«Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.»

«A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.»

«And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled / In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: / If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister; / Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church: / Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; / Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: / To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: / Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: / Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.»

«But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; / Partly, whilst ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used.»

«(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.) / Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: / But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, / In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; / By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, / By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, / By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; / As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; / As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.»

«And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: / Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me.»

«And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him, / And delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and he made him governor over Egypt and all his house.»

«Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: / Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.»

«Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; / Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, / But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel: / Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.»

«Afflictions sent by providence melt the constancy of the noble minded, but confirm the obduracy of the vile, as the same furnace that liquefies the gold, hardens the clay»