HKB
at sin, your sober and holy deportment also, before both God and men, is a great refreshment to me; For ye are our glory and joy. 1 Thess. ii. 20.
I have sent you here enclosed, a drop of that honey that I have taken out of the carcase of a lion. Judg. xiv. 5–8. I have eaten thereof myself, and am much refreshed thereby. (Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them, we shall find a nest of honey within them.) The Philistines understand me not. It is something of a relation of the work of God upon my soul, even from the very first, till now, wherein you may perceive my castings down, and risings up: for He woundeth, and His hands make whole. It is written in the Scripture, Isa. xxxviii. 19, The father to the children shall make known Thy truth. Yea, it was for this reason I lay so long at Sinai, Lev. iv. 10, 11, to see the fire, and the cloud, and the darkness, that I might fear the Lord all the days of my life upon earth*, *and tell of His wondrous works to my children. Psalm lxxviii. 3–5.
Moses, Numb. xxxiii. 1, 2, writ of the journeys of the children of Israel, from Egypt to the land of Canaan; and commanded also that they did remember their forty years’ travel in the wilderness. Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness*, to humble thee, and to prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep His commandments, *or no. Deut. viii. 2. Wherefore this I have endeavoured to do; and not only so, but to publish it also; that, if God will, others may be put in remembrance of what He hath done for their souls, by reading His work upon me.
It is profitable for Christians to be often calling to mind the very beginnings of grace with their souls. It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord*, for bringing them out from the land of Egypt. This is that night of the Lord to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations. Exod. xii. 42. O my God (saith *David), Ps. xlii. 6, my soul is cast down within me; therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan*, and of the Hermonites, *from the hill Mizar. He remembered also the lion and the bear, when he went to fight with the giant of Gath. 1 Sam. xvii. 36, 37.
It was Paul’s accustomed manner, Acts xxii., and that, when tried for his life, Acts xxiv., even to open before his judges the manner of his conversion: he would think of that day, and that hour, in which he first did meet with grace; for he found it supported him. When God had brought the children of Israel out of the Red Sea, far into the wilderness, yet they must turn quite about thither again, to remember the drowning of their enemies there, Numb. xiv. 25, for though they sang his praise before, yet they soon forgat his works. Psalm cvi. 11, 12.