A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

;AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 165covered, have been rather worse than before. It is true,that true repentance is never too Late, but late repentanceis seldom fruf " for here our sins rather leave us than we:them, as Ambrose says, and as he adds, " Woe be untothem whose sin and life end together." This receivedprinciple among the ancient fathers, that late repentanceis rarely true, implies that it is often false and unsound,and so by consequence confirms the present point. Toomanifold experience also makes it good. Amongst many,for my part I have taken special notice of two. The onebeing laboured with in prison, was seemingly so extraordinarilyhumbled, that a reverend man of God was movedthereby to be a means of his reprieve, whereupon a pardonwas procured. And yet this so extraordinary a penitentwhile death was in his eye, having the terror removed, returnedto his vomit, and some two years after to the sameplace again, as notorious a Belial as he was before. Another,having upon his bed of sickness received in his own conceitthe sentence of death against himself ; and being pressedto humiliation and broken-heartedness, for he had formerlybeen a stranger and an enemy to purity and the power ofgodliness, answered thus: " My heart is broken " ; and sobroke out into an earnest confession of particular sins ; henamed uncleanness, stubbornness, obstinacy, vain-glory,hypocrisy, dissimulation, uncharitableness, covetousness,lukewarmness, iScc. He compared himself to the thiefupon the cross. " And if God," saith he, " restore me tohealth again, the world shall see what an altered man Iwill be." When he was pressed to sincerity and trueheartedness in what he said ; he protested that he repentedwith all his heart and soul, and mind, and bowels, ^:c.and desired a minister that stood by to be a witness of thesethings between the world and him. And yet this manupon his recovery became the very same, if not worse thanhe was before.CHAP. IX.The Remedy iii this Fifth Case. 1. Admonition to the Ministers, to becareful in comforting at that time. 2. To the People, not to deferRepentance till that time.Now since upon this perusal of the different deaths incidentto the godly and the wicked, it appears that some men neversoundly converted, may in respect of all outward representationsdie as confidently and comfortably in the judg-