# “Let us trust our Physician” by John Newton

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2015/08/21/let-us-trust-our-physician-by-john-newton/
- Published: 2015-08-21T11:00:52-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“If the Lord is pleased to sanctify the infirmities to which our present mortal 
frame is subject, we shall have cause to praise Him at least, no less for the bitter
than the sweet.

I am convinced in my judgment, that a cross or a pinch somewhere or other, is so
necessary to us, that we cannot go on well for a considerable time without one.

We live on an enchanted ground, are surrounded with snares, and if not quickened
by trials, are very prone to sink into formality or carelessness. It is a shame 
it should be so, but so it is, that a long course of prosperity always makes us 
drowsy.

Trials therefore are medicines, which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes,
because we need them; and He proportions the frequency and the weight of them to
what the case requires.

Many of His people are sharply exercised by poverty, which is a continual trial 
every day, and all the year round. Others have trials in their families.

They who have comfortable firesides, and a competence for this world, often suffer
by sickness, either in their own persons, or in the persons of those they love.

But any, or all of these crosses, are mercies, if the Lord works by them to prevent
us from cleaving to the world, from backsliding in heart or life, and to keep us
nearer to Himself.

Let us trust our Physician, and He will surely do us good. And let us thank Him 
for all His prescriptions, for without them our soul-sickness would quickly grow
upon us.”

–John Newton, _[The Aged Pilgrim’s Thoughts Over Sin and the Grave, Illustrated in a Series of Letters to Walter Taylor, Never Before Published, by the Rev. John Newton](https://books.google.com/books?id=RdkGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA34#v=onepage&q&f=false)_(
London: Baker and Fletcher, 1825), 33-34.

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