5. It should silence all murmurings and repinings against the providence of God, to consider that we are his own. Doth he afflict you? and are you not his own? Doth he kill you? are you not his own? As a Ruler, he will show you reason enough for it in your sins; but as your absolute Lord and Owner, he need not give you any other reason than that he may do with his own as he list. It is not possible that he can do any wrong to that which is absolutely his own. If he deny you health, or wealth, or friends, or take them from you; he denieth you, or taketh from you, nothing but his own. Indeed, as a Governor and a Father, he hath secured the faithful of eternal life: otherwise, as their Owner, he could not have wronged them, if he had made the most innocent as miserable as he is capable to be. Do you labour, and beat, and kill your cattle, because they are your own (by an imperfect propriety)? and dare you grudge at God for afflicting his own, when their consciences tell them, that they have deserved it and much more? [Sidenote: Sins against God's dominion.] And that you may not think that you have resigned yourselves to God entirely, when you do but hypocritically profess it, observe: 1. That man is not thus resigned to God, that thinketh any service too much for God, that he can do. 2. Nor he that thinketh any cost too great for God that he is called to undergo. 3. Nor he that thinketh that all is won (of his time, or wealth, or pleasure, or any thing) which he can save or steal from God: for all is lost that God hath not. 4. Nor he that must needs be the disposer of himself, and his condition and affairs, and God must humour him, and accommodate his providence to his carnal interest and will, or else he cannot bear it, or think well of it. 5. Remember that all that is bestowed in sin upon God's enemies, is used against him, and not as his own. 6. And that he that hideth his talent, or useth it not at all, cannot be said to use it for God. Both idleness and alienating the gifts of God, are a robbing him of his own.