“We should be careful that discretion and love be in exercise, though in strife and contention it be not always an easy matter to do this. When the beasts of dissension get loose from the caravan, Satan sometimes drives them through the streets of Zion, that they may enter the houses of the inhabitants; and like the lioness that escaped from the keepers at Shrewsbury, and attacked the foremost horse in the carriage; {53} so contentions frequently attack the leaders, in order to stop the carriage of the ministry as it travels on in the labors of the pulpit. In the midst of the noise of strife, the man of God must raise his voice to heaven for courage and tenderness, so that the oil of Christ’s love to the souls of men may be found in the oil-flagon of reproof, which is poured on the head; for if anger and revenge enter in, they will drop, like the spider in Germany, into the pot, and that will prevent the salutary effect of the oil, because the poison of wrath is mixed with it. The righteousness of God cannot be fulfilled in this manner in the discipline. O! brother, who is sufficient for these things, without constant help from heaven? How awful is this place! This is the house of God and the gate of heaven—and here is a ladder by which we may climb up for help; and a school in which we may learn how to conduct ourselves in the house of God. “You cannot but be conscious, brother, of the great difficulty there is not to speak unadvisedly with our lips, as did Moses whilst drawing water for the rebellious Israelites. The rebellion of the people had imbittered his spirit, so that his obduracy stood like a cloud between the people and the tenderness of the Lord, when he was showing mercy upon them by giving them water. Moses upbraided their rebellion instead of showing mercy, as the dispensation of God now required; a dispensation which contained in it a secret intimation of the great mercy to be shown by the death of Christ on the cross. Their strife was the cause of imbittering the spirit of Moses, yet he should have possessed his soul in patience.