A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 177of refuge ; Joab, being pursued for his life, fled to the tabernacleof the Lord, and laid fast hold upon the hornsof the altar ; a wounded man hies unto the surgeon : proportionablya poor soul, broken and bruised with the insupportablebuithens of all his abominations, bleeding atheart's root under sense of Divine wrath hy the cuttingedge of the sword of the Spirit, managed aright by somemasters of assemblies, chased furiously by the law, sin,conscience, and Satan ; sometimes even to the brink of despair,will be willing in good earnest to cast itself into thesweet, compassionate, inviting arms and embracements ofJesus Christ, broken and bleeding upon the cross for oursins, and so be made his for ever."(2.) For our sanctification, also, it is good for us thatthe Comforter's first work be to v/ork fear in us ; for we arenaturally so frozen in our dregs, that no fire will warm orthaw us. We wallow in our own blood ; we stick fast inthe mire of sin up to the chin, that we cannot stir ; so thatthis fear is sent to pull us violently as it were from our corruptions,to make us holy, and look unto our ways for thetime to come. Now to effect this, sharpest things are best,us are the law and threatenings of condemnation, the openingof hell, the racking of the conscience, and a sense ofsvrath present and to come. So hard-hearted are we bynature, being as the children of the bondwoman, to whomViolence must be used, even as we see a man riding a youngand wild horse to tame him. He will run him against awall that he may make him afraid ; ride him in deep andrough places ; or, if this will not do, take him up to somehigh rock, and bringing him to the brink thereof, he threatenethto throw him down headlong ; maketh him shake andquake, whereby at the last he is tamed. So deals the Lordwith us : he gives us a sight of sin and of the punishmentdue thereunto, a sense of wrath, setteth the conscience onfire, as it were ; fiUeth the heart with fears, horrors, anddisquietness ; openeth hell thus unto the soul, bringeth usto the gates thereof, and threateneth us to throw us in ; andall this to make a man more holy, and hate sin the more."" The cure of the stone in the heart," saith another*,speaking to the same purpose, " is like that of the stone inthe bladder. God must use a sharp incision, and comewith his pulling and plucking instruments, and rend theheait in pieces, ere that sin can be got out of it." " Evenas in a lethargy it is needful the patient should be cast into;i burning fever, because the senses are benumbed, and this• Dyke of Repentance, chap, ii.