A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

—120 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGtry, and Felix trembling when Paul struck him on theright vein.The reasons why this more particular discovery and denouncingof judgment against a man's principal sin is likeGod assisting with the spirit of bondage to put such life intothe work of the law, are such as these :1. " The sword of the Spirit," which is the word of God,being wielded by the hand of the Holy Ghost, and edged,as it were, with the special power of God's blessing for thecutting asunder of the iron sinews of a stubborn and stonyheart, doth crush and conquer, strike through and break mpieces with an irresistible power, proportioned to the insolencyor easiness of resistance. My meaning is this, asphilosophers say of the lightning, that by reason of theeasiness of the passage, weakness of resistance, porosity ofthe parts, it pierceth through the purse, scabbard, and bark,without any such scorching and visible hurt ; but melts themoney, the sword, rends and shivers the tree, because theirsubstance and solidity doth more exercise and improve itsactiveness and ability : so this spiritual sword, though itstrike at every sin, and passeth through " even to the dividingasunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints andmarrow," yet the hairy pate of the main corruption andmaster sin it wounds with a witness ; it there tortures andteais in pieces with extraordinary anguish and smart,searching and sense ; for that opposeth with the mostflinty iron sinew, to blunt and deaden its edge if it werepossible.2. In consciences regularly and rightly wounded andawakened, sins are wont to bite and sting proportionablyto tlieir heinousness and the exorbitancy of their form.ersensual impressions. Some like a mastiff, some like a scorpion,some like a wolf in the evening. But understand,that spiritual anguish surpasseth immeasurably any corporalpain, therefore conceive of them with a vast disproportion.Now the darling delight or captain sin frighting the heartwith greatest horror, and stinging with extremity proportionableto its former outrages upon conscience, doth by anaccidental power (God blessing the business) give a greatstroke to drive a man to deepest detestation of himself, tothrow him down to the lowest step of penitent dejection, torender more eager his thirsty greediness after pardon andgrace, and at length to terrify him out of his naturalestate.3. A man's principal and most prevailing sin is Satan'sstrongest hold. When he is in danger to be dislodged anddriven by the power of the word out of the other parts of