The Mute Christian Under the Sm
they. Ah, England, England! hadst thou no more sins upon thee, thy murmuring were enough to undo thee, did not God exercise much pity and compassion towards thee. But more of this hereafter, and therefore let this touch for the present suffice.
2. Secondly, This truth looks sourly upon those that fret, chafe, and vex, when they are under the afflicting hand of God. Many when they feel the rod to smart, ah, how they do fret and fume! Isa. 8:21, 'When they were hardly bestead and hungry, they fret themselves, and curse their king and their God;' Prov. 19:3, 'The foolishness of man perverteth his way, and his heart fretteth against the Lord.' The heart may be fretful and froward when the tongue doth not blaspheme.
Folly brings man into misery, and misery makes man to fret; man in misery is more apt to fret and chafe against the Lord, than to fret and chafe against his sin that hath brought him into sufferings, 2 Kings
6:33, Ps. 37:1, 7, 8. A fretful soul dares let fly at God himself. When Pharaoh is troubled with the frets, he dare spit in the very face of God himself: 'Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?' Exod. 5:2.
And when Jonah is in a fretting humour, he dares tell God to his face, 'that he doth well to be angry,' Jonah 4:8. Jonah had done well if he had been angry with his sin, but he did very ill to be angry with his God. God will vex every vein in that man's heart, before he hath done with him, who fumes and frets, because he cannot snap in sunder the cords with which he is bound, Ezek. 16:43. Sometimes good men are sick of the frets, but when they are, it costs them dear, as Job and Jonah found by experience. No man hath ever got anything by his