they call so them of his household ?"

"Fear them

not then," saith our Saviour, "for all privities shall be made plain, there is now nothing secret, but it shall be shewed in light." Of Christ's words let us neither be ashamed, nor afraid to speak them. For so Christ, our master, commandeth us, saying, "That I tell you privily, speak openly abroad: and that I tell you in your ear, preach it upon the house-top." And, "fear not them, which kill the body, for the soul they cannot kill; but fear Him, which can cast both body and soul into hell fire."

Know ye, that the heavenly Father hath ever a gracious eye and respect towards you, and a fatherly providence for you: so that, without his knowledge. and permission, nothing can do you harm. Let us, therefore, cast all our care upon him, and he shall provide that, which shall be best for us. For, if of two small sparrows, which both are sold for a mite, one of them lighteth not on the ground without your. Father; and all the hairs of your head are numbered; fear not then, saith our master Christ, for ye are more worth than many small sparrows.

Let us not stick to confess our master Christ, for fear of danger, whatsoever it shall be, remembering the promise that Christ maketh, saying, "Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall I confess before my Father which is in heaven; but whosoever shall deny me, him shall I likewise deny before my Father, which is in heaven." Christ came not to give unto us here a carnal amity, and a worldly peace, or to knit his unto the world in ease and peace: but rather to separate and divide them from the world, and to join them unto himself; in whose cause we must, if we will be his, forsake father and mother, and stick unto him. If we forsake him, or shrink from him, for trouble or death's sake, which he calleth his cross; he will none of us, we cannot be his.

If for his cause we shall lose our temporal lives here, we shall find them again and enjoy them for evermore; but if in his cause we will not be contented to leave nor lose them here; then shall we lose them so, that we shall never find them again, but in everlasting death. What though our troubles here be painful for the time, and the sting of death bitter and unpleasant; yet we know, that they shall not last in comparison of eternity, no, not the twinkling of an eye, and that they, being patiently taken in Christ's cause, shall procure and get us immeasurable heaps of heavenly glory, unto the which these temporal pains of death and troubles compared, are not to be esteemed, but to be rejoiced upon.

"Wonder not," saith St. Peter, " as though it were any strange matter, that ye are tried by the fire (he meaneth of tribulation), which thing," saith he, "is done to prove you. Nay, rather, in that ye are partners of Christ's afflictions, rejoice, that in his glorious revelation ye may rejoice with merry hearts. If ye suffer rebukes in Christ's name, happy are you, for the glory and spirit of God resteth upon you. Of them God is reviled and dishonoured; but of you he is glorified."

"Let no man be ashamed of that he suffereth as a Christian, and in Christ's cause; for now is the time, that judgment and correction must begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of those, think ye, which believe not the Gospel? and if the righteous shall be hardly saved, the wicked and the sinner, where shall he appear? wherefore, they, which are afflicted according to the will of God, let them lay down and commit their souls to him by well doing, as to a trusty and faithful Maker."

This, as I said, may not seem strange to us, for we know that all the whole fraternity of Christ's congregation in this world is served with the like, and by the same is made perfect for the fervent love that the Apostles had unto their master, Christ; and for the great commodities and increase of all godliness, which they felt by their faith to ensue of afflictions in Christ's cause; and thirdly, for the heaps of heavenly joys, which the same do get unto the godly, which shall endure in heaven for evermore for these causes, I say, the Apostles of their afflictions did joy, and rejoiced in that they were had and accounted worthy to suffer contumelies and rebukes for Christ's name.

And Paul, as he gloried in the grace and favour of God, whereunto he was brought and stood in by faith; so he rejoiced in his afflictions, for the heavenly and spiritual profits, which he numbered to rise upon them: yea, he was so far in love with that, that the carnal man loatheth so much, that is, with Christ's cross, that he judged himself to know nothing else but Christ crucified: he will glory, he saith, in nothing else but in Christ's cross; yea, and he blesseth all those, as the only true Israelites and elect people of God, with peace and mercy, which walk after that rule, and after none other.

O Lord, what a wonderful spirit was that, that made Paul, in setting forth of himself against the vanity of Satan's pseudapostles*, and in his claim there, that he in Christ's cause did excel and pass them all; what wonderful spirit was that, I say, that made him to reckon up all his troubles, his labours, his beatings, his whippings and scourgings, his shipwrecks, his dangers and perils, by water and by land; his famine, hunger, nakedness, and cold, with

many more, and the daily care of all the congregations of Christ, among whom every man's pain did pierce his heart, and every man's grief was grievous unto him? O Lord, is this Paul's primacy, whereof he thought so much good, that he did excel others? Is not this Paul's saying unto Timothy, his own scholar, and doth it not pertain to whomsoever will be Christ's true soldiers: Bear thou," saith he, "affliction, like a good soldier of Jesus Christ?" "This is true, if we die with him (he meaneth Christ), we shall live with him; if we suffer with him, we shall reign with him; if we deny him, he shall deny us; if we be faithless, he remaineth faithful, he cannot deny himself."

THE

This Paul would have known to every body; for there is none other way to heaven, but Christ and his way and all that will live godly in Christ, shall (saith St. Paul) suffer persecution." By this way went to heaven the patriarchs, the prophets, Christ our master, his apostles, his martyrs, and all the godly since the beginning. And, as it hath been of old, that he, which was born after the flesh, persecuted him, which was born after the spirit, for so it was in Isaac's time: so, said St. Paul, it was in his time also. And whether it be so, or no, now, let the spiritual man, the self-same man I mean that is endued with the spirit of Almighty God, let him be judge.

Of the cross of the patriarchs, as ye may read in their stories, if ye read the book, of Genesis, ye shall perceive. Of others St. Paul in few words comprehendeth much matter, speaking, in a generality, of the wonderful afflictions, death, and torments, which the men of God, in God's cause, and for the truth's sake, willingly and gladly did suffer.

After much particular rehearsal of many, he saith, "Others were racked and despised, and would not

- be delivered, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Others again we tried with mockings and scourgings, and moreover with bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, hewn asunder, tempted, fell, and were slain upon the edge of the sword; some wandered to and fro in sheeps' pilches, in goats' pilches, forsaken, oppressed, afflicted: such godly men, as the world was unworthy of, wandering in wilderness, in mountains, in caves, and in dens; and all these were commended for their faith. And yet they abide for us the servants of God, and for those, their brethren, which are to be slain, as they were, for the word of God's sake, that none be shut out, but that we may all go together to meet our master, Christ, in the air at his coming, and so to be in bliss with him in body and soul for evermore.

Therefore, seeing we have so much occasion to suffer, and to take afflictions for Christ's name's sake patiently, so many commodities thereby, so weighty causes, so many good examples, so great necessity, so sure promises of eternal life and heavenly joys, of him that cannot lie; let us throw away whatsoever might let us all burden of sin, and all kind of carnality, and patiently and constantly let us run for the best game in this race, that is set before us; ever having our eyes upon Jesus Christ, the ringleader, captain, and perfecter of our faith, which for the joy, that was set before him, endured the cross, not passing upon the ignominy and shame thereof, and is set now at the right hand of the throne of God." Consider this, that he suffered such strife of sinners against himself, that ye should not give over, nor faint in your minds. As yet, brethren, we have not withstood unto death, fighting against sin.

Let us never forget, deår brethren, for Christ's sake, that fatherly exhortation of the wise, that speaketh unto us, as unto his children, the godly