A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 191sies ; aa endless maze of windings, turnings, and hiddenpassages. No eye can search and see its centre and secrets,but that all-seeing One alone, which is ten thousand timesbrigliter than the sun, to which the darkest nook of hell isas the noon-day : and therefore not I nor any man alivecan promise pardon, or apply the promises, but conditionallyupon supposition, "if these things be so and so, as thouhast said." And the sincerity of thy heart and truth of thesehopeful protestations, which we now hear from thee in thisextremity (and I must tell thee by the way, such like rnaybe enforced by the slavish sting of present tenor, not fairlyand freely flow from a true touch of conscience for sin; Isay this may be, though I hope better things of thee)-, thetruth, as 1 said, both of thy heart and these affectionatepromises will appear when the storm is over, and this dismaltempest, which hath overcast and shaken thy spirit withextraordinary fear and astonishment, is overblown. Thycourse of life to come will prove a true touchstone, to trywhether this be the kindly travail of the new birth, or onlya temporary terror during the fit, by reason of the uncouthnessand exquisiteness of this invisible spiritual torture,without true turning to Jesus Christ. If when the nowtroubledpowers of thy soul, which the wound of thy consciencehath cast into much distracted and uncomlortableconfusion, shall recover tlieir wonted calmness and quiet,thou turn unto thine old bias, humour, company, and conversation,it will then be more than manifest that thisfurnace of terror and temptation, wherein thou now liestand languishest, was so lar from working thine heart toheavenliness and grace, that it hath hammered it to morehardness and ungraciousness— from purging and refining,that it hath occasioned more earthliness, epicurism, andraging affections in sensuality and sinful pleasures. But if,when thou art up again and raised by God's merciful handout of the depth of this spiritual distress, into which thehorrible sight and heavy weight of thy sins hath sunk thee ;if then thou express and testify thy true heartedness in thesepresent solemn protestations, made now, as it were, in thyhot blood ; I mean, of thy hatred against sin, by an earnestopposition, watchfulness, and stiiving against all, especiallythat, which in thine unregenerate time stuck closest to thybosom, of thine hunger and thirst after a comfortable fruitionof God's face and favour, by a conscientious and constantpursuit and exercise of all good means and opportunities,of all his blessed ordinances appointed and sanctifiedfor growth in grace, and bringing him nearer unto him ; ofthy future new obedience and Christian walking, by plyinc;