A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 19fountain of original corruption, which fill it with many distractionsand tumultuations of hell. But now, if besidesthis inward boiling it be also tossed with outward troubles,what a miserable creature is a carnal man 1 Even as thesea, if besides its internal agitations by the restless motionsof estualion, dissension, revolution, and reflection, it bealso outwardly troubled with storms and tempestuous winds,how rageful and roaring will it be 1 But the other is like astrong immovable mountain that stands impregnable againstthe rage of wind and weather ; and all the cruel incursionsand ungodly oppositions made against it, either by men ordevils, are but like so many proud and swelling waves whichdash themselves against a mighty rock, — the more boisterouslythey beat against it, the more are they broken andturned into a vain foam and froth. Come what will, hisheart is still in his breast, and his resolution as high asheaven.Pestilent then is that principle of Machiavei (one notto be named but by way of detestation), and savoursrankly of cursed atheism, whereby he leaches in sense andsum ; that " heathenish religion did inspire her worthies ofold with invincible and victorious spirits ;but Christian religionbegets effeminacy, dejections, and fears." He speaksto this purpose, which to me seems strange, that such aprofound professor of the depths, or rather devilishness ofpolicy, should doat so sottishly :—and yet it is no suchstrange thing, for many times we may observe, that deepestpolicy, by the curse of God upon it for opposition to goodness,turns into extremest folly : and all counsels and politic constitutionsagainst Christ are but the brainless infatuationsof Ahithophel.For that which he holds is strongly contradictory both tocommon sense and a thousand experiences to the contrary.For the first, and in a word, let that great master of mischiefand of most abhorred atheistical principles of state tell me,whether a real assurance of a crown of life and endless joysin another world be not more powerful to raise a n,an'sspirit to the highest pitch of undaunted nobleness of spiritand unconquerable resolution, than a vain breath of immortalfame among miserable men after this life 1 and in thislies the sinew of his proof. For the second, let the acts ofthe ancient Jews be impartially v/eighed, from whose magnanimityin causes of most extreme hazard those strangeand unwonted resolutions have grown, which for all circumstances,says a great divine, no people under the roof ofheaven did ever hitherto match : and that which did alwaysanimate them was their mere religion. Let the chronicles