REFLECTIONS ON THE THREE BYGONE YEARS

And, first, I observe the changeableness of the Christian’s life while in this world; and if this had not been recorded of the godly in all ages in the Scriptures, I would have despaired of my life, that hath been and yet is so full of changes.

Secondly, I desire always to believe that I have an unchangeable God to do with; for I have found that when He with one hand hath been smiting me, the other hath holden me up; and when by His dispensations He hath been stripping and, as it were, slaying me, He hath even then spoke in words of grace to my soul with such power as made me cleave to Him and wait for new deliverance.

Thirdly, I see great difficulty to know duty in dark steps of providence, and the great danger the soul is in of falling in with sense and reason.

Fourthly, I see that only by the divine conduct of the Spirit and Word the soul will be made to know God’s call to duty, by all other ways whatsoever.

Fifthly, I see the glory only belongs to the Lord in leading the soul in the dark and supporting under sharp conflicts betwixt faith and unbelief, especially as to that piece of exercise about the land and Church, as recorded in the end of the eight-and-twentieth year of my life. I am persuaded it was from the Lord, as is clear to me from the following evidences:—

1. I never had any thing like it all my life formerly. By my living so retiredly, I had little knowledge of any thing but what concerned my own soul; but when this concern was laid on, it exceeded all other concerns for a time.

2. The Lord reasonably convinced me and informed my judgment of the causes of His wrath against this Church and land, from what I read in the Scriptures, comparing the case of the day I lived in and them together, and so I was made to see what I was never told of nor saw formerly.

3. I had more than ordinary allowances and influences of the Spirit in prayer and access to and freedom with the Lord.

4. I see an agreeableness between these exercises and the exercises of the Lord’s wrestling remnant, as recorded in the several periods of the Church in like cases.

5. Evidence is from the opposition the enemy made against me all the time of this exercise.

6. All that I was made to seek for and believe I saw clearly made out, both in my own and the Church’s case, and I apprehended that some of the predictions of the worthy sufferers in the late times were accomplished in the formidable appearance this stroke had, and the means and instruments from whose hand it was.

7. Had not the Lord, in whose hand the powers of hell and earth are, and who says to the raging sea, “Peace, be still; hitherto shalt thou come and no further,” set restraining bounds to the enemy’s malicious designs, where or in what case had the Protestant interest been both as to Church and State? And it is for lamentation that such a wondrous work, both of judgment and mercy, was so little either seen or believed by the generation, and how much it is forgotten; but I desire to remember to His glory that I was made to stand still and see the salvation of God in that deliverance. And what further work, either of judgment or mercy, He hath to do in this land, future events will declare; I love not to be wise above what is written.

As to the effects of this exercise:—

1. I was taught more in the knowledge of the relation that is betwixt Christ and His Church than in all my life formerly.

2. My faith was strengthened and increased when I saw such a relation and such a foundation of access to Him and allowance to wrestle with Him in behalf of His public glory.

3. Ever since I have made to follow the Lord in His dispensations with some measure of concern and particular observation, though still I have my own deficiencies to regret, and that my own concerns should so much take me up and the concerns of His public glory so little.

4. Upon the whole I see, had not everlasting arms been under-

neath and borne me up under those great temptations, and also restrained the enemy, I would have been broken under them.

1. I found in my experience that in this embodied state we cannot receive the revelation of His secrets and the discoveries of what is within the veil.

2. I found a virtue communicate from Christ both to soul and body which bore me up and carried me through in all my exercises, and yet so stripped on the back of the greatest manifestations, so as I have been made to see that I had nothing and could do nothing of myself, and so made to say, “The Lord giveth, and withholdeth as He sees meet, and blessed be His name for ever,” etc. So much for reflections on the three last years.