A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

250 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGwolves they sought and sucked his blood ; and will he shuthis ears, thinkest thou, from thy complaints and groans,who values one drop of his blood to quench thy spiritualthirst at a higher price than the worth of many worlds'?Comfort thyself invincibly. It cannot be.2. In the faintness of faith, and want of feeling.Thou beholdest sometimes a father holding a little childin his arms : now, whether dost thou think is the child safeby its own or by the father's hold 1 It clasps about the fatherwith its little weak hands as well as it can ; but thestrength of its safety is in the father's arm ; nay, and thefather holds the faster when at any time he perceives thechild to have left its hold. Thou art tied as it were untoChrist by a double bond ; first, of the Spirit, and secondly,of faith. Thou layest hold on Christ by faith, and he holdsthee by his Spirit. Now thy infant faith, or after somegood standing in Christianity weakened and sorely woundedin thy present feeling, hath lost its holdfast ; and thereforethou thinkest all is gone, and walkest dejectedly and uncomfortably,as though not any promise in God's book, ordrop of Christ's blood were thine. But assure thyself, beingsound at the heart-root, and " walking in the light, asGod is in the light," thy heavenly Father in this case holdsthee so fast by his Spirit, that no man or devil, not all thepowers of darkness or gates of hell, can possibly pluckthee out of his hand. Nay, the excellency of his power ismost gloriously improved and made more illustrious in thygreatest extremities and extremest spiritual weakness ; andhe holds it his highest honour to hold thee the fastest whenthy hold is gone. Here then and upon this ground thouhast a calling, and mayest comfortably, for he is ever mostloving and tender-hearted in times of temptation to all thatare true of heart, exercise that most excellent act of faith," to believe without feeling :" to believe when the face ofGod doth shine upon thee with sensible refreshing, andwhen thou enjoyest plentiful and pregnant proofs of his favour,is no great matter, no such mastery ; but to believewhen all sense of God's love is gone, and the light of hiscountenance hid from thee, when all go quite cross and contraryin the apprehension of carnal reason, then is thehighest praise ; this is the perfection of faith. The verydull, senseless, and soul-less earth upon which we tread,may teach us to rest and depend upon God in such a case.It is a mighty and massy body, planted in the midst of thinair, and hangs upon just nothing in the world, but onlyupon God's word. By that alone it is there establishedimmoveably, keeps its place most steadily, never stirs an