A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 27if our souls were therein immortal, and neglecting thosethings which are immortal, as if ourselves after the worldwere but mortal. 2. Let adversity seem what it will ; tohappy men ridiculous, who make themselves merry withother men's miseries, and to those under the cross, grievous;yet this is true, that for all that is past to the very instantthe portions remaining are equal to either. For be it thatwe have lived many years, and, according to Solomon, inthem all we have rejoiced ; or be it that we have measuredthe same length of time, and therein have evermore sorrowed;yet looking back from our present being, we findboth the one and the other, to wit, the joy and the wo,sailed out of sight, and death, which doth pursue us andhold us in chase from our infancy, hath gathered it. Whatsoeverof our age is past, death holds it : so as whosoever hebe to whom prosperity hath been a servant, and the time afriend, let him but take the account of his memory (for wehave no other keeper of our pleasures past), and truly examinewhat it hath reserved either of beauty arid youth orforegone delights, what it hath saved that it might last ofhis dearest affections, or of whatever else the jovial springtimegