m, sed levius fit patientia, quicquid corrigere est
nefas._(147) Your impatience cannot help you, but hurt you, it is the very
yoke of your yoke, but quiet and silent stooping makes it easy in itself,
and brings in more help beside, even divine help. Learn this, I beseech
you, to get your own wills abandoned, and your spirits subdued to God,
both in the point of duty and dispensation. If duties commanded cross thy
spirit--as certainly the reality and exercise of godliness must be
unpleasant to any nature--know what thou art called to, to quiet thy own
will to him, to give up thyself to his pleasure singly, without so much
respect to thy own pleasure or gain. Learn to obey him simply because he
commands, though no profit redound to thee, and by this means thou shalt
in due time have more sweet peace and real gain, though thou intendedst it
not. And in case any dispensation cross thy mind, let not thy mind rise up
against it. Do not fall out with Providence, but commit thy way wholly to
him, and let him do what he pleases in that. Be thou minding thy duty. Be
not anxious in that, but be diligent in this, and thou shalt be the only
gainer by it, besides, the honour redounds to him.

Then I would exhort you, from this ground, to trust in him. Seeing he
alone is the absolute Sovereign Lord of all things,--seeing he has passed a
determination upon all things, and accordingly they must be,--and seeing
none can turn him from his way,--O then, Christians, learn to commit
yourselves to him in all things, both for this life and the life to come!
Why are ye so vain and foolish as to depend and hang upon poor, vain,
depending creatures? Why do ye not forsake yourselves? Why do ye not
forsake all other things as empty shadows? Are not all created powers,
habits, gifts, graces, strength, riches, &c., like the idols in comparison
of him, who can neither do good, neither can they do ill? Cursed is he
"that trusteth in man," Jer. xvii. 5. There needs no other curse than the
very disappointment you shall meet withal. Consider, I beseech you, that
our God can do all things, whatever he pleases, in heaven and earth, and
that none can obstruct his pleasure. Blessed is that soul for whom the
counsel of his will is engaged. And it is engaged for all that trust in
him. He can accomplish his good pleasure in thy behalf, either without or
against means; all impediments and thorns set in his way, he can burn them
up. You who are heirs of the promise