Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
... They are occasions of most excellent good things. The power of God is in our infirmity made perfect. By these things as by a fatherly chastisement are corrected our daily falls: haughtiness and pride is kept under: the flesh and wantonness is restrained: our old man is brought to corruption, but our inward man is renewed, sluggishness and slothfulness is shaken of, the confession of faith is wrong out, the imbecility of our strengths is uncovered: and we are provoked more fervently to pray and to implore the favour of God, and daily the better understand the perverseness of our own nature.
Farther by afflictions we are made like unto Christ. For it behoved Christ to suffer, and so to obtain his kingdom, & we also ought to follow the self same steps. For the kingdom of God suffereth violence: and narrow is the way which leadeth to life. But even as he after the obedience of the crosse was exalted, and had given unto him a name above all names: so also if we shall suffer together with him, we shall reign also together with him, and it is a sweet thing also unto a lover to suffer for the thing that he loveth. Hereby also we accustom our selves to patience, that being become as hard as the adamant stone, when we are smitten we shall rather be weary, then once break. For these are as it were exercises in the body of a man: by which is confirmed health, and strengths are gotten, rather then that by them they are taken away or weakened. Wherefore the godly do upon good consideration rejoice in afflictions. ...
For more, see:
Farther by afflictions we are made like unto Christ. For it behoved Christ to suffer, and so to obtain his kingdom, & we also ought to follow the self same steps. For the kingdom of God suffereth violence: and narrow is the way which leadeth to life. But even as he after the obedience of the crosse was exalted, and had given unto him a name above all names: so also if we shall suffer together with him, we shall reign also together with him, and it is a sweet thing also unto a lover to suffer for the thing that he loveth. Hereby also we accustom our selves to patience, that being become as hard as the adamant stone, when we are smitten we shall rather be weary, then once break. For these are as it were exercises in the body of a man: by which is confirmed health, and strengths are gotten, rather then that by them they are taken away or weakened. Wherefore the godly do upon good consideration rejoice in afflictions. ...
For more, see:
https://reformedcovenanter.wordpres...rmigli-on-god-using-afflictions-for-our-good/
