A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

74 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGa time from the rage and bitings thereof: but they mayassure themselves, in evil times, when the days are comeupon them wherein there is no pleasure, when the play isdone, when all worldly comforts and comforteis, like runawayservants and drunken serving men, are to seek whenthey have most use and need of them,—I say, that then thetime and turn is come that the worm of conscience, destitutenow for ever of any further satisfaction from sensualsweetness, will ragingly turn upon the soul, devour like alion, gnaw like a vulture, vex eternally.5. If the weight of the whole world were now laid uponany of these bodies here lately buried, it would not stir orgroan. And why ! Because it is naturally dead. Proportionably,though the burthen of sin, far heavier than a mountainof lead, than this mighty and massive earth under ourfeet, lies upon every impenitent soul, ready every hour topress and plunge it into the lowest pit; yet, wretched andbewitched thing, it neither feels any smart, nor fears anyhurt ; it is neither sensible of the present weight, nortroubled for future wrath. And what is the reason ? It isspiritually dead : it is stark " dead in trespasses and sins."The strong man is gone away with all ; and there is nostirring nor sense of this cursed burthen, until either a"stronger than he" lay harids upon this hellish tyrant,disarm him and throw down his holds ; and a mightier voiceof the Son of God than that which made Lazarus come outof the grave, put lil'e into it ; or else that the dreadfulthunder of God's fierce and final wrath, the day of visitationbeing expired, awake it to everlasting woe.6. Though in the mean time thou be extremely miserable,and if thou diest in thine impenitent state this day,thou must most certainly lodge this night in the lake of fireand brimstone among the damned ;yet thy sins for the presentdo not represent to the eye of thy conscience thoseforms of foulness and terror, of which they are naturallyfull, and which without timely repentance thou wilt hereafterfind and feel in them to thine endless grief; becausethou lookest upon them in the false glass of vain-glory,ignorance, self-love, self-conceitedness, painted over bythe devil's daubing, with lewd enticing colours of pleasure,profit, preferment, worldly applause, and other such goodlyand golden outsides. Whereas a true and efli'ectual beholdingthem in the clear crystal of God's pure law, hunted continuallyat the heels with Divine vengeance, all the cursesin this book, and plagues innumerable, internal, external,eternal, and in the bitter passion of Jesus Christ, withoutwhose heart's blood not the least sin that ever was com-