2. Let your praise be the native result of faith and love in your soul, otherwise it will be but an empty sound. Faith is necessary to draw by the vail, and shew us the perfections of the invisible God, who is the spring and author of all our mercies; love gives a deep sense of his goodness, enlargeth the heart towards God, and opens the lips to shew forth his praises.

3. Study to have a deep sense of your own unworthiness and ill-deservings at the Lord's hand, upon the account of your sins and ill improvement of former deliverances, saying with Jacob, Gen. xxxii. 10. “I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies."

4. Look above instruments and second causes, and do not ascribe your recovery to physicians or outward means, but to the Lord, the prime author of it, whose blessing alone it is that gives efficacy and success to the appointed means, and by whose mercy only we are spared and brought back from the gates of the grave. To this the apostle attributes Epaphroditus his recovery, Phil. ii. 27. "Indeed he was sick nigh unto death, but God had mercy on him." Hence we are told, 1 Sam. ii. 6. "The Lord bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up."

5. Observe narrowly the remarkable circumstances of the Lord's goodness, and the sweet ingredients of thy mercies: as for instances, (1.) How discernible the Lord's hand was in thy deliverance, which obligeth thee to say, "Surely this is the finger of God! This is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in mine eyes.” (2.) How thy deliverance came to thee as the return of prayer, that makes thee say, surely he is a prayerhearing God. (3.) How deliverances came when there was but little ground to hope for it. See how Hezekiah observed this ingredient in his recovery from sickness, Isa. xxxviii. 10, 11. "I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants

of the world." ver. 15. "What shall I say? He hath both spoken to me, and himself hath done it." Sometimes God sends deliverances to his people when they are most hopeless, and saying with the captives in Babylon, Ezek. xxxvii. 11. “Behold, our bones are dried, and our hopes are lost, and we are cut off for our parts." (4.) Remember how the extremity of thy distress was God's opportunity of sending relief. Abraham never forgot the seasonableness of God's appearing for him in his extreme need upon Mount Moriah, when he called the name of the place Jehovah-Jireh, for preserv ing the memorial of it; "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." So doth David, Psal. xcvi. "I was brought low, and he helped me."

6. Let the present deliverance bring all former mercies to thy remembrance, that so thou mayest praise God for them all, whether they be national or personal mercies, public or private, spiritual or temporal. New mercies should revive the memory of the old, and all of them should come above board at such a time; so doth the Psalmist direct, Psalm cv. 2. "Sing to the Lord, talk ye of all his wondrous works. And what he directs others to, he practises himself in such a case, Psal. cxvi. 12. "What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits towards me?"

7. Be ready to communicate to others an account of the Lord's kind dealings towards you, and the sweet ingredients of his mercies, and particularly of his sending spiritual deliverance to your soul, as well as outward deliverance to your body, when he is pleased to do so; and do this in order to recommend the service of God to others, and to engage and invite them to assist you in blessing and praising the Lord. We see how David observed his soul-deliverances, Psal. cxvi. 7, 8. and declared his experience to others, Psal. xxii. 22. "I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee." Psal. Ixvi. 10. "Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul."

Lastly, Remember always to give thanks for mer cies to the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; as directed, Eph. v. 20. Your spiritual sacrifices are only acceptable to God, when you offer them up by Jesus Christ, 1 Pet. ii. 5. As we must seek all our mercies in Christ's name, so we must give thanks for them also in his name. He is the Mediator of our praises as well as of our prayers. Believers have not one mercy but what comes swimming to them in Christ's blood, and is the fruit of his death and purchase to them; and therefore he is to be owned and looked to in the receiving of every mercy. And as Christ is the only Mediator for conveying blessings and mercies from God to us, so he is the sole Mediator for conveying all our services and spiritual sacrifices to God. God accepts of them only as they are perfumed by Christ's meritorious sacrifices, and potent intercession.

DIRECT. III. When the Lord is pleased to grant thee any signal merey or deliverance from trouble, beware of forgetting the Lord's kindness towards thee.

FORGETTING of God's remarkable kind provi

dences, is an evil we are naturally prone unto, when we are in a prosperous state. Hence it is, that the Spirit of God gives so many cautions against it in his word; and the saints of God do so solemnly charge their own souls to beware of it, as in Psal. ciii. 2. "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits; who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction." Forget not his benefits: but carefully preserve and treasure them up in thy memory. It was usual for saints, under the Old Testament, to set up some visible monument to remind them of God's singular favours to them; they elected stones, and built altars, to be memorials of the mercies they received; and put names on these places for this end. Let all this teach you to guard against this evil of forgetting the Lord's kind providence in recov ering you from sickness.

You are guilty of this evil, when you do not duly value the mercy, but let it pass as a turn of common providence. When you let the impression of the mercy wear soon off your hearts; when you make a bad use of it, or do not rightly improve it to God's glory, and your own soul's good: when you do not put on new resolutions to walk more exactly, live more fruitfully, and serve God more holily and humbly, then are you guilty of forgetting his benefits.

This is an evil most grievous and provoking to a good and gracious God, as is evident from the many heavy complaints he makes of his people for it, as in Judges viii. 34. Psal. lxxviii. 11. Psal. cvi. 13. Wherefore watch and pray against it.

DIRECT. IV. Inquire after these fruits of righteousness, which are the genuine effects of affliction in the children of God, who are duly exercised thereby.

THE

HE Apostle speaks of these fruits, Heb. xii. 11. as natively following upon sanctified afflictions, and a kindly exercise of spirit under them. And therefore it is your duty to inquire if they be produced in you.

1st, The increase of true repentance is one of these fruits which is the product of sanctified trials; Job. found it in himself, on the back of his afflictions, Job xlii. 6. Now I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." It would be happy if we could find our hearts more soft and melting upon the view of sin, after we have been in the furnace of affliction.

2dly, Another fruit is the improvement of faith. The afflicted believer is taught to look to and depend more upon God for help in time of need, and less upon the creature. He now sees that vain is the help of man in the day of calamity, and that God in Christ is the only proper object of the soul's trust. This was the fruit of the apostle's affliction, 2 Cor. i. 8, 9, 10. "We were pressed out of measure, above

strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life. We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead; who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver; in whom we trust that he will yet deliver."

3dly, Humility and low thoughts of ourselves is one of the fruits of righteousness which sanctified affliction doth yield. How proud and lofty was Nebuchadnezzar before his affliction! Dan. iv. 29, 30. But afterwards he was made to own God, and humbly submit to him as his supreme and incontrolable sovereign, and to acknowledge, that those who walk in pride, he is able to abase, verse 27. This was God's design in the various trials of his people Israel in the wilderness, Deut. vii. 1, 6. "That he might humble thee, prove thee, and do thee good at thy latter end." See then, O believer, if this fruit be produced in thee.

4thly, Another fruit is the spirit of prayer and sup plication. This was visible in the Psalmist's case after God had delivered him from the sorrows of death, and heard his voice, Psal. cxvi. 2. "Therefore, says he, will I call upon him as long as I live." O, saith the true believer, God's mercy to me in trouble, and his sending me relief when I cried to him, will make me love prayer the better, and engage me to be more diligent in it all my days; for I still see I have daily, need of his helping hand.

5thly,

Heavenly-mindedness is a fruit of sanctified affliction. Before, the man was inclined to that language, It is good for us to be here; let us build tabernacles in this lower world. But now he turns his tongue, and changeth his thoughts, and saith, with the Psalmist," It is good for me to draw near to God, Arise, let us depart, this is not our rest." This world is nothing but the house of our pilgrimage, heaven only is our home.

6thly, Another fruit of sanctified trials is greater