Objection 4: My Afflictions Daily Multiply and Increase upon Me
Object. 4. “I would be mute and silent under my afflictions, but my afflictions daily multiply and increase upon me; like the waves of the sea, they come rolling one over the neck of another, and how, then, can I hold my peace? How can I lay my hand upon my mouth, when the sorrows of my heart are daily increased?”
To this I answer thus,
1. Thy afflictions are not so many as thy sins; thy sins are as the stars of heaven, and as the sands of the sea, that cannot be numbered. There are three things that no christian can number: (1.) His sins. (2.) Divine favors. (3.) The joys and pleasures that are at Christ’s right hand. But there is no christian so poor an accountant, but that he may quickly sum up the number of his troubles and afflictions in this world. Thy sins, O christian! are like the Syrians that filled the country; but thy afflictions are like the two little flocks of kids that pitched before them, 1 Kings xx. 27, therefore hold thy peace.
2. If such should not be mute and silent under their afflictions, whose afflictions are increased and multiplied upon them, then there are none in the world who will be found mute and silent under their afflictions; for certainly there are none who do not find the waters of affliction to grow daily upon them. What mean the daily sighs, groans, and complaints of christians amongst us, if their troubles, like the waters in EzekiePs sanctuary, be not still increasing upon them? Every day brings us tidings of new straits, new troubles, new crosses, new losses, new trials, &c.
3. They are not so many as God might have exercised thee with. God could as easily exercise thee with ten as with two, and with a hundred as with ten, and with a thousand as with a hundred. Let thy afflictions be ever so many, yet they are not so many as they might have been, had God either consulted with thy sins, with thy deserts, or with his own justice; there is no comparison between those afflictions that God hath inflicted upon thee, and those that he might have inflicted; thou hast not one burden of a thousand that God could have laid on, but he would not; therefore hold thy peace.
4. Thy afflictions are not so many as thy mercies; nay, they are not to be named in the day wherein thy mercies are spoken of. What are thy crosses to thy comforts, thy miseries to thy mercies, thy days of sickness to thy days of health, thy days of weakness to thy days of strength, thy days of scarcity to thy days of plenty? And this is that the wise man would have us seriously to consider. u In the day of adversity consider; “but what must we consider? “that God hath set the one over-against the other,” Eccl. vii. 14. As God hath set winter and summer, night and day, fair weather and foul, one over-against another; so, let us set our present mercies over-agaiust our present troubles, and we shall presently find that our mercies exceed our troubles, that they mightily overbalance our present afflictions; therefore let us be silent, let us lay our hands upon our mouths.
5. If you cast up a just and righteous account, you will find that they are not so many as the afflictions that have befallen other saints. Have you reckoned up the afflictions that befell Abraham, Jacob, Job, Asaph, Heman, the prophets and apostles? If you have, you will say, that your afflictions are no afflictions to those that have befallen them; their lives were filled up with sorrows and sufferings, but so are not yours; therefore kiss the rod, and be silent. It may be, if thou lookest but upon thy relations, thy friends, thy neighbors, thou mayst find many whose afflictions, for number and weight, do much outweigh thine; therefore be silent, murmur not, hold thy peace.
6. Not so many as attended our Lord Jesus, whose whole life, from the cradle to the cross, (Isa. liii. read the whole chapter,) was nothing but a life of sufferings. Many afflictions did Christ meet with whilst he was in this world; none can be ignorant of this who have but read the New Testament; he is called a man of sorrows; his whole life was filled up with sorrows; when he was but a little past thirty years of age, sorrows, pains, troubles, oppositions, and persecutions, had so worn him, that the Jews judged him towards fifty, John viii. 57. A man had as good compare the number of his bosom friends with the stars of heaven, as compare his afflictions and the afflictions of Christ together.
7. Muttering and murmuring will but add to the number. When the child is under the rod, his crying and fretting doth but add lash to lash, blow to blow. But of this enough before.
Lastly, Though there are many, yet they are not so many as the joys, the pleasures, the delights that are at Christ’s right hand; as the pleasures of heaven are matchless and endless, so they are numberless. Augustine, speaking concerning what tve can say of heaven, saith, that it is but a little drop of the sea, and a little spark of the great furnace. Those good things of eternal life are so many, that they exceed number; so great, that they exceed measure; so precious, that they are above all estimation. Neither Christ nor heaven can be hyperbolized; for every affliction, many thousand joys and delights will attend the saints in a glorified state. What will that life be, or rather, what will not that life be, saith one, (speaking of heaven,) since all good either is not at all, or is in such a life? light which place cannot comprise, voices and music which time cannot ravish away, odors which are never dissipated, a feast which is never consumed, a blessing which eternity bestoweth, but eternity shall never see at an end. And let this suffice for answer to this fourth objection.