Besides all this, they bear dreadful persecutions, cruel mockings, and scourings, and tortures, from the hands of men, and go through all the sorrows of martyrdom. What noble instances and miracles of this kind did the primitive age furnish us with, so that their tormentors were amazed? They saw not the secret springs of divine life which supported them; they knew not the grace of God and the power of Christ, by which the christians were upheld in all their labours and their sufferings. The spring of their life was almighty, but it was hidden from the eyes of men: It was concealed and reserved with Christ in God. Read the labours and the sufferings of St. Paul; 2 Cor. xi. 23. “In stripes above measure, in prisons frequent, in deaths often: He was beaten with rods, he was stoned, he suffered shipwreck, in perpetual perils by land and sea, in weariness, in painfulness, in watchings and fastings, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness.” One would think his bones were iron, and his flesh were brass. He was invisibly supported by Christ the spring of his life. Read his wondrous virtues and self-denial; Phil. iv. 11, 12, 13. I know how to be abased and how to abound; I can be full, and be hungry; I can possess plenty, and I can suffer want: I can do all things through Christ strengthening me. This was the fountain of his life and strength. I acknowledge, says he, in another place, that I am nothing, I have no sufficiency of myself to think so much as one good thought: But all my sufficiency is of God, in whom my life is hid; 2 Cor. iii. 5. And with what a devout zeal does he ascribe his life to Christ, in that glorious amassment of spiritual paradoxes! Gal. ii. 20. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live: yet, not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Therefore I can be delivered to death daily for Jesus Christ’s sake; troubled and perplexed, and yet not in despair; be cast down, and not be destroyed; because I believe that the life of Jesus must be made manifest in my mortal flesh, and he which raised up the Lord Jesus, shall raise us up also by Jesus, and shall present us with you; 2 Cor. iv. 14. IIId Instruction. See whither a dead sinner must go to attain spiritual and eternal life, and whither a decaying dying christian must go for the recruit of his fainting life too; it is to God by Jesus Christ, for it is all hidden with Christ in God.