X. TRIBULATION.

I FIND two sad etymologies of tribulation. One from tribulus, a three-forked thorn, which intimates that such afflictions, which are as full of pain and anguish unto the soul as a thorn thrust into a tender part of the flesh is unto the body, may properly be termed tribulations.

The other from tribulus, the head of a flail, or flagel, knaggy and knotty, (made commonly, as I take it, of a thick black thorn,) and then it imports, that afflictions falling upon us as heavy as the flail threshing the corn are styled tribulations.

I am in a strait which deduction to embrace, from the sharp or from the heavy thorn. But, which is the worst, though I may choose whence to derive the word, I cannot choose so as to decline the thing; I must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. [Acts xiv. 22.]

Therefore I will labour, not to be like a young colt, first set to plough, which more tires himself out with his own untowardness (whipping himself with his misspent mettle) than with the weight of what he draws: and will labour patiently to bear what is imposed upon me.