“Hear” and make use of this most excellent pastoral direction from the Rev. Richard Sibbes (Works, Vol. 2, p. 298):
Let your care be, when ye have used the means, to depend upon God for support in the event and issue of all. If God deny you what you pray for, he will grant you that which is better. He will set up an excellent inward peace there, whereby he will stablish the soul in assurance of his love, pardon of sins, and reconciliation: whereby their souls shall be guarded, and their hearts and minds preserved in Christ. So they become impregnable in all miseries whatsoever, when they have ‘the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,’ to guard them within. Therefore let us not betray and lose our comforts for want of making use of them, or for fear some should call us hypocrites.
And, on the other side, let us not flatter ourselves in an evil course; but make the conscience good, which will bear us out in all miseries, dangers, and difficulties whatsoever. Nothing makes losses, crosses, banishment, imprisonment, and death so terrible and out of measure dreadful unto us, but the inward guilt and sting in the inside, the tumults of conscience, Gen. 42:21.
Clear this well once, make all whole within, let conscience be right and straight, let it have its just use and measure of truth and uprightness, and go thy way in peace; I warrant thee, thou shalt hold up thy head, and wind thyself out of all dangers well enough: nothing shall daunt or appal thy courage. For, saith Solomon, ‘The righteous is bold as a lion,’ Prov. 28:1. What can, what should he fear, who is heir of all things,’ Rev. 21:7, whose all things are, and who is reconciled to God in Christ, having all the angels and creatures for his servants, Heb. 1:14, for whose sake ‘all things must needs work together for good?’ Rom. 8:28
And, on the other side, let us not flatter ourselves in an evil course; but make the conscience good, which will bear us out in all miseries, dangers, and difficulties whatsoever. Nothing makes losses, crosses, banishment, imprisonment, and death so terrible and out of measure dreadful unto us, but the inward guilt and sting in the inside, the tumults of conscience, Gen. 42:21.
Clear this well once, make all whole within, let conscience be right and straight, let it have its just use and measure of truth and uprightness, and go thy way in peace; I warrant thee, thou shalt hold up thy head, and wind thyself out of all dangers well enough: nothing shall daunt or appal thy courage. For, saith Solomon, ‘The righteous is bold as a lion,’ Prov. 28:1. What can, what should he fear, who is heir of all things,’ Rev. 21:7, whose all things are, and who is reconciled to God in Christ, having all the angels and creatures for his servants, Heb. 1:14, for whose sake ‘all things must needs work together for good?’ Rom. 8:28
