A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

andAFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 163world, hope lo be saved, desire to be dissolved and go toheaven, &c. They may cry aloud with a great deal ofiormal confidence, " Lord, Lord ; Mercy, mercy in thename of Christ ; Lord Jesus receive our spirits," &c. ; andyet all these goodly hopes, and earnest ejaculations, growingonly from a form, and not from the power of godliness, arebur, as 1 said somewhere before, as so many catcliings andscramblings of a man over head in water. He strugglesand strives for hold to save himself, but he grasps nothingbut water, it is still water which he catches, and thereforesinks and drowns. They are all but as a spider's web,upon wMch, one falling from the top of a house lays holdby the way for stay and support. " He shall lean upon hishouse, but it shall not stand; he shall hold it fast, but itshall not endure" (Job viii, 14, 15). "Oh, how manydescend," saith an ancient father, " with this hope to eternaltravails and torment?" " How many," saith anotherworthy doctor*, "goto hell with a vain hope of heaven,whose chiefest cause of damnation is their false persuasionand groundless presumption of salvation "! Of all the fourkinds of death which ordinarily befal such as are not saved,this is the fairest in show ; but yet of greatest impostureto those about them, and of most pestilent consequence toharden especially all of the same humour that hear of it.(4.) Some die penitently. But 1 mean seemingly so, notsavingly. Many having served tlieir appetites all theirlives and lived in pleasure ; now, when the sun of theirsensual delights begins to set, and the dark midnight ofmisery and horror to seize upon them, would very gladlybe saved. And I blame them not, if they might first livethe life of the wicked, and then die the death of the righteous: if they might have the earthly heaven of the world'sfavourites here, and the heaven of Christ's martyrs in theworld to come. Tliese men are wont in this last extremityto grieve extremely ; but it is but like their "howling upontheir beds," Hos. vii, 14. Because they are pinched withsome sense of present horror and expectation of dreadfulthings, they cry out mightily for mercy ; but it is no otherthan their early seeking, Prov. i, 28. Because distress andanguish is come upon then), they inquire eagerly after God,and would now be gladly acquainted with him ; but justlike them. Psalm Ixxviii, 34, "When he slew them, thenthey sought him : they returned and inquired earlyafter God. And they remembered that God v/as their rock,and the high God their redeemer. Nevertheless they did* Dr. Featlv.