God's Anger Without Affection.

God can't be wrathful: but we may conclude
Wrathful He may be by similitude:
God's wrathful said to be, when He doth do
That without wrath which wrath doth force us to.

God ne'er afflicts us more than our desert,
Though He may seem to overact His part:
Sometimes He strikes us more than flesh can bear;
But yet still less than grace can suffer here.

Through all the night
Thou dost me fright,
And hold'st mine eyes from sleeping;
And day by day,
My cup can say
My wine is mix'd with weeping.

Thou dost my bread
With ashes knead
Each evening and each morrow;
Mine eye and ear
Do see and hear
The coming in of sorrow.

Thy scourge of steel,
Ah me! I feel
Upon me beating ever:
While my sick heart
With dismal smart
Is disacquainted never.

Long, long, I'm sure,
This can't endure,
But in short time 'twill please Thee,
My gentle God,
To burn the rod,
Or strike so as to ease me.

Though Thou be'st all that active love
Which heats those ravished souls above;
And though all joys spring from the glance
Of Thy most winning countenance;
Yet sour and grim Thou'dst seem to me
If through my Christ I saw not Thee.

Where God is merry, there write down thy fears:
What He with laughter speaks, hear thou with tears.

God is all sufferance here; here He doth show
No arrow nockt, only a stringless bow:
His arrows fly, and all His stones are hurl'd
Against the wicked in another world.