t justly fear that
thou wouldst turn thine eyes for ever from us, as, though we cannot
endure afflictions in ourselves, yet in thee we can; so, though thou
canst not endure sin in us, yet in thy Son thou canst, and he hath taken
upon himself, and presented to thee, all those sins which might
displease thee in us. There is an eye in nature that kills as soon as it
sees, the eye of a serpent; no eye in nature that nourishes us by
looking upon us; but thine eye, O Lord, does so. Look therefore upon me,
O Lord, in this distress and that will recall me from the borders of
this bodily death; look upon me, and that will raise me again from that
spiritual death in which my parents buried me when they begot me in sin,
and in which I have pierced even to the jaws of hell by multiplying such
heaps of actual sins upon that foundation, that root of original sin.
Yet take me again into your consultation, O blessed and glorious
Trinity; and though the Father know that I have defaced his image
received in my creation; though the Son know I have neglected mine
interest in the redemption; yet, O blessed Spirit, as thou art to my
conscience so be to them, a witness that, at this minute, I accept that
which I have so often, so rebelliously refused, thy blessed
inspirations; be thou my witness to them that, at more pores than this
slack body sweats tears, this sad soul weeps blood; and more for the
displeasure of my God, than for the stripes of his displeasure. Take me,
then, O blessed and glorious Trinity, into a reconsultation, and
prescribe me any physic. If it be a long and painful holding of this
soul in sickness, it is physic if I may discern thy hand to give it; and
it is physic if it be a speedy departing of this soul, if I may discern
thy hand to receive it.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] 2 Chron. xxv. 16.

[128] Isaiah, xlii. 13.

[129] Isaiah, ix. 6.

[130] Isaiah, xi. 2.

[131] Gen. i. 26.

[132] Job, vii. 20.

[133] 1 Tim. iv. 1; Hos. iv. 12; Isaiah, xix. 14.

[134] Rev. vii. 1.

X. LENTE ET SERPENTI SATAGUNT OCCURRERE MORBO.

_They find the disease to steal on insensibly, and endeavour to meet
with it so._

X. MEDITATION.

This is nature's nest of boxes: the heavens contain the earth; the
earth, cities; cities, men. And all these are concentric; the common
centre to them all is decay, ruin; only that is eccentric which was
never made; only that place, or garment rather, which we can imagine but
not demonstrate.