A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

;AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 171and draws a skin over it before his corrosive have consumedthe dead Heth, before he hath opened it vi'ith his tents,ransacked it to llie root, and rent out the core, is so far fromserving, that he procures a great deal of misery to hispatient. For the rotten matter that remains behind willcontinue to rankle and fester underneath, and at lengthbreak out again perhaps, both with more extremity ofanguish and difficulty of cure. They are but mountebanks,smatterers in physic and surgery, in short, but plain cheatersand cozeners, who are so ready and resolute for extemporaryand palliative cures. Sudden recoveries from rooted andold distempers are rarely sound. If it be thusin bodily cures,what a deal do you think of extraordinary discretion,heavenly wisdom, precise and punctual pondering of circumstances,well-advised and seasonable leisure, bothspeculative and experimental skill, heartiest ejaculations,wrestlings with God by prayer for a blessing, is very convenientand needful for a true and right method in healinga wounded conscience ! which doth pass immeasurably allother maladies, both in exquisiteness of pain, tenderness oftouch, deceitfulness of depth, and in highest and greatestconsequence, either for the everlasting health or endlesshorror of an immortal soul. Hence it was that that one ofa thousand and learned doctor in this heavenly mystery *,did so far differ from all daubers with untempered mortarand the ordinary undoing courses in this kind : —" But now coming to the salving of this sore," saith he, "Ishall seem very strange in my cure, and so much the morebe wondered at, by how much in manner of proceeding Idiffer from the most sort of men herein. I am not ignorantthat many visiting afflicted consciences cry still. Oh, comfortthem ! Oh, speak joyful things unto them ! Yea,there be some, and those of the most learned, who in suchcases are full of these and such like speeches : Why are youso heavy, my brother? Why are you so cast down, mysister? Be of good cheer. Take it not so grievously.What is there that you should fear? Cod is merciful;Christ is a Saviour. These be speeches of love indeed ;but they often do the poor souls as much good herein, as ifthey should pour cold water into their bosoms ; whenaswithout further se irching of their sores they may as wellminister a malady as a medicine. For as nutritive and cordialmedicines are not good for every sick person, especiallywhen the body needeth rather a strong purgative than amatter restorative ; and as carminative medicines may for• Greenharo, in his Treatise for an Afflicted Conscience.