A mission of consolation. Usefull for all afflicted persons. / By W.S.

Of the covenant of suf∣ferings as men the Sons of Adam.

TO the first co∣venant of suf∣ferance you know we all give our voice, by a natural in∣stinct, before we have

scarce enjoyed so much as light for it; and our eys may be said to set their mark to it, before we are able to set our hands to this Article of eat∣ing in the sweat of our brows: for our eys pay their sweat, which is their tears, for what we taste, even before we be able to receive bread for it; and as we grow into a state to set our hands to the co∣venant of labour, we

know there is scarce any thing we relish much, that doth not cost us sweat, and con∣tention; nay we are of such a constitution, that we can have no kinde of delectation: the which some want and suffering must not precede to affect us with the gust of it, so as we are sentenced to pay a great fine of pain before hand for all those fleeting, and tran∣sitory pleasures, which

at best do but run o∣ver our senses, and so pass away and leave them again in their drouth, and privation. And most commonly the advance of all our pain and passion ren∣dreth us nothing of what they negotiate. So as a man when he looketh upon himself in the best reflexes his temporary wishes can make him, shall finde this brand and stigmate of Adam up∣on

on his forehead. Gen. 3. 19. Thou shalt eat in the sweat of thy brows.

And this is a mark which God stamped upon Adam of another kinde of signification than that he set upon Cain, for this directeth to all things that oc∣cur to man in this life to strike him, and wound his temporal estate in some kinde or other; in so much as all the Creatures do in their

several manners exe∣cute this sentence upon the Sons of Adam not alowing themselves to be enjoyed by them without stinging them in some sort, either with the anxietie of their appetite to them, preceding fruition, or the distaste of satiety following it, or with vexation of a deprive∣ment of them during the Order of their af∣fections to them. So as we may well say

that every thing we finde now assaults our felicity in this life in some sort to kill it, and to revive to us the memory of our co∣venant of sufferance we entered into as soon as we entered in∣to light. For which reason the wise man proclaimeth elegantly the tenour of it saying Eccles. 40. 1. Great travel is created for all men, and a heavie yoak upon the children of

Adam, from the day of their coming forth of their mothers womb un∣til the day of their bu∣rying in the mother of all their cogitations, and fears of the heart, imaginations of things to come, and the day of their ending, from him that sitteth upon the glorious state un∣to him that is humbled in earth and ashes. Neither need we look back upon the defaced images of all conditi∣ons

in the dead prints of History, we have such living figures of them before our eys, as must needs imprint upon our thoughts a lively character of the deplorable estate of all mortals, whereby out of the ruines of houses whereof you lament the demolish∣ments, you may pick up some materials to build in your mindes this frame of the in∣stable constructure of

the greatest strength of humane happiness; and thus your friends may in their fall some way support your vir∣tue, and your patience, when you consider how incident it is to the vicissitudes of the world to expose unto us that changeable scene whereof Solomon reporteth this to us. Eccles. 10 and 7. I have seen servants up∣on horses, and Princes walking upon the

ground as servants. And in such capital letters as these you may now reade the articles of the cove∣nant of sufferance, which man is engaged in, whereof Job ma∣keth a manifest, is signed even by all the Princes of the earth; for we finde this under their hands in all re∣cords of them, in some part of their lives. Job 14 1. Man born of a woman and living

a short time is reple∣nished with many mi∣series. In so much that after man by sin had made miserie for him∣self in this life, it seem∣eth a mercie of God to have joyned death with it, before which even the light of na∣ture is sufficient to shew the Philosophers that none can be coun∣ted happy. And in or∣der to this proof, we mark that Cain he who first abused death by

imploying it to make sin, was thought wor∣thy of no less a punish∣ment than the protra∣ction of life, which he had made so afflicting by his fearing to die, and thus he was made his own torturer, by the ignorance of the evil of life, and of the good of death which he had so much de∣merited the knowing of, for his brothers goodness was thought worthy to be quickly

relieved by death, and his malice was adjudg∣ed to the pain of ap∣prehending it, and to the supplice of a long life. With good cause then may this be well reflected on, that the first virtuous and god∣ly Abel, man was quickly removed out of this hedg of thorns his father had set, and reconveyed towards Paradise, and the first impious murtherer was sentenced to live

in the pungencie, and asperity of these pricks and bryars of the earth. But such is Gods wisdom as he can ex∣tract medicines out of all the Brambles, and Thistles our earth is over-run with, and mi∣nister them to our in∣firmity, for he appli∣eth even those griefs, and sorrows which sin introduced to the ex∣pulsion of sin in it self; so as this is an opera∣tion worthy of Gods

invention by the la∣bour, and exercising of the bodie to enlarg the freedom of the soul, even by this un∣fortifying of her pri∣son in which she is kept, the closer, the stronger the delecta∣tion of our senses groweth upon us. Therefore the distan∣cing of the conveni∣encie of the flesh dila∣teth the commodities and freedoms of the spirits, so as it is a di∣vine

artifice which God useth by hanging weights of sufferings and pressures upon our senses, to winde up ra∣ther than to clog our spirits, which are the motions, and resorts of the whole frame, and in probation of of this experiment. David saith. Psal. 4. 1 In tribulation thou hast enlarged me.

And it is most ob∣serveable that God ministred this receipt

(drawn out of thorns) to all those Sons of Adam whose mindes he meant to purge and clarifie; for all the holy Patriarks took this detersive potion of bitterness and affli∣ction in this life; and it deserveth our atten∣tion to note, how the nearer the time drew to the manifestation of the Son of God (who was designed the man of sorrow) the passions of gods chil∣dren

grew the bitterer and the sharper, for the Patriarks were ex∣ercised by divers mor∣tifications, which were not capital, they staid upon the distresses of their life: some of the Prophets as they ap∣proached to this ful∣ness of the time of passion tasted by an∣ticipation, of the cup of death, in which they were all but figures of Christs cup-bearers, as Esay, Jeremy, Zachary,

and others, and so those sufferings which in time were the least distant from Christ (as those we finde record∣ed in the Maccabees) came also the nearest to the horror and acer∣bity of the passions of Christ, and Christians for they went not straight to death, but turned about to take a compass of tortures, to make death bitter to those they could not make it terrible; as

you may reade in the execution of the mo∣ther, and her seven children, the very dawning of the day of passion which was coming on gave them this light of fortitude.

It seemeth this weight of sufferance and sorrow was always in so natural a motion upon the children of God, that it moved the faster the nearer it came to the centre (the man of sorrow) who

being the Son of God by nature, was the cen∣tre of all the Sons by grace, and adoption, and therefore all the bloudy sacrifices of the Law of nature, and ceremonial, tended and pointed to him as their last term, and directi∣on; in order where∣unto S. Paulinus stick∣eth not to say that Christ from the begin∣ing of all ages suffer∣eth, and triumpheth in all the Churches

persecutions: in Abel, he is killed by a bro∣ther, in Noah, he is derided by a Son, in Abraham he is a Pil∣grim, in Isaac a Vi∣ctim, and in Jacob a Servant, in Joseph he is sold, in Moses left a Derelict, in the Pro∣phets he is stoned, starved, and vilefied. So as all the lines of holy passions, drawn from the circumfe∣rence of all ages tend, and resort to this cen∣tre

of the man of sor∣row, the Lamb of God, slain from the begin∣ning of the world.

These evidences may prove unto us clearly enough the first bond or covenant of sufferances we are en∣tered into as men, (and even in that notion we seem to be implicit christians) since he who suffered sufficiently for us all, maketh all vir∣tuous afflictions refer∣raable to him) it had

been very easie for me to have exhibited a more precise manifest of this our first desig∣nation to sufferings un∣der the notion of men, there are so many ex∣cellent draughts of it stamped by the mora∣lists, or naturalists of all ages; but I chose to deflect a little from the letter of the Text, that I might make the inferences rather stongly usefull, than critically uniform; and

therefore as I have al∣ready stepped beyond the out court of the Gentiles, into part of the temple, I will not call back to Philoso∣phy to borrow any de∣monstrations of this principle, wherein the proofs are so acumu∣late as all Sects of Philosophers which differ so much con∣cerning the point of the good mans life, concur in the confessi∣on of the multiplicity

of the ills thereof, but I shall not as I said walk aside into the gardens and flowry beds of the Gentiles, because I conceive it more proper for your state, to have some wholesome confection to take, than a nosegay of the flowers of Phi∣losophy to smell to onely, in these un∣healthful times; for the larg contemplations of of the miseries of hu∣man nature is not a

receipt direct, and ex∣press enough for your present exigencies, for that is but as a good air of meditation, that may be sufficient for such as are but in light ordinary indispositions of fortune, but your distempers require some more forceable application of com∣fort, by taking in∣to your mindes the strongest obligations to patience and longa∣nimity, I will there∣fore

pass on to the o∣ther two assignments of suffering which are upon you as Christi∣ans, and leave this our single humanity seal∣ed with Jobs signa∣ture. Job 14. 22. His flesh while he lives shall have sorrow and his soul shall mourn upon himself.