If we desire to end our days in joy and comfort, let us lay the foundation of a comfortable death now betimes. To die well is not a thing of that light moment as some imagine: it is no easy matter. But to die well is a matter of every day. Let us daily do some good that may help us at the time of our death. Every day by repentance pull out the sting of some sin,that so when death comes, we may have nothing to do but to die. To die well is the action of the whole life.

What unthankfulness is it to forget our consolations, and to look upon matters of grievance. To think so much upon two or three crosses as to forget an hundred blessing.

In the godly, holy truths are conveyed by way of a taste; gracious men have a spiritual palate as well as a spiritual eye. Grace alters the spiritual taste.

God's children improve all advantages to advance their grand end; they labour to grow better by blessings and crosses, and to make sanctified use of all things.

Whatsoever God takes away from His children, He either replaces it with a much greater favor or else gives strength to bear it.

Christ chiefly manifests Himself in times of affliction, because then the soul unites itself most closely by faith to Christ. The soul, in time of prosperity, scatters its affections, and looses itself in the creature; but there is a uniting power in sanctified afflictions, by which a believer, (as in rain a hen collects her brood) gathers his best affections unto his Father and his God.

When we grow careless of keeping our souls, then God recovers our taste of good things again by sharp crosses.