, I say, to this
discomfort, and self-accusing, and self-condemning: "Alas, how
improvident, and in that how unthankful to God and his instruments, am I
in making so ill use of so great benefits, in destroying so soon so long
a work, in relapsing, by my disorder, to that from which they had
delivered me": and so my meditation is fearfully transferred from the
body to the mind, and from the consideration of the sickness to that
sin, that sinful carelessness, by which I have occasioned my relapse.
And amongst the many weights that aggravate a relapse, this also is one,
that a relapse proceeds with a more violent dispatch, and more
irremediably, because it finds the country weakened, and depopulated
before. Upon a sickness, which as yet appears not, we can scarce fix a
fear, because we know not what to fear; but as fear is the busiest and
irksomest affection, so is a relapse (which is still ready to come) into
that which is but newly gone, the nearest object, the most immediate
exercise of that affection of fear.

XXIII. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, my God, thou mighty Father, who hast been my physician;
thou glorious Son, who hast been my physic; thou blessed Spirit, who
hast prepared and applied all to me, shall I alone be able to overthrow
the work of all you, and relapse into those spiritual sicknesses from
which infinite mercies have withdrawn me? Though thou, O my God, have
filled my measure with mercy, yet my measure was not so large as that of
thy whole people, the nation, the numerous and glorious nation of
Israel; and yet how often, how often did they fall into relapses! And
then, where is my assurance? How easily thou passedst over many other
sins in them, and how vehemently thou insistedst in those into which
they so often relapsed; those were their murmurings against thee, in
thine instruments and ministers, and their turnings upon other gods, and
embracing the idolatries of their neighbours. O my God, how slippery a
way, to how irrecoverable a bottom, is murmuring; and how near thyself
he comes, that murmurs at him who comes from thee! The magistrate is the
garment in which thou apparelest thyself, and he that shoots at the
clothes cannot say he meant no ill to the man: thy people were fearful
examples of that, for how often did their murmuring against thy
ministers end in a departing from thee! When they would have other
officers, they would have other gods; and still to-day's murmuring was
to-morrow'