borne chastisement, I will not offend any more," Job xxxiv. 31. Whatever God does with you, speak well and think well of him and his works.

6. Our sorrows exceed due bounds, when we continually excite and provoke them by willing irritations.

Grief, like a lion, loves to play with us before it destroys us. And strange it is, that we should find some kind of pleasure in rousing our sorrows. It is Seneca's observation, and experimentally true, that even sorrow itself has a certain kind of delight attending it. The Jews, who were with Mary in the house to comfort her, "when they saw that she went out hastily, followed her, saying, She goeth to the grave to weep there;" as they do," says Calvin," who seek to provoke their troubles, by going to the grave, or often looking upon the dead body."

Thus we delight to look upon the relics of our deceased friends, and often to mention their actions and sayings, not so much for any matter of holy and weighty instruction or imitation, for that would warrant and commend the action; but rather to rub the wound, and fetch fresh blood from it, by piercing ourselves with some little, trivial, yet wounding, circum

stances. I have known many who will sit and talk of the features, actions, and sayings of their children, for hours together, and weep at the rehearsal of them, and that for many months after they are gone; so keeping the wound continually open, and excruciating their own hearts, without any benefit at all by them. A lock of hair, or some such trifle, must be kept for this purpose, to renew their sorrow daily by looking on it. On this account, Jacob would not have his son called Benoni, lest it should renew his sorrow, but Benjamin.

I am far from commending a brutish oblivion of our dear relations, and condemn it as much as I do this childish and unprofitable remembrance. O! friends, we have other things to do under the rod than these. Were it not better to be searching our hearts and houses, when God's rod is upon us, and studying how to answer the end of it, by mortifying those corruptions which provoke it? Surely the rod works not kindly till it comes to this.

7. Our sorrows may then be pronounced sinful, when they deafen our ears to all the wholesome and seasonable words

of counsel and comfort, offered us for our relief and support.

"A voice was heard in Ramah : lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children, would not be comforted for her children, because they were not," Jer. xxxi. 15. She will admit no comfort; her disease is curable by no other means but the restoration of her children. Give her them again, and she will be quiet, else you speak unto air, she regards not whatever you say. Thus it was with Israel in their cruel bondage in Egypt. Moses brings them the glad tidings of deliverance;" but they hearkened not to him, because of the anguish of spirit, and their cruel bondage," Exod. vi. 9. So obstinately fixed are many in their trouble, that no words of advice or comfort find any place with them; yea, I have known some exceedingly quick and ingenious, even above the rate of their common parts and abilities, in inventing shifts and framing objections to turn off comfort from themselves, as if they had been hired to plead against their own interest; and if they are driven from those pleas, yet they are settled in their troubles too fast to be moved. Say what you will, they mind it

not, or, at most, it abides not upon them. Let proper seasonable advice or comfort be tendered, they refuse it: your counsel is good, but they have no heart to it now. Thus David says in Psalm lxxvii. 10," My soul refused to be comforted."

To want comfort in time of affliction, is an aggravation of our affliction; but to refuse it when offered us, wants not sin. Time may come when we would be glad to receive comfort or hear a word of support, and shall be denied it.

Oh! it is a mercy to the afflicted to have Barnabas with them, an interpreter, one among a thousand; and it will be the great sin and folly of the afflicted, to spill like water upon the ground those excellent cordials prepared and offered to them out of a froward or dead spirit under trouble. Say not with them in Lam. iii. 18, 19, "My hope is perished from the Lord, remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall." It is a thousand pities that the wormwood and gall of affliction should so disgust a Christian, as that he should not at any time be able to relish the sweetness that is in Christ and in the promises.

And thus I have despatched the first

part of my design, in shewing you wherein the sin of mourners does not lie, and in what it does lie.

II. Having cleared this, and shewn you wherein the sin and danger lie, my way is now prepared to the second thing proposed, namely, to dissuade mourners from these sinful excesses of sorrows, and keep the golden bridle of moderation upon their passions in times of affliction. And O! that my words may be as successful upon those pensive souls that shall read them, as Abigail's were upon David, who, when he perceived how seasonable they were, said, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who sent thee this day to meet me, and blessed be thy advice."

proper

and

I am sensible how hard a task it is that I here undertake, to charm down and allay mutinous, raging, and tumultuous passions. To give a check to the torrent of passion is ordinarily but to provoke it, and make it rage and swell the more. The work is the Lord's; it wholly depends upon his power and blessing. He that says to the sea when the waves thereof roar, "Be still," can also quiet and compose the stormy and tumultuous sea that rages in the breasts of the afflict