The Mute Christian Under the Sm
silent under the hand of God, who dares charge God himself for laying his hand upon him. But,
4. Fourthly, This truth looks sourly and sadly upon such as will not be silent nor satisfied under the afflicting hand of God, except the Lord will give them the particular reasons why he lays his hand upon them. Good men sometimes dash their feet against this stumbling stone: Jer. 15:18, 'Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable?' &c. Though God hath always reason for what he doth, yet he is not bound to shew us the reasons of his doings. Jeremiah's passion was up, his blood was hot; and now nothing will silence nor satisfy him but the reasons why his pain was perpetual, and his wound incurable. So Job, chap. 7:20, 'Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself?' It is an evil and a dangerous thing to cavil at or to question his proceedings, who is the chief Lord of all, and who may do with his own what he pleaseth, Rom. 9:20, Dan. 4:3, 36. He is unaccountable and uncontrollable; and therefore who shall say, What doest thou? As no man may question his right to afflict him, nor his righteousness in afflicting of him, so no man may question the reasons why he afflicts him. As no man can compel him to give a reason of his doings, so no man may dare to ask him the particular reasons of his doings. Kings think themselves are not bound to give their subjects a reason of their doings; and shall we bind God to give us a reason of his doings, who is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and whose will is the true reason and only rule of justice? Eccles. 8:4, Rev. 1:5. The general grounds and reasons that God hath laid down in his word why he afflicts his people, as, viz., for their profit, Heb. 12:10; for the purging away of their sins, Isa. 1:25; for the reforming of their lives, Ps.
119:67, 71; and for the saving of their souls, 1 Cor. 11:32,—should work them to be silent and satisfied under all their afflictions, though
God should never satisfy their curiosity in giving them an account of some more hidden causes which may lie secret in the abysses of his eternal knowledge and infallible will. Curiosity is the spiritual drunkenness of the soul; and look, as the drunkard will never be satisfied, be the cup never so deep, unless he see the bottom of it, so some curious Christians, whose souls are overspread with the leprosy of curiosity, will never be satisfied till they come to see the bottom and the most secret reasons of all God's dealings towards them; but they are fools in folio, who affect to know more than God would have them. Did not Adam's curiosity render him and his posterity fools in folio? And what pleasure can we take to see ourselves every day fools in print? As a man by gazing and prying into the body of the sun may grow dark and dim, and see less than otherwise he might, so many, by a curious prying into the secret reasons of God's dealings with them, come to grow so dark and dim, that they cannot see those plain reasons that God hath laid down in his word why he afflicts and tries the children of men.
I have read of one Sir William Champney, in the reign of King Henry the Third, once living in Tower Street, London, who was the first man that ever built a turret on the top of his house, that he might the better overlook all his neighbours, but so it fell out, that not long after he was struck blind; so that he that could not be satisfied to see