is still slight and weak; let us ask
further, whether they believe that they are well-pleasing to God
when they suffer in body, property, honor, friends, or whatever
they have, and believe that God of His mercy appoints their
sufferings and difficulties for them, whether they be small or
great. This is real strength, to trust in God when to all our
senses and reason He appears to be angry; and to have greater
confidence in Him than we feel. Here He is hidden, as the bride
says in the Song of Songs: "Behold he standeth behind our wall,
he looketh forth at the windows" [Song 2:9]; that is, He stands
hidden among the sufferings, which would separate us from Him
like a wall, yea, like a wall of stone, and yet He looks upon me
and does not leave me, for He is standing and is ready graciously
to help, and through the window of dim faith He permits Himself
to be seen. And Jeremiah says in Lamentations, "He casts casts
off men, but He does it not willingly." [Lam. 3:32]

This faith they do not know at all, and give up, thinking that
God has forsaken them and is become their enemy; they even lay
the blame of their ills on men and devils, and have no confidence
at all in God. For this reason, too, their suffering is always an
offence and harmful to them, and yet they go and do some good
works, as they think, and are not aware of their unbelief. But
they who in such suffering trust God and retain a good, firm
confidence in Him, and believe that He is pleased with them,
these see in their sufferings and afflictions nothing but
precious merits and the rarest possessions, the value of which no
one can estimate. For faith and confidence make precious before
God all that which others think most shameful, so that it is
written even of death in Psalm cxvi, "Precious in the sight of
the Lord is the death of His saints." [Ps. 116:13] And just as
the confident and faith are better, higher and stronger at this
stage than in the first stage, so and to the same degree do the
sufferings which are borne in this faith excel all works of
faith. Therefore between such works and sufferings there is an
immeasurable difference and the sufferings are infinitely better.

[Sidenote: The Highest Stage of Faith: Torments of Conscience]

VIII. Beyond all this is the highest stage of faith, when God
punishes the conscience not only with temporal sufferings, but
with death, hell, and sin, and refuses grace and mercy, as though
it were His will to condem