A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

asINSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGhave been heard in this case. Either the Son of God mustdie, or all mankind be eternally lost. Then, -wjien^thouart provoked to sin, think seriously and sensibly of the pricethat upon necessity must be paid for it before it be pardoned.11. Sinful pleasures are attended with a threefold bittersting (whereof see my Directions for Walking with God),which though the devil hides from them in the heat of temptation;yet in his seasons, to serve his own turn, he sets themon with a vengeance.12. Compare the vast and invaluable difference betweenyielding to the enticement, and conquering the temptationto sin. For which purpose look upon Joseph and David,two of God's dearest servants, and consider the results.What a deal of honour and comfort did afterward crownthe head and the heart of the one, and what horrible mischiefsand miseries fell upon the family, and grisly horrorsupon the conscience of the other. Survey also the distinctstories of Galeacius Caracciolus and Francis Spira, thanwhich in their several kinds there is nothing left to the memoryof the latter times more remarkable ; and you shallfind in them as great a difference as between a heaven andhell upon earth. The one withstanding unconquerably varietyof mighty enticements to renounce the gospel of JesusChrist and return to popery ;besides the sweet peace of hissoul, attained that honour in the church of God that he isin some measure paralleled even with Moses, and recommendedto the admiration of posterity by the pen of thatgreat and incomparable glory of the Christian world,blessed Calvin*. The other, conquered by an unhappytemptation to turn from the truth of God and our true religionto the synagogue of Satan and abominations of the** scarlet whore," besides the raging and desperate confusionhe brought upon his ov.n spirit, became such a spectacleto the eye of Christendom as hath been hardly heardof.13. Compare the poor, short, vanishing delight of thechoicest sensual, worldly contentment, if thou wilt, of thysweetest sin, with the exquisiteness and eternity of hellishtorments. Out of which might an impenitent reprobatewretch be assured of enlargement after he had enduredthem so many thousand, thousand years as there are sandson the sea-shore, hairs upon his head, stars in the firmament,grass piles upon the ground, creatures both in heavenand earth, he would think himself happy, and as it were* See Crashaw's Life of Caracciolus.