ase was one of inward Affliction, rather than, as
she would have it, of sin. And the treatment of this great subject of
'desertion,' by one who was a standard-bearer of the new doctrine of
faith and assurance, is remarkably beautiful. 'It is dolorous to the
faithful,' he writes another friend, 'to lack the sensible feeling of
God's mercy and goodness (and the sensible feeling thereof he lacketh
what time he fully cannot rest and repose upon the same). And yet as
nothing more commonly cometh to God's children, so is there no exercise
more profitable for his soldiers than is the same.' But to Mrs Bowes he
points out, what she certainly would not have observed, that 'it doth
no more offend God's Majesty that the spirit sometimes lie as it were
asleep, neither having sense of great dolour nor great comfort, more
than it doth offend him that the body use the natural rest, ceasing from
all external exercise.' And again, varying the figure, 'no more is God
displeased, although that sometimes the body be sick, and subject to
diseases, and so unable to do the calling; no more is he offended,
although the soul in that case be diseased and sick. And as the natural
father will not kill the body of the child, albeit through sickness it
faint, and abhor comfortable meats, no more (and much less) will our
heavenly Father kill our souls, albeit, through spiritual infirmity and
weakness of our faith, sometimes we refuse the lively food of his
comfortable promises....[52] 'You are sick, dear sister,' he had said
elsewhere, 'and therefore,' alluding even to her confidences of
scepticism as to Christian doctrine, 'you abhor the succour of most
wholesome food.' 'Fear not,' he sums up in a subsequent letter, 'the
infirmity that you find either in flesh or spirit. Only abstain from
external iniquity'--which he supplements elsewhere with the more
positive advice, 'Be fervent in reading, fervent in prayer, and merciful
to the poor, according to your power, and God shall put an end to all
dolours, when least is thought [according] to the judgment of man.' And
in the meantime, 'Dear mother, he that is sorry for absence of virtue is
not altogether destitute of the same ... our hunger cries unto God.'
Knox himself, he assured his troubled friend, never ceased to pray for
her; but 'although I would cease, and yourself would cease, and all
other creature, yet your dolour continually cryeth and returneth not
void from the presence of our God.'[53]

Mr