say in respect of many out of it. spiritual, the way of life is one, but there are Each one hath not opportunity nor ability for every sin, or every degree of sin, but each sins after his own mode and power. Isa. xl. 20. Thy tongue, it may be, wanders not in the common path-road of oaths and curses, yet it wanders in secret calumnies, in detraction and defaming of others, though so conveyed as it scarcely appears; or if thou speak them not, yet thou art pleased to hear them. It wanders, in trifling away the precious hours of irrecoverable time, with vain unprofitable babblings in thy converse; or, if thou art much alone, or in company much silent, yet is not thy foolish mind still hunting vanity, following this selfpleasing design or the other, and seldom, and very slightly, if at all, conversant with God and the things of heaven, which, although they alone have the truest and the highest pleasure in them, yet to thy carnal mind are tasteless and unsavory? There is scarcely any thing so light and childish, that thou wilt not more willingly and liberally bestow thy retired thoughts on, than upon those excellent, incomparable delights. Oh! the foolish heart of man! when it may seem deep and serious, how often is it at Domitian's exercise in his study-catching flies! Men account little of the wanderings of their hearts, and yet truly this is most of all to be considered; for from thence are the issues of life. It is the heart that hath forgotten God, and is roving after vanity: this causes all the errors of men's words and actions. A wandering heart makes wandering eyes, feet, and tongue; it is the leading wanderer that misleads all the rest. And as we are here called straying sheep, so within the heart itself of each of us, there is as it were a whole wandering flock, a multitude of fictions, ungodly devices. This is the natural freedom of our thoughts; they are free to wander from God and heaven, and to carry us to perdition. And we are guilty of many pollutions this way, which we never acted. Men are less sensible of heart-wickedness, if it break not forth; but the heart is far more active in sin than any of the senses, or the whole body. The motion of spirits is far swifter than that of bodies. The mind can make a greater progress in any of these wanderings in one hour, than the body is able to follow in many days. When the body is tied to attendance in the exercises wherein we are employed, yet know you not that the heart can take its liberty, and leave you nothing but a carcass? This the unrenewed heart doth continually. They come and sit before me as my people, but their heart is after their covetousness. It hath another way to go, another God to wait on. And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua; for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.-Exod. xvii. 14. THERE are two things in that record; the victory obtained over Amalek, and the way of obtaining it by incessant prayer : and there are two things to be done to secure this mercy for their use and benefit in future fears, it must be recorded and rehearsed, preserved from oblivion, and seasonably produced for relief. There are two special assistances given us against fear by experience. 1. Experience greatly abates the terror of sufferings, and makes them less formidable and scaring than otherwise they would be. Fear saith, they are great waters, and will drown us; experience saith, they are much shallower than we think, and are safely fordable; others have and we may pass through the Red Sea, and not be overwhelmed. Fear saith, the pains of death are inconceivable, sharp, and bitter, the living little know what the dying feel; and to lie in a filthy prison in a continual expectation of a cruel death is an insupportable evil: Experience contradicts all these false reports which make our hearts faint, as the second spies did the daunting stories of the first; and assures us prisons and death are not, when we come home to them for Christ, what they seem and appear to be at a distance. O what a good report have those faithful men given, who have searched and tried these things! who have gone down themselves into the valley and shadow of death, and seen what there is in a prison, and in death itself, so long as they were in sight and hearing, able by words or signs to contradict our false notions of it. Oh what a sweet account did Pomponius Algerius give of his filthy prison at Lyons in France! dating all his letters whilst he was there, From the delectable orchard of the Leontine prison; and when carried to Venice, in a letter from the prison there, he writes thus to his Christian friend: "I shall utter that which scarcely any will believe; I have found a nest of honey in the entrails of a lion, a paradise of pleasure in a deep dark dungeon, in a place of sorrow and death, tranquillity of hope and life." Oh! here it is that the Spirit of God and of glory rests upon us. So blessed Mr. Philpot, our own martyr, in one of his sweet encouraging letters: "Oh how my heart leaps (saith he) that I am so near to eternal bliss! God forgive me my unthankfulness and unworthiness of so great glory. I have so much joy of the reward prepared for me, the most wretched sinner, that though I be in the place of darkness and mourning, yet I can not lament, but am night and day so joyful, as though I were under no cross at all; in all the days of my life I was never so joyful: the name of the Lord be praised." Others have given the signals agreed upon betwixt them and their friends in the midst of the flames, thereby, to the last, confirming this truth, that God makes the inside of sufferings quite another thing to what the appearance and outside of them is to Thus the experience of others abates the terrors of sufferings to you; and all this is fully confirmed by the personal experience you yourselves have had of the supports and comforts of God, wherein soever you have conscientiously suffered for his sake. sense. 