long time? You will say, Sure the wound or malady of the child required it, and that else it could not be cured. This is the case between God and you: God's heart is tender, and yearns towards you, when his hand is upon you: therefore bear it patiently.

3. God afflicts you in measure, Isaiah xxvii. 8; fitting your affliction for kind, time, and weight, according to the strength of grace which he has already given you, or which certainly he will bestow upon you. He does never lay more upon you, than what you shall be able to bear, 1 Cor. x. 13, and will always with the cross and temptation, make a way to escape. The husbandman will not always be ploughing, Isaiah xxviii. 24, 25, and harrowing of his ground, but only gives it so much as it hath need of, or as the nature or situation of the soil requires. So likewise he threshes his divers sorts of grain, with divers instruments, according as the grain can endure them: the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is the cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin: bread-corn is bruised, because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen, Isaiah xxviii. 26 - 28. If the husbandman do all this by the discretion wherewith God has instructed him; can you think that God, who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working, Isaiah xxviii. 29, will plough and harrow any of his ground, or thresh any of his corn, above that which is fit, and more than his ground and corn can bear? Should not his ground and corn therefore be patient at such tillage, and at such threshing?

4. God's end in afflicting, is always his own glory in your good; as, to humble you, and to bring you to a sight of your sin, to break up the fallow ground of your heart, that you may sow in righteousness and reap in mercy, Hosea x. 12, to harrow you, that the seed of grace may take root in you. All God's afflic-