There are several degrees of suffering for righteousness: there is the scourge of the tongue, the ruin of an estate, the loss of liberty, a jail, a gibbet, a stake, a dagger. Now answerable to these are the comforts of the Holy Ghost prepared, like to like, part proportioned to part; only the consolations are said to abound. 2 Cor. 1:5. But the lighter the sufferings are, the more difficult it is to judge of the comforts of the Spirit of God; for it is common for a man to be comfortable under sufferings when he suffereth but little, and knows also that his enemy can touch his flesh, his estate, or the like, but little. And this maybe the joy of the flesh, the result of reason; and may be very much, if not altogether, without a mixture of the joy of the Holy Ghost therewith. The more deep, therefore, and the more dreadful the sufferings are, the more clearly are seen the comforts of the Spirit. When a man has comfort where the flesh is dead, stirreth not, and can do nothing; when a man can be comfortable at the loss of all; when he is under sentence of death, or at the place of execution--if yet a man's cause, a man's conscience, the promise, and the Holy Ghost, have all one comfortable voice, and do all together with their trumpets make one sound in the soul, then good are the comforts of God and his Spirit. There are several degrees of sufferings; wherefore it is not to be expected that he that suffers but little should partake of the comforts that are prepared for them that suffer much. He that has only the scourge of the tongue, knows not what are the comforts that are prepared for him that meets with the scourge of the whip. And how should a man know what manner of comforts the Holy Ghost doth use to give at the jail and the gibbet, when himself for righteousness never was there? Persecution of the godly was never intended of God for their destruction, but for their glory, and to make them shine the more when they are beyond this valley of the shadow of death.