All this may be applied to the whole of life; to positive inconveniences as well as wants; not indeed to the sensations of pain and sorrow, but to all the uneasinesses of reflection, murmuring, and discontent. Thus is human nature formed to compliance, yielding submission of temper. We find the principles of it within us, and every one exercises it towards some objects or other, i.e., feels it with regard to some persons, and some circumstances. Now, this is an excellent foundation of a reasonable and religious resignation. Nature teaches and inclines us to take up with our lot; the consideration, that the course of things is unalterable, hath a tendency to quiet the mind under it, to beget a submission of temper to it But when we can add, that this unalterable course is appointed and continued by infinite wisdom and goodness, how absolute should be our submission, how entire our trust and dependence!
This would reconcile us to our condition: prevent all the supernumerary troubles arising from imagination, distant fears, impatience; all uneasiness, except that which necessarily arises from the calamities themselves we maybe under. How many of our cares should we by this means be disburdened of! Cares not properly our own, how apt soever they may be to intrude upon us, and we to admit them; the anxieties of expectation, solicitude about success and disappointment, which in truth are none of our concern. How open to every gratification would that mind be, which was clear of these incumbrances!
Our resignation to the will of God may be said to be perfect, when our will is lost and resolved up into his; when we rest in his will as our end, as being itself most just, and right, and good. And where is the impossibility of such an afiection to what is just, and right, and good, such a loyalty of heart to the Governor of the universe, as shall prevail over all sinister indirect desires of our own? Neither is thiB at bottom anything more than faith, and honesty, and fairness of mind; in a more enlarged sense, indeed,
