A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

56 INSTRUCTIONS TO 11 COMFORTINGgeance upon his conscience, his heavy heart immediatelymelts away in his breast and becomes as water. He faintsand fails, both in the strength of his body and stoutness ofhis mind. His bones, the pillars and master-timbers of hisearthly tabernacle, are presently broken in pieces andturned into rottenness. His spirit, the eye and excellencyof his soul, which should enlighten and make lightsome thewhole man, is quite put out and utterly overwhelmed withexcess of horror and flashes of despair. Oh ! this is itwhich would not only crush the courage of the stoutest sonof Adam that ever breathed upon eaith, but even break theback of the most glorious angel that ever shone in heaven,should he lift up but one rebellious thought against hisCreator ! This alone is able to make the tallest cedar inLebanon, the strongest oak in Bashan (I mean the highestlook and the proudest heart), the most boisterous Nimrod,or swaggering Belshazzar, to bow and bend, to stoop andtremble, as the leaves of the forest that are shaken with thewind.2. In all other adversities a man is still a friend untohimself, favours himself, and reaches out his best considerationsto bring in comfort to his heavy heart. But in thishe is a scourge to himself; at war with himself ; an enemy tohimself. He doth greedily and industriously fetch in asmuch matter as he can possibly, both imaginary and true,to enlarge the rent and aggravate his horror. He gazeswillingly in that false glass which Seitan is wont in suchcases to set before him, wherein by his hellish malice hemakes an infinite addition both to the already unnumberedmultitude and to the too true heinousness of his sins, andwould fain, if he will be led by his lying cruelty, misrepresentto his affrighted imagination every gnat as a camel,every moat as a mole hill, every mole hill as a mountain ;every lustful thought as the most unclean act, every idleword as a desperate blasphemy, every angry look as anactual murder, every intemperate passion as an inex}>iableprovocation, every distraction in holy duties as an absoluterebellion, every transgression against light of conscience asa sin against the Holy Ghost. Nay, in this amazedness ofspirit and disposition to despair he is apt, even of his ownaccord, and with great eagerness, to arm every several sinas it comes into his mind with a particular sting, that itmay strike deep enough and stick fast enough in his alreadygrieved soul. He employs and improves the excellency andutmost of his learning, understanding, wit, memory, to arguewith all subtlety, with mucli sophistry, against the pardonablenessof his sins and possibility of salvation. He woundseven his wounds with a conceit that they they are incurable,