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avoid persecution, it was in their way: but none of these things moved them. There was joy in their expected rest in happiness at last, though there was great pain and heaviness in the way to it: the way was rough, but right; therefore they approved of it, they acquiesced in it; nay, herein “they greatly rejoiced.” Thus the saints of old took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and were tortured, not accepting deliverance, because they knew in themselves, “that they had in heaven a better and an enduring substance," Heb. x. 34. O that blessed knowledge! it comforts, refreshes, it fills the soul, and lifts a man above himself.
Every path which God takes is right then and the believer chooses to walk in it: His God, his Father, has marked it out, and nothing goes so against the grain, but that “all is well," which his father does: His will is brought to be one with God's; the soul approves of all God does.
3. This submission implies in it our cleaving to God in all. To be pleased with God as a friend, when he seems to be coming forth against, us as an enemy; to lean upon a promise, when all the ways leading to the performance are shut up; to rejoice in God when we have nothing left beside to rejoice in, and faith is hard put to it to
