Moreover, we do use to loathe that thing we alway have,
And do delight the more in that which mostly we do want:
Affliction urgeth us also more earnestly to crave,
And when we once relieved be, true faith in us it plant,
So that to call in each distress on God we will not faint:
For trouble brings forth patience, from patience doth ensue
Experience, from experience hope, of health the anchor true.
Again, ofttimes God doth provide affliction for our gain,
As Job, who after loss of goods had twice so much therefor.
Sometime affliction is a means to honour to attain,
As you may see, if Joseph's life you set your eyes before:
Continually it doth us warn from sinning any more,
When as we see the judgments just which God, our heavenly King,
Upon offenders here in earth for their offences bring.
Sometime God doth it us to prove, if constant we will be;
As he did unto Abraham: sometime his whole intent
Is to declare His heavenly might; as in John we may see,
When the disciples did ask Christ why God the blindness sent
Unto that man that was born blind? to whom incontinent
Christ said: Neither for parents' sins, nor for his own offence,
Was he born blind, but that God might show his magnificence.

MATHETES.
This is the sum of all your talk, if that I guess aright,
That God doth punish his elect to keep their faith in ure,
Or lest that, if continual ease and rest enjoy they might,
God to forget through haughtiness frail nature should procure;
Or else by feeling punishment our sins for to abjure;
Or else to prove our constancy; or lastly, that we may
Be instruments, in whom his might God may abroad display.