in ashes, will flame out afresh, and be fully revived.  Want of faith, no feeling of grace for the present, are not fit directions; we must live by faith, not by feeling; ’tis the beginning of grace to wish for grace:  we must expect and tarry.  David, a man after God’s own heart, was so troubled himself; “Awake, why sleepest thou?  O Lord, arise, cast me not off; wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest mine affliction and oppression?  My soul is bowed down to the dust.  Arise, redeem us,” &c., Ps. xliv. 22.  He prayed long before he was heard, expectans expectavit; endured much before he was relieved.  Psal. lxix. 3, he complains, “I am weary of crying, and my throat is dry, mine eyes fail, whilst I wait on the Lord;” and yet he perseveres.  Be not dismayed, thou shalt be respected at last.  God often works by contrarieties, he first kills and then makes alive, he woundeth first and then healeth, he makes man sow in tears that he may reap in joy; ’tis God’s method:  he that is so visited, must with patience endure and rest satisfied for the present.  The paschal lamb was eaten with sour herbs; we shall feel no sweetness of His blood, till we first feel the smart of our sins.  Thy pains are great, intolerable for the time; thou art destitute of grace and comfort, stay the Lord’s leisure, he will not (I say) suffer thee to be tempted above that thou art able to bear, 1 Cor. x. 13. but will give an issue to temptation.  He works all for the best to them that love God, Rom. viii. 28.  Doubt not of thine election, it is an immutable decree; a mark never to be defaced:  you have been otherwise, you may and shall be.  And for your present affliction, hope the best, it will shortly end.  “He is present with his servants in their affliction,” Ps. xci. 15.  “Great are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of all,” Ps. xxxiv. 19.  “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh in us an eternal weight of glory,” 2.  Cor. iv. 18.  “Not answerable to that glory which is to come; though now in heaviness,” saith 1 Pet. i. 6, “you shall rejoice.”

Now last of all to those external impediments, terrible objects, which they hear and see many times, devils, bugbears, and mormeluches, noisome smells, &c.  These may come, as I have formerly declared in my precedent discourse of the Symptoms of Melancholy, from inward causes; as a concave glass reflects solid bodies, a troubled brain for want of sleep, nutriment, and by reason of that agitation of spirits to which Hercules de Saxonia attributes all symptoms almost, may reflect and show prodigious shapes, as our vain fear and crazed phantasy shall suggest and feign, as many silly weak women and children in the dark, sick folks, and frantic for want of repast and sleep, suppose they see that they see not:  many times such terriculaments may proceed from natural causes, and all other senses may be deluded.  Besides, as I have said, this humour is balneum diaboli, the devil’s