When you meet with crosses and calamities, say, "Now I see God's justice and God's truth; now I see the hatefulness and hurtfulness of sin; and therefore now I will mourn, not because I am crossed, but because I have deserved this cross, and a worse too."
Especially look to those sins to which your crosses have some reference and respect. Are you crossed in your goods? Think if you did not over-love them and get them unjustly, or if in your children, see if you did not over-love them and cocker them, and so in all things of like kind. In what God smites vou, see if you have not in that sinned against Him, and so frame to lament your sins and to seek help against them.
