Our faith in reference to dispensation, is to do two things: 1st, To believe in general, though dispensation be rough, stormy, black, yet Christ is fair, sweet, gracious; and that hell and death are servants to God’s dispensation towards the children of God. Abraham must kill Isaac; yet in Isaac, as in the promised seed, all the nations of the earth are blessed. Israel is foiled, and falleth before the men of Ai; yet Israel shall be saved by the Lord. Judah shall go into captivity, but the dead bones shall live again. .Read the promise in general, engraved upon the dispensation of God. Garments are rolled in blood in England and Scotland. The wheels of Christ’s chariot, in this reformation, go with a slow pace: the prince is averse to peace, many worthies are killed, a foreign nation cometh against us; yet all worketh of the best to those that love God. 2. Hope biddeth us to await the Lord’s event. We see God’s work, it cometh to our senses; but the event that God bringeth out of his work lieth under-ground. Dispensation is as a woman travailing in birth, and crying out for pain ;but she shall be delivered of two men-children,–Mercy to the people of God, Justice to Babylon. Wait on till the woman bring forth, though you see not the children.
—Samuel Rutherford, “The Trial and Triumph of Faith.”