scudderpage333

not be so well, nor so easily cured; beside the vexation in the meantime.

Secondly, Deal plainly, truly, and fully, in showing the cause of your trouble; not doing as many, telling one part of your grief, and not another, which has been the cause that they have gone away without comfort. Either tell all or none in this case. If you think him not faithful, reveal nothing therefore to him: if you judge him a fit man, then show, as you would do your bodily maladies and diseases to a surgeon, or physician, if you would have them cured.

Thirdly, Believe them rather than yourselves in this case; hearken to them, and make use of their judgment and experience, and be not presumptuous of your own understanding and feeling. In times of your fears and doubts, be not rash and sudden in judging yourselves. The devil is a juggler, and your eyes are dazzled, and of all men you are the most unfit and incompetent to judge of yourselves in this case, for when groundless suspicion, and causeless fears have, like a headstrong colt, caught the bit in their teeth, they will, like to other passions, carry you headlong whither they list, contrary to all right reason and understanding. In such suspicion and fear of your estate, you are like a woman in the fit of her jealousy, who will pick matter out of every thing her husband does to increase her suspicion of him; if he be somewhat strange and austere, then, she says, he loves her not, but others better. If he be kind to her, then she thinks that this is but to dazzle and blind her eyes, that he may without suspicion give himself to others. Deal now ingenuously, and answer whether it is not, or whether it has not been so with you. I pray observe your absurd and contrary reasonings. When you prosper, thence you infer, Sure, God does not love me, for whom he loves, he corrects. When God corrects you, and lays upon you grievous afflictions, thence you conclude, Sure, God is wroth with me, and does not love me. If you be troubled in conscience, O, then God writes bitter things against you, you can have no peace. And when he gives you