A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 109ness, affected ness, and unprofitablene.ss of that kind ofpreachini;, which hath been of late years too much takenup in court, university, city, and country. The usual scopeof very many preachers is noted to be a soaring up inpoints of divinity, too deep for the capacity of the people ;or a mustering up of much reading, or a displaying of theirown wits, &c. Now the people bred up with this kind ofteaching, and never instructed in the catechism and fundamentalgrounds of religion, are for all this airy nourishmentno better than abrasa: tahulce, mere table books, ready to befilled up, either with the manuals and catechisms of thepopish priests, or the papers and pamphlets of anabaptists*,"&c.In another place he resembles with admirable fitness theunprofitable pomp and painting of such self-seeking discourses,patched together, and stuffed with a vain-gloriousvariety of human allegations, " to the red and blue floweisthat pester the corn, when it stands in the field ; where theyare more noisome to the growing crop than beautiful to thebeholding eye" — they are King James's own words t;whereupon a little after he tells the Cardinal, that " it wasno decorum to enter the stage with a Pericles in his mouth,but with the sacred name of God. Nor should his lordship,"saith his Majesty, " have marshalled the passage of a royalprophet and poet, after the example of a heathen orator."These things being so, how pestilent is the an of spiritualdaubing! What miserable men are men-pleasers, whobeing appointed to help men's souls out of hell, carry themheadlong and hoodwinked by their unfaithfulness andflatteries towards everlasting miseries? Oh, how muchbetter were it, and comfortable for every man that entersupon and undertakes that most weighty and dreadful chargeof the ministry, a burthen, as some of the ancients elegantlyamplify it, able to make the shoulders of the most mightyangel in heaven to shiink under it, to tread in the steps ofblessed Paul, by using " no flattering words, nor u cloak of covetousness,nor seeking glory of men ; but preaching in seasonand out of season ; not as the scribes, but in the demonstrationof the Spirit and of power ; keeping nothing back thatis profitable, declaring unto their hearers all the counsel ofGod " ; holding the spiritual children which God hathgiven them, their " gloiy, joy, and crown of rejoicing ; stillwatching for the souls of tlieir flock, as they that must give* King James. The reasons of the I'ving's directions fur Preacliingand Preitchers, as I received them from the ha.'id of a public register.t In tiie Preface to his Remonstrance against an Oration of CardinalPerron.L