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that without distraction, I am bound to plead for, and more I desire not. By my secluded retirements, I have the advantage to observe how every day’s occasions insensibly wear off the heart from God, and bury it in itself, which they who live in care and slumber cannot be sensible of.
I have come to see a need of every thing God gives me, and to want nothing that he denies me. There is no dispensation though afflictive, but either in it, or after it I find I could not be without it; whether it be taken from me or not given to me. sooner or later God quiets me in himself without, it I cast all my concerns on the Lord, and live securely on the care and wisdom of my heavenly Father.
My ways, you know, are, in some sense, hedged up with thorns, and grow darker and darker daily: But yet l distrust not my God in the least, and live more quietly in the absence of all by faith, than I should do, (lam persuaded) if I possessed them.
I think the Lord deals kindly with me, to make me believe for all my mer-
