Jeremy Taylor: Anglicans’ Sorrows Relieved, Their Persecutions Turned into Joys

A bit of encouragement from Jeremy Taylor, in Holy Living, for those who are scorned for the disarray of Anglican churches in the West:

I know, my Lord, that there are some interested persons who add scorn to the afflictions of the Church of England; and because she is afflicted by men, call her ‘forsaken of the Lord’; and because her solemn assemblies are scattered, think that the religion is lost, and the church divorced from God, supposing Christ (who was a man of sorrows) to be angry with his spouse when she is like him, (for that is the true state of the error,) and that he who promised his Spirit to assist his servants in their troubles will, because they are in trouble, take away the Comforter from them; who cannot be a comforter, but while he cures our sadnesses, and relieves our sorrows, and turns our persecutions into joys, and crowns, and sceptres.