A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

338 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGaffairs of heaven and salvation of souls, to receive fromthem some light and direction to regain her love ; but itwill not yet be (ver. 3). No comfort comes by all or anyof these means ; no feeling of God's favour and formerpeace for all this various and solicitous seeking and pursuit.For God may sometimes purposely restrain his quickeninginfluence from the means, and recal as it were to the wellheadthose refreshing rivers of comfort, which ordinarilyflow through his own holy ordinances as so many blessedconduits of grace into humble hearts ; that we may fetchthem more imm.ediately from the fountain, the boundlesssea of all heavenly treasures and true peace, and so withmore humility, sense of self-emptiness, reverence, andpraise, acknowledge from whence we have them."It was but a little that I passed from them," saith thedeserted soul, "but I found him whom my soul loveth "(ver. 4). When no means would bring him, but that shehad passed through the use and exercise of them all, and hewould not be found; he after, at length, comes upon hisown compassionate accord, and enlightens her dark anddisconsolate state with the shining beams of his gloriouspresence, and fills her plentifully with joy and believingagain ; that so no use, variety, and excellency of means,but his own free mercy and goodness, might be crowned withthe glory of it.Let every Christian, by the way, take notice of and treasureup ihis point ; it may serve him in some spiritual extremityhereafter. God may sometimes withdraw and delay hiscomfort, to draw his children through all the means, whichwhen they have passed without prevailing, he after (andimmediately when he so pleases) puts to his helping hand,that they may not attribute it to the means, though neverso excellent, but to the mercies of God, the only well-springboth of the first plantation, continuance, and everlastingne^,sof all spiritual graces and true comforts in all thosehappy ones which shall be saved.Why doth the Lord let us use all the means, and yet notfind him in them 1That we may know he only cometh when he will, nothingmoving him but his own good pleasure.Fifthly. The world sometimes, that mighty enemy to thekingdom of Christ, aided underhand by the covetous corruptionof our false heart and the devil's craft (for ordinarilyin all assaults and overthrows Satan is the bellows, theworld the wildfire, our corruptions the tinder, and theprecious souls of men those goodly frames which are fearfullyset on fire and blown up), doth wrestle so desperately