A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 89thou fallest into that sin, thou art fallen into hell, if Godlielp not out.19. Never be the bolder to give way unto any wickedness,to exercise thy heart with covetousness, cruelty, ambition,revenge, adulteries, speculative wantonness, undeanness,or any other solitary sinfulness, because thou art alone,and no mortal eye looks upon thee. For " if thine heartcondemn thee, God is greater than thy heart, and knowethall things;" and will condemn thee much more. If thyconscience be as a thousand witnesses ; God, who is theLord of thy conscience, will be more than a million of witnesses;and thou mayest be assured, howsoever thoublessest thyself in thy secrecy, that what sin soever is nowacted in the very retiredst corner of thine heart, or anyways most solitarily by thyself ; though in the meantimeit be concealed and lie hid in as great darkness as it wascommitted, until that last and great day, yet then it mustmost certainly appear, and be as legible on thy forehead asif it were written with the brightest sun-beam upon a wallof crystal. Thou shalt then in the face of heaven and earthbe laid out in thy true colours, and without confessing andforsaking while it is called to-day, be before angels, men,and devils, utterly, universally, and everlastingly shamedand confounded.20. Consider the resolute resistance and mortified resolutionsagainst sin and all enticements thereunto of many,upon whom the sun of the gospel did not shine with suchbeauty and fulness as it doth upon us; neither were somany heavenly discoveries in the kingdom of Christ madeknown unto them as our days have seen. For upon ourtimes (which makes our sins a great deal more sinful) hathhappily fallen an admirable confluence of the saving lightand learning, experience and excellency of all former ages,besides the extraordinary additions of the present, whichwith a glorious noontide of united illuminations doth abundantlyserve our turn for a continued further and fullerillustration of the great mystery of godliness and secrets ofsanctification. Hear Chrysostom ": But I think thus, andthis will I ever preach, that it is much more bitter to offendChrist than to be tormented in the pains of hell." He thatwrites the life of Anselm, saith thus of him ; "He fearednothing in the world more than to sin. My consciencebearing me witnes 1 lie not ; for we have often heard himprofess, that if on the one hand he should see corporallythe horror of sin, on the other the pains of hell, and mustnecessarily be plunged into the one, he would choose hellrather than sin. And another thing also no less perhapsI 3