A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

—AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 159please : whether it be glorious and untempted, or discomt'ortablebecause of bodily distempers, and consequentlyuninterpretable by undiscerning spirits ; or mingled of temptationsand triumphs ; or ordinary, and without any greatshow or remarkable speeches, after extraordinary singularitiesof a holy life, which promised an end of special noteand admiration.Wliy may not some worthy heavenly-minded Christianssometimes, by strong mortifying meditations and many conqueringfore-conceits of death in their life-time, make it be^forehand so familiar and easy unto them, and by continualconversing above, and constant peace of conscience,taste so deeply of spiritual joys, that that dreadful passageout of this life, as it may breed no great sense of alterationin themselves, so no extraordinary matter of special observationto others 1CHAP. VIII.The ciivei-s kiuds of Death in Wicked Men.Of the wicked, and those who were ever strangers to themystery of Christ and triith of godliness,(1.) Some die desperately. Though thousands perish bypresumption to one of those who despair, yet some thereare, to whom, upon their beds of death, all their sins areset in order before ihem, and represented to the eye of theirawaked consciences in such grisly forms and so terribly,that at the very first and fearful sight they are presentlystruck dead in soul and spirit, utterly overv/helmed andquite swallowed up with guilty aud desperate horror. Sothat afterward no counsel nor comfort ; no consideration ofthe immeasurableness of God's mercy, of the invaluablenessand omnipotency, if I may so speak, of Christ's bloodshed,of the variety and excellency of gracious promises,of the loss of their own immortal souls, can possibly driveand divert from that infinitely false conceit and cursed cry," My sins are greater than can bepardoned." Whereupon,most miserable and forlorn wretches ! they very wickedlyand wilfully throw themselves into hell, as it were, uponearth, and are damned above ground. Thus the Lord sometimesfor the terror of others, glorifying his own justice, andbringing exemplary confusion upon impenitent obstinacy insin, and wilful opposition to grace, doth in greatest indignationby the hand of divine vengeance unclasp unto them