A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan
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A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

digitalpuritan.net
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13.07.2015 Views

'and:14-2 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGand affliction of conscience for sin, lake notice of such asthese[l.J Terror for sin springs out of the conscience, and fromthe sn^art of a spiritual wound there. Melancholy dwellsand hath its chief residence in the imagination, and uncomfortablyovercasts and darkens the splendour and lightsomenessof the animal spirits in the brain.[2.] The melancholy man is extremely sad, and knowsnut wliy. He is full of fear, doubts, distrust, and heaviness,without any true and just ground, arising only from thedarkness and dir^order of the imagination, the grisly fumesof that black humour in the brain. But a broken heart, inalmost every case, can readily tell you the particular sins,the crying abemination, the legal hammer, and ministerialhand that made it bleed- His trouble is ever upon causeclear and evident, and the greatest that ever brought miseryupon mankind, weight of sin and the wrath of God.A melancholic man will ride many miles, walk many hours,and at length be able to give no account of the exercisediscourse of his mind, or what his thoughts have beenall the while. But he that is troubled in mind for sin can,for the most part, tell with certainty, and recount exactlyto his spiritual physician the several temptations, suggestions,and injections; the hideous conflicts with Satan; hisobjections, exceptions, replies, methods, devices, anddepths, which have afflicted his heavy spirit, since thefirst enlightening, convincing, and affrighting his awakedand working conscience.[3.] The soul may be seized upon with terror of conscienceand spiritual distemper, the body being sound andin good temper; in excellency of health, purity of blood,symmetry of parts, vivacity of spirit, &c. But the horrorsof melancholy are wont to haunt corrupted constitutions ;where obstructions hinder the free passage of the humoursand spirits, the blood is overgross and thick, &c.[4.J Melancholy makes a man almost mad with imaginaryfears, and strange chimeras of horror which have nobeing, but only in the monstrous compositions of a darkenedand distempered brain. He is many times, by the predominancyof that cowardly humour, afraid of every man, ofevery thing, of any thing; of a shadow, of the shaking ofa leaf, of his own hands, of his own heart. He fears whereno fear is, where there is no probability, no possibility,even in the very midst of security. His fear sometimes isso extremely foolish, that he can hear of no fearful thingfallen upon others, but he thinks verily the very same thingshall befal him ; so prodigious, that some of them, thinkinj.^

AFFLICTED C0NSCIENC1

AFFLICTED C0NSCIENC1

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