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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2022
Of Patience. Its Original. How GOD was the first Patient Person in the World. The Nature, and the Glory, and the blessed Effects of his Eternal Patience. The Reason and Design of all Calamities. Of Patience in Martyrdom. The extraordinary Reward of ordinary Patience in its meanest obscurity.
PATIENCE is a Vertue of the Third estate; it belongs not to the estate of Innocence, because in it there was no Affliction; nor to the estate of Misery, because in it there is no Vertue: but to the estate of Grace it appertains, because it is an estate of Reconciliation, and an estate of Trial: wherein Affliction and Vertue meet together. In the estate of Glory there is no Patience.
THIS is one of those distastful Vertues, which GOD never intended. It received its bitterness from Sin, its life and beauty from GOD's Mercy. If we dislike this Vertue we may thank our selves, for we made GOD first to endure it. And if all things are rightly weighed, no Creature is equal of GOD in Sufferings. We made it necessary for the Eternal GOD-HEAD to be Incarnate, and to suffer all the Incommodities of Life, and the bitter Torments of a bloody Death, that he might bear the Penance of or Sins, and deliver us from eternal Perdition.
THE Corporeal Sufferings of our Saviour are not comparable to the Afflictions of his Spirit. Nor are there any Sufferings or Losses so great as those we cast upon the GOD-HEAD. He infinitely hateth Sin, more than Death: and had rather be Crucified a thousand times over, than that one Transgression should be brought into the World. Nothing is so quick and tender as Love, nothing so lively and sensible in resenting. No loss is comparable to that of Souls, nor any one so deeply concerned in the loss, as GOD Almighty: No Calamity more peircing, than to see the Glory of his Works made Vain, to be bereaved of his Desire, and frustrated of his End in the whole Creation. He had rather we should give him the Blood of Dragons, or the cruel Venom of Asps, to drink, than that we should pollute our selves, or his Kingdom with a Sin.
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