2. And this can not but be a singular assistance to your faith; your own and others' experiences, just like Aaron and Hur, stay up the hands of faith on the one side and the other, that they hang not down, whilst your fears, like those Amalekites, fall before you. For what is experience, but the bringing down of the divine promises to the test of sense and feeling? It is our duty to believe the promises without trial and experiments, but it is easier to do it after so many trials; so that your own and others' experiences, carefully recorded and seasonably applied, would be food to your faith, and a cure to many of your fears in a suffering day. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.-John i. 14. Nor shepherds only, and widow women, and aged men, declare to us the good tidings, but the very voice of the things themselves, sounding clearer than any trumpet, and so loudly, that the sound was straightway heard even in this land. For, says one, his fame went into all Syria; and he revealed himself to all, and all things everywhere exclaimed, that the King of Heaven was come. Evil spirits everywhere fled and started from him, Satan covered his face and retired, death at that time retreated before him, and afterwards disappeared altogether; every kind of infirmity was loosed, the graves let free the dead, the devils those whom they had maddened, and diseases the sick. And one might see things strange and wonderful, such as with good cause the prophets desired to see, and saw not. One might see eyes fashioned, might see him showing to all in short space, and on the more noble portion of the body, that admirable thing which all would have desired to see, how God formed Adam from the earth; palsied and distorted limbs fastened and adapted to each other, dead hands moving, palsied feet leaping amain, ears that were stopped re-opened, and the tongue sounding aloud which before was tied by speechlessness. For having taken in hand the common nature of men, as excellent workmen might take a house decayed by time, he filled up what was broken off, banded together its crevices and shaken portions, and raised up again what was entirely fallen down. And what should one say of the fashioning of the soul, so much more admirable than that of the body? The health of our bodies is a great thing, but that of our souls is as much greater as the soul is better than the body. And not on this account only, but because our bodily nature follows whithersoever the Creator will lead it, and there is nothing to resist, but the soul being its own mistress, and possessing power over its acts, does not in all things obey God, unless it will to do so. For God will not make it beautiful and excellent, if it be reluctant and in a manner constrained by force, for this is not virtue at all; but he must persuade it to become so of its own will and choice. And so this cure is more difficult than the other; yet even this succeeded, and every kind of wickedness was banished. And as he re-ordered the bodies which he cured, not to health only, but to the highest vigor, so did he not merely deliver the souls from extremest wickedness, but brought them to the very summit of excellence. A publican became an apostle, and a persecutor, blasphemer, and injurious, appeared as herald to the world, and the Magi became teachers of the Jews, and a thief was declared a citizen of Paradise, and of the two women of Canaan and Samaria, the latter undertook to preach the gospel to her countrymen, and having inclosed a whole city in her net, so brought them to Christ; while the former, by faith and perseverance, procured the expulsion of an evil spirit from her daughter's soul; and many others much worse than these were straightway numbered in the rank of disciples, and at once all the infirmities of their bodies and diseases of their souls were transformed, and they were fashioned anew to health and exactest virtue. And of these, not two or three men, not five, or ten, or twenty, or an hundred only, but entire cities and nations, were easily re-modeled. Why should one speak of the wisdom of the commands, the excellency of the heavenly laws, the good ordering of the angelic polity? For such a life hath he proposed to us, such laws appointed for us, such a polity established, that those who put these things in practice, immediately become angels and like to God, as far as is in our power, even though they may have been worse than all men. "He speaks, and, list'ning to his voice, New life the dead receive; The mournful, broken hearts rejoice; "Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb, Ye blind, behold your Saviour come; APRIL 3. These all died in faith.-Heb. xi. 18. BAXTER. THE faith of the patriarchs saw the promises afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that |