r lack of Bread, if you do not
look better after your self, than God is like to do for you._ It is an
usual thing for Persons to dispair of Gods _Fatherly Care_ Concerning
them; they torture themselves with distracting and amazing Fears, that
they shall come to want before they dy; Yea, they even say with _Jonas_,
in _Chap. 2.4._ _I am cast out of the sight of God;_ He wont look after
me! But it is the Devil that is the Author of all such Melancholly
Suggestions in the minds of men. It is a thought that often raises a
Feaver in the Hearts of _Married_ Persons, when Charges grow upon them;
_God will never be able in the way of my Calling, to feed and cloath all
my Little Folks._ It is a Thought with which _Aged_ persons are often
tormented, _Tho' God has all my dayes hitherto supplied me, yet I shall
be pinched with Straits before I come to my Journeys end._ 'Tis a
malicious Devil that raises these _Evil surmisings_ in the hearts of
Men. And sometimes a distemper of Body affords a Lodging for the Devil,
from whence he shoots the cruel Bombs of such _Fiery Thoughts_ into the
minds of many other persons. With such thoughts does the Devil choose to
persecute us; because thereby we come to _Forfeit_ what we _Question_.
We _Question_ the Care of God, and so we _Forfeit_ it, until perhaps the
Devil do utterly _drown us in Perdition_. Our God says, _Trust in the
Lord, and do good, and verily thou shall be fed._ But the Devil says,
_don't you trust in God; be afraid that you shall not be fed;_ and thus
he hinders men from the _doing of Good_.

VI. There is nothing more Frequent in the _Temptations_ of the Devil,
then for our _Adoption_ to be doubted, because of our _Affliction_. When
our Lord was in his Penury, then says the Devil, _If thou be the Son of
God;_ he now makes an _If_, of it; _What? the Son of God, and not be
able to Command a Bit of Bread!_ Thus, when we are in very Afflictive
Circumstances, this will be the Devils Inference, _Thou art not a Child
of God._ The Bible says in _Heb. 12.7._ _If you are Chastened, it is a
shrow'd sign that you can't be Children._ Since he can't Rob us of our
_Grace_, he would Rob us of our _Joy_; and therefore having Accused us
unto God, he then Accuses God unto us. When _Israel_ was weak and faint
in the Wilderness, then did _Amalek_ set upon them; just so does the
Devil set upon the people of God, when their Losses, their Crosses,
their Exercises have Enfeebled their Souls within them;