And for myself I am pained at the heart, that I cannot find myself disposed to leave myself and go wholly into Christ. Alas! that there should be one bit of me out of Him, and that we leave too much liberty and latitude for ourselves, and our own ease, and credit, and pleasures, and so little room for all-love-worthy Christ. Oh, what pains and charges it costeth Christ ere He get us! and when all is done, we are not worth the having. It is a wonder that He should seek the like of us. But love overlooketh blackness and fecklessness; for if it had not been so, Christ would never have made so fair and blessed a bargain with us as the covenant of grace is. I find that in all our sufferings Christ is but redding marches, that every one of us may say, "Mine, and thine;" and that men may know by their crosses, how weak a bottom nature is to stand upon in trial; that the end which our Lord intendeth, in all our sufferings, is to bring grace into court and request amongst us. I should succumb and come short of heaven, if I had no more than my own strength to support me; and if Christ should say to me, "Either do or die," it were easy to determine what should become of me. The choice were easy, for I behoved to die if Christ should pass by with straitened bowels; and who then would take us up in our straits? I know we may say that Christ is kindest in His love, when we are at our weakest; and that if Christ had not been to the fore, in our sad days, the waters had gone over our soul. His mercy hath a set period, and appointed place, how far and no farther the sea of affliction shall flow, and where the waves thereof shall be stayed. He prescribeth how much pain and sorrow, both for weight and measure, we must have. Ye have, then, good cause to recall your love from all lovers, and give it to Christ. He who is afflicted in all your afflictions, looketh not on you in your sad hours with an insensible heart or dry eyes.