Eleventh Letter

I do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains; but I pray earnestly that God would give you strength and patience to bear them as long as He pleases. Comfort yourself with Him who holds you fastened to the cross. He will loose you when He thinks fit. Happy are those who suffer with Him. Accustom yourself to suffer in that manner, and seek from Him the strength to endure as much, and as long, as He judges necessary for you.

The men of the world do not comprehend these truths. Nor is it to be wondered at, since they suffer like what they are and not like Christians. They consider sickness as a pain to nature and not as a favor from God. Seeing it only in that light, they find nothing in it but grief and distress. But those who consider sickness as coming from the hand of God, as the effects of His mercy and the means which He employs for their salvation, commonly find in it great sweetness and sensible consolation.

I pray that you see that God is often nearer to us and more effectually present with us in sickness than in health. Rely upon no other Physician because He reserves your cure to Himself. Put all your trust in Him, and you will soon find the effects of it in your recovery, which we often retard, by putting greater confidence in physic than in God. Whatever remedies you make use of, they will succeed only so far as He permits. When pains come from God, He only can cure them. He often sends diseases of the body to cure those of the soul. Comfort yourself with the sovereign Physician both of soul and body.

I foresee that you will tell me that I am very much at my ease, that I eat and drink at the table of the Lord. You have reason. But think how painful it would be to the greatest criminal in the world to eat at the king's table and be served by him yet be without assurance of pardon? I believe he would feel great uneasiness, such as nothing could moderate, but only his trust in the goodness of his sovereign.

So I assure you, that whatever pleasures I taste at the table of my King, my sins, ever present before my eyes, as well as the uncertainty of my pardon, torment me, though in truth that torment itself is pleasing. Be satisfied with the condition in which God places you. However happy you may think me, I envy you. Pain and suffering would be a paradise to me, if I could suffer with my God. The greatest pleasure would be hell to me if I could relish them without Him. All my consolation would be to suffer something for His sake.

I must, in a little time, go to God. What comforts me in this life is that I now see Him by faith. I see Him in such a manner as might make me say sometimes, I believe no more, but I see. I feel what faith teaches us, and, in that assurance and that practice of faith, I will live and die with Him.

Continue then always with God. It is the only support and comfort for your affliction. I shall beseech Him to be with you.

I present my service.