A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

!;24 INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMFORTINGwhen they shall lie upon their last beds like " wild bulls ina net," as the prophet speaks, " full of the wrath of Godsaying in the morning, Would God it were even ; and ateven, Would God it were morning, for the fear of theirheart wherewith they shall fear, and for the sight of theireyes which they shall seel" I say, in what case will theybe then ? Then but my words do fail me here, andso doth my imagination. For as none knows the sweetnessof the spouse's kiss but the soul that receives it, soneither can any one conceive this honor, but he that suffersit. The Lord of heaven in mercy awaken them in the meantime with the piercing thunder of his sacred and saving word,that they may be happily frighted out of their amazed soulmurderingsloth, before they feel in hell those fearful thingswe so faithfully forewarn them ofTo rouse them out of this cruel carnal security, let thementertain in their most serious thoughts such considerationsas these : Consider,1. Why thou camest into this world. There is not somuch as one age past since thou layest hid in the loathedstate of being nothing. Above five thousand years weregone after the creation before there was any news of thee atall ; and thou mightest never have been. God hath noneed of thee : he gave thee a being only out of his ownmere bounty. Infinite millions shall never be, which mighthave been as well as thou. God's omnipotency is equallyable and active to have produced them as thee ; and noparts of that vast abyss of nothing can possibly make anyresistance to al mightiness. And besides being so, that thoumust needs have a being, there is not any creature that everissued out of the hands of God, but thou mightest havebeen that, either for the kind or for the particular. All isone to him, to make an angel or an ant ; to create thebrightest cherub or the most contemptible fly ; for in everycreation no less than omnipotency must needs be the efficient,and no more than nothius: is ever the object. Now what amiraculous mercy was this, that passing by such an unnumberedvariety of incomparably inferior creatures, he shouldmake thee an everlasting soul like an angel of God, capableof grace and immortality, of incorporation into Christ, andfruition of Jehovah himself, blessed for ever !Nay, and yet further, though thou wast to have thebeing of a reasonable creature, yet there was not an hourfrom the first moment of time unto the world's end, hut Godmight have allotted that to thee for thy coming into thisworld ; and therefore thy time might have been within thecompass of all those four thousand years, or thereabouts.