This is a life of faith, for God will try the truth of our faith, so that the world may see that God has such servants as will depend upon His bare word.

It is good to divert our sorrow for other things to the root of all, which is sin. Let our grief run most in that channel, that as sin bred grief, so grief may consume sin.

If we would make it evident that our conversion is sound, we must loathe and hate sin from the heart.

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.

If believers decay in their first love, or in some other grace, yet another grace may grow and increase, such as humility, their brokenheartedness; they sometimes seem not to grow in the branches when they may grow at the root; upon a check grace breaks out more; as we say, after a hard winter there usually follows a glorious spring.

This is a life of faith, for God will try the truth of our faith, so that the world may see that God has such servants as will depend upon His bare word.

We cannot say this or that trouble shall not befall, yet we may, by help of the Spirit, say, nothing that doth befall shall make me do that which is unworthy of a Christian.