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instructing rods! How many lessons of Christianity are to be learned under thy rod! So much comfort and consolation is to be found in quietly and calmly acquiescing to his will, that I may say, I shall never have such contentedness, were I to be inheritor of the whole world, as I had under the sweet cross of Christ. O praises! praises to him who made it so!———But with what a heavy heart did I come out of that castle of Blackness! The Lord did give me such a fight of the intricate dispensations that the Church was to meet with, by the coming of the Prince of Orange, that instead of being compast about with songs of deliverance, it was attended with great heaviness: I could take pleasure in nothing, but mourning over the sad things I saw coming on the Church. When others were rejoicing, I durst not make mention of my disconsolate case. When they spake of preferment to my family, it was as a sword to my heart, I cried, and the Lord heard me in that; and instead of that, he gave me the assurance of the salvation of my dear child William, and gave me full submission to his sickness, which I could never win to before,—accompanied with many sweet melting days, which was to me an inexpressible mercy. Oh, then! what did I see next? The work of God betrayed, not by enemies, nor by that party only that had sitten at their ease, but by those ministers and
