A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

372 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGfoul and fearful thoughts put into their heads, which theydare not mention for their abhorred monstrousness, neitherremember without trembling. Now by this dreadful ent,'ineof the devil, wliich 1 thus talk of before 1 tell you what itis (and no marvel, for what heart would not willingly retire,or can choose but tremble in treating upon such atheme?)—I mean hideous injections, horrible thoughts, blasphemoussuggestions, monstrous conceits of the most holy,pure, and ever-glorious God, his word, divine truths, theLord Jesus blessed for ever ; or some way or other aboutspiritual and heavenly things, framed immediately by Satanhimself, and with furious violence thrown into ourminds infinitely against our wills, at the grisliness whereofnot only religion but also reason, nay even corrupted natureand common sense stand astonished, and shrink back atthe horror, and abhor them extremely. — Some of God'sdearest children and those that love him best (would youthink hi yet it is too true) are sometimes so pestered withtheir irksome intrusions, that whatsoever they speak, do,hear, read, or think upon, is wrested, perverted, and hellishlyempoisoned with this temptation of blasphemy. Andthey are ordinarily pressed upon them with most importunityand impetuousness, when they are best busied and exercisedin the holiest duties, as in prayer, hearing, or readingthe word, singing of psalms, days of humiliation, &c.In the first place, for a comfortable support in such acase, peruse, ponder well upon, and apply such considerationsand counsels as these —:(1.) In this terrible temptation also thou becomest butconformable to thy Lord and ^Master who bought thee withhis dearest blood, and to many of his blessed saints. Wasthere ever suggestion in conceit, or word, or any possibilityof being like unto this in execrableness and horror, thatthe King of saints, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of theGodhead bodily, should fall down and worship the princeof hell and vilest of creatures'? (Rev. xv, 3 ; Colos. ii, 9.)And yet this most horrible blasphemy was injected into themost holy imagination of Jesus Christ, with which it wasinfinitely more impossible to be any ways tainted or stainedthan the fairest sun-beam with the foulest dirt. But he enduredit, and conquered, and that for our sakes only andsafety, even for such excellent ends as these : — First,That when we are set upon by Satan in the same kind, andso hideously assaulted, that upon the first sense we areready to sink under the sudden fright, and to think thai nonein the world are so but we ;yet in cool blood we may comfortablyrecover ourselves, and presently conceive that our