Southern Christian Advocate

OUR TRIALS.

Seeing, therefore, we live, for this life, amongst so many great perils and dangers, we must be well assured by God's word how to bear them, and how patiently to take them, as they be sent to us from God. We must also assure ourselves that there is no other remedy for Christians in the time of trouble, than Christ himself hath appointed us. In St. Luke, he giveth us this commandment: Ye shall possess your lives in patience, saith he. In the which words, he giveth both commandment what to do, and also great consolation and comfort in all troubles. He showeth also what is to be done, and what is to be hoped for in troubles: and when troubles happen, he biddeth us be patient, and in no case violently nor seditiously to resist our persecutions, because God hath such care and charge of us, that he will keep, in the midst of all troubles, the very hairs of our head, so that one of them shall not fall away without the will and pleasure of our heavenly Father.

Whether the hair, therefore, tarry in the head, or fall from the head, it is the will of the Father. And seeing he hath such care for the hairs of our head, how much more doth he care for our life itself? Wherefore let God's adversaries do what they list, whether they take the life or take it not, they can do us no hurt. or their cruelty hath no further power than God permitteth them: and that which cometh unto us by the will of our heavenly Father, can be no harm, no loss, neither or destruction unto us, but rather gain, wealth, and felicity. For all troubles and adversities that chance to such as be of God, by the will of the heavenly Father, can be none other but gain and advantage. That the spirit of man may feel those consolations. the giver of them (the heavenly Father) must be prayed unto, for the merit of Christ's passion: or it is not the nature of man that can be contented, until it be regenerated and possessed with God's Spirit, to bear patiently the troubles of the mind or of the body.

When the mind and heart of a man seeth on every side sorrow and heaviness, and the worldly eye beholdeth nothing but such things as be troublous and wholly bent to rob the poor man of that he hath, and also to take from him his life; except the man weigh those brittle and uncertain treasures that be taken from him with the riches of the life to come, and this life of the body with the life in Christ's precious blood and so for the love and certainty of the heavenly joys contemn all things present, doubtless he shall never be able to bear the loss of goods. life, or any other things of this world. Therefore St. Paul giveth a very godly and necessary lesson to all men in this short and transitory life, and therein showeth how a man may best bear the iniquity and troubles of this world: If ye be risen again with Christ, saith he, seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God the Father. Wherefore the Christian man's faith must be always upon the resurrection of Christ when he is in trouble; and in that glorious resurrection he shall not only see continual and perpetual joy and consolation, but also the victory and triumph of all persecution, trouble, sin, death, hell, the devil, and all other persecutors and tyrannies of Christ and of Christ's people: the tears and weepings of the faithful dried up, their wounds healed, their bodies made immortal in joy, their souls for ever praising the Lord, and conjunction and society everlasting with the blessed company or God's elect in perpetual joy.--Bishop Hooper.

From the "Letters of the Martyrs."