“Let your afflictions be what they will, there is not one of you, but has more mercies than afflictions. Objection. You will say, ‘Yes, but you do not know what our afflictions are such as you do not conceive of, because you do not feel them.’
Answer. Though I cannot know what your afflictions are, yet I know what your mercies are, and I know they are so great that I am sure there can be no afflictions in this world as great as the mercies you have. If it were only this mercy, that you have this day of grace and salvation is continued to you: it is a greater mercy than any affliction. Set any affliction beside this mercy and see which would weigh heaviest; this is certainly greater than any affliction.
That you have the sound of the Gospel still in your ears, that you have the use of your reason: this is a greater mercy than your afflictions. That you have the use of your limbs, your senses, that you have the health of your bodies; health of body is a greater mercy than poverty is an affliction. No man who is rich, if he is wise, and has a sickly body, would not part with all his riches that he might have his health.
Therefore your mercies are more than your afflictions.”
–Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1648/2002), 173.
