A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

104 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGI insisted the longer upon this point, because I know it fullwell to be a most universal and prevailing policy of thedevil, whereby he keeps many thousands in his cursed slavery,and from salvation, to confirm as many pastors as hecan possibly, willing enough to drive their flocks beforethem to perdition iii an ignorant or affected prejudice, andforbearance of that saving method of bringing souls out ofhell, mentioned before, and made good with much varietyof evidence ; and to nourish also in the hearts of naturalmen a strong and sturdy dislike, opposition, and ragingagainst downright dealing and those men of God (sufficient,as they say, but falsely and against their own souls, bytheir terrible teaching to drive their hearers to distraction,self-destruction, or despair) who take the only right courseto convert them and to bring them to Jesus Christ as hehimself invites them, to wit, " labouring and heavy laden"with their sins (Matt, xi, 28).Daubers, then, who serve Satan's craft in this kind, andall those who dispense their ministry without all spiritualdiscretion and good conscience, of whom there are toomany, as great strangers to the right way of workinggrace in others as to the woik of grace in themselves ;i say, they are a generation of dangerous men ; adeptsin an accursed art of conducting poor blinded soulsmerrily towards everlasting misery, and setting them downin the very midst of bell, before they be sensible ofany danger, or discovery of their perilous state. Great menthey are with the men of this world, with all those wisefools and sensual great ones, who are not willing to be tormentedbefoie their time, or rather who desire impossiblyto live the life of pleasures now, and yet at last to " die thedeath of the righteous." They have still ready at handmercy and pardon, heaven and salvation for all comers,and all that come near, without so much as a desire to putany difference, or to divide the precious from the vile, wliichis a prodigiously arrogant folly, pernicious in the highestdegree both to their own souls and those they delude.Hear how they are branded in the Book of God, callingthem, "pillow-sewers" under men's elbows (Ezek.xiii, 18);that being laid soft and locked fast in the cradle of security,they may sink suddenly into the pit of destruction beforethey be aware. "Criers of Peace, peace, when there isno peace" (Jer.vi, 14), but horrible stirs ; tumbling of garmentsin blood ; burning and devouring of fire ;" menpleaseis"(Gal. i, 10), who choose rather to tickle theitching ears of their carnal hearers with some frothy, friarlikeconceits, and so smooth great ones in their humours