The Mute Christian Under the Sm (continued)
sinned? for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law. Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle: and he hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.' Stupidity lays a man open to the greatest fury and severity.
The physician, when he findeth that the potion which he hath given his patient will not work, he seconds it with one more violent; and if that will not work, he gives another yet more violent. If a gentle plaster will not serve, then the chirurgeon applies that which is more corroding; and if that will not do, then he makes use of his cauterizing knife. So when the Lord afflicts, and men feel it not; when he strikes, and they grieve not; when he wounds them, and they awake not: then the furnace is made hotter than ever; then his fury burns, then he lays on irons upon irons, bolt upon bolt, and chain upon chain, until he hath made their lives a hell. Afflictions are the saints' diet-drink; and where do you read in all the Scripture that ever any of the saints drunk of this diet-drink, and were not sensible of it.
2. Secondly, A holy, a prudent, silence doth not shut out prayer for deliverance out of our afflictions. Though the psalmist lays his hand upon his mouth in the text, yet he prays for deliverance: ver. 10, 'Remove thy stroke away from me;' and ver. 11, 12, 'Hear my prayer, O Lord! and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears; for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Oh spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence and be no more;' James 5:13, 'Is any among you afflicted? let him pray;' Ps.
50:15, 'Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.' Times of affliction, by God's own injunction, are special times of supplication. David's heart was more often out of tune than his harp; but then he prays and presently cries, 'Return to thy rest, O my soul.' Jonah prays in the whale's belly, and Daniel prays when among the lions, and Job prays when on the dunghill, and Jeremiah prays when in the dungeon, &c.; yea, the heathen mariners, as stout as they were, when in a storm, they cry every man to his god, Jonah 1:5, 6. To call upon God, especially in times of distress and trouble, is a lesson that the very light and law of nature teaches. The Persian messenger, though an heathen, as Æschylus observeth, saith thus: 'When the Grecian forces hotly pursued our host, and we must needs venture over the great water Strymon, frozen then, but beginning to thaw, when a hundred to one we had all died for it, with mine eyes I saw, saith he, many of those gallants whom I had heard before so boldly maintain there was no God, every one upon his knees, and devoutly praying that the ice might hold till they got over.' And shall blind nature do more than grace? If the time of affliction be not a time of supplication, I know not what is.
As there are two kinds of antidotes against poison, viz. hot and cold, so there are two kinds of antidotes against all the troubles and afflictions of this life, viz. prayer and patience: the one hot, the other cold: the one quenching, the other quickening. Chrysostom understood this well enough when he cried out: Oh! saith he, it is more bitter than death to be spoiled of prayer; and thereupon