“Let us enter into the holy disposition which was in Christ, to suffer willingly for the glory of God, and our salvation. Is it not strange, that though the way he past through to glory, was ignominy, pain, and the cross, yet they who call themselves his followers, desire and expect another way for themselves to walk in? It is a shame for a ♦Christian to pass his days more at ease than Jesus Christ did. Let us therefore go after him, and suffer with him. Blessed be sickness, the loss of honour, riches, goods of the nearest things, and the separation from all creatures, which hold us bowed towards the earth, if it set us straight, and make us lift up our eyes to heaven, and enter into the designs of God over us. Blessed be the plague, the war the famine, all the scourges of God, which produce in us these effects of grace and salvation! ♦ “Chirstian” replaced with “Christian” 11. The greatest exercise of patience he ever had was that which was given to him by his mother. She had claimed a large share of what his father had bequeathed to him; who with great submission and respect gave her all that he believed her due, over and above. But she demanded still more. Being advised by council, it could not be given without wrong to his children; he ♦referred the whole business to arbitrators, and agreed that his mother should choose them all. The day being come for their giving sentence, his mother was in one chamber of the house, and her son, with his lady and a friend in an other, where his employment was, to pray to God for such an issue as might be for his glory, and the procurement of peace. When the award was brought, although it was not advantageous to him, and there was a large penalty on whomsoever did not stand to it, he heard it with perfect calmness, and immediately signed it without objection or dispute. ♦ “refered” replaced with “referred” 12. Believing now that his mother was fully satisfied, he was no sooner returned home, than he caused _Te Deum_ to be sung, beginning it himself, in thanksgiving for this happy conclusion. But God, to refine and purify him the more, permitted the cross to continue upon him. For his mother, not satisfied yet, found means to appeal from the award, without incurring the penalty. Her son did all that was possible for him to alter her design; after earnest prayer, and extraordinary fasting, he went to her, cast himself on his knees before her, and with the utmost reverence, humility and submission, begged of her over and over, with abundance of tears, “that she would please to take him and his family to herself; and after that she might dispose as she pleased of all the goods his father had left him.” But neither would she consent to this, but persisted in her resolution, of suing him at the parliament of _Dijon_. This he might have prevented, and never stirred out of _Paris_, but in respect to her, he declined it, and determined to go to _Dijon_.