A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

182 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGout of their hearts, cast them out of their consciences, andhold no higher or further estimatioh of them, than of otherand ordinary men, if they forbear to persecute them withthoughts of disdain and contempt.5. The true penitent having smarted under the sense ofDivine wrath, and frighted witii the flames of horror forsin, doth grow fearful for ever after to offend, and withmuch gracious care dreads that " consuming fire." Butthe alien, while he is upon the rack indeed, and hath theheinousness of his sins and hell freshly in his eye, willeasily make many glorious protestations and promises whata rare and resolute convert he will become upon his recovery.But if once the storm be oveiblown, God's handwithdrawn, and his peiinful conscience cast agam into adead sleep by the power, or rather poison of some sensualreceipt, he performs just nothing ; but like a filthy swinewallows again in tiie mire and mud of earthliness and carnality,and again with the beastly dog returns unto andresumes his vomit.6. He that hath savingly passed through the pangs ofsuch spiritual afflictions, is wont to be very kindly affected,most compassionate and tender-hearted to others afflictedwith the same woful terrors and troubles of conscience. Awoman, who hath herself with extraordinary pain experiencedthe exquisite torture of childbirth, is wont to bemore tenderly and mercifully disposed towards another inthe like torment, than she that never knew what that miserymeant ; and is more ready, willing, and skilful to relievein such distresses. It is proportional)ly so in the presentcase ; but the alien being tainted in some measure withthe devil's hateful disposition, is by the heat of his slavishhorror rather enraged with malice than resolved into mercy ;he is rather tickled with a secret content, than touchedwith true commiseration, to see and hear of others plungedinto the same gulf of misery and plagued like himself. Heis much troubled with soleness in suffering, and the singularityof any sorrowful accident. Companionship in cros.>-e,sdoth something allay the discomlorts of carnal men ; sothat sometimes they secretly but very sinfully rejoice (suchis their dogt:,ed devilish disposition) even to see the handof God upon their neighbours. Neither can he in such extremitiesminister any means of help or true comfort at all,either by prayer, counsel, or any experimental skill, becausethe "evil spirit" of his vexed conscience was not drivenaway by any well-grounded application of God's merciesand Christ's blood ; but as Saul's was by music, worldly