A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

—AFFLICTED CONSCIE]\CES. 309of God's free grace for such a work ! I mean the new creation,at which heaven and earth, angels and men, and allcreatures, may stand everlastingly amazed. So sweet it isand admirable, and makes an immortal soul for ever.But to keep myself to the point. Those who complain,as 1 have said, that because the pangs of their new birthwere not, in that proportion they desire, answerable to theheinousness of their former pestilent courses and abominablenessof their foregone ill-spent life, many times suspectthemselves, and are much troubled about the truth oftheir conversion ; may have their doubts and scruples increased,by taking notice of such propositions as these,which divines both ancient and modern letin their penitential discourses —:fall sometimes" Ordinarily men are wounded in their consciences attheir conversion, answerably to the wickedness of theirformer conversation."— " Contrition in true converts is for themost part proportionable to the heinousness of their formercourses. " The more wicked that thy former life hath been,the more fervent and earnest let thy repentance or returningbe*."" Sorrow must be proportionable to our sins. The greaterour sin, the fuller must be our sorrow t."" According to the weight of sin upon the conscience,ought penitent sorrow to be weighty J."" He that hath exceeded in sin, let him exceed also insorrow^.""Look how great our sins are, let us so greatly lamentthem [|."" Let the mind of everyone drink up so much of the tearsof penitent compunction, as he remembers himself to havewithered from God by wickedness H."" Grievous sins require most grievous lamentations**."" The measure of your mourning must be agreeable andproportionable to the sin tt."And we may see these rules represented unto us in thepractice of Manasseh, who being a most grievous sinner(2 Chron. xxxiii, 6), " humbled himself greatly before theGod of his fathers" (ver. 12). In the woman who is calleda sinner (Luke vii, 37) emphatically, and by a kind of singularity,and therefore sorrows extraordinarily (ver. 38),and " wipes Christ's feet with tears." In the idolatrousIsraelites upon their turning unto the Lord (I Sam, vii, 4,* Homil. of Repentance. t Dike on Repentance, chap. iv.t Ambr. ad Viri?. corr. cap. viii. § Idem de Penit. lib. i, cap. ii.IICypr. de Lapsis ad fin. % (iregor. Pastor. Curse, cap. xxx.** Autr. ad Fratr. in ereino. tt Cireenliam's Grave Coausel.