378 APPENDIX. 



* The hand of an enemy poisons the wound : his 

 malice or his insolence doubles and trebles the 

 vexation. The malignity of the instrument may 

 envenom a scratch into a gangrene. But the 

 blessed hand of God, even when it strikes, drops 

 balsam. His very rods are bound up in silk and 

 softness, and dipt before-hand in balm : he wounds 

 that he may heal, and in wounding heals : Una 

 eadenique manus vulmis, opemque — and, therefore, 

 may we never be beaten by the hand of a cruel 

 and insulting slave ; but let our righteous Lord 

 himself f smite us, and it shall be a kindness ; 

 let him correct us, and it shall be an excellent oil. 

 JO let us still fall into the hands of God (for 

 great are his mercies) but let us not fall into the 

 hands of men. 



4. Mercy, lastly, in the degree of the affliction ; 

 that he hath punished us less than our iniquities 

 deserve ; afflicted us in measure ; corrected us in 

 judgment, not in his fury, for then we had been 

 utterly brought to nothing : that we have had our 

 lives for a prey, and are as so many fire-brands 

 plucked out of the burning. And, therefore, why 

 should a living man complain ? Say we rather as 

 Abraham did in the case of Sodom, when he had 

 that horrible scene of vengeance now in his eye, 

 § we are but dust and ashes. Not only dust in 

 the course of ordinary frailty, but ashes too in the 

 merit of a far sharper doom; deserve that God 



* Psm. xxvii. 14. f Psm. cxli. 5. 



% 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 4. § Gen. xviii. 27. 



