A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

368 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGing sorrowful, even unto death " ; and that last rueful bittercry, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken meV*chap xxvii, 46. If Christ Jesus himself then, blessed forever, the " Son of the Father's love," the Prince of Glory ;nay, the glory of heaven and earth, the brightness of everlastinglight, &c. in whom he professeth himself to be wellpleased,and for whose sake only he loves all the sons ofmen which shall be saved, was thus plunged into a matchlessdepth of unknown sorrows and most grievous desertion,let no Christian cry out in the like spiritual desolation (butever immeasurably short of his) and in his fear of being forsaken,that his case is singular, desperate, irrecoverable.For the only, dear, innocent Son of God was far worse inthis respect, and in greater extremity than he is, can, orever shall be.(2.) Amongst other ends for which the Lord Jesus drankso deep, and the very dregs of that bitier cup of his dearestFather's heaviest indignation, this was one : that by aparticular and personal passing through that infinite sea,those extremest dreadful horrors of Divine wrath for oursins, which we all most justly deserved, and would havecaused any mere creature to have sunk down under it intothe bottom of hell, and by an experimental fear and feelingof that bitter and bloody agony, which melted, as itwere, his blessed soul into that mournful cry, " My God,my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" — the comfortableinfluence of the Deity being for the time in some sort restrainedand retired from the human nature, that it mightbe capable and sensible of that anger and anguish, whichwould have holden both men and angels, and all- creatednatures, under everlasting calamity and woe —; 1 say, thatby his own sense and experience of such painful passages,he might learn and know, with a more fellow-feeling andpitiful heart to commiserate his poor afflicted ones in theirspiritual desertions, and with a softer and more compassionatehand to bind up their bleeding souls with his sweetestbalm of tender-heartedness and love, when in such horribledepths they shall thirst and long, and gasp for drops ofmercy and his Father's pleased face :" For in that he himselfhath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour themthat are tempted " (Heb. ii, 18). A woman who hath herselfwith extraordinary torture endured the exquisite painsof child-birth, is wont to be a great deal more tenderly andmercifully afl^ected to another in like case, than she thatnever tried what it is to be terrified with the suddenness,unavoidableness, and terrible pangs of a woman's travail ;and is more skilful, ready, and forward to relieve in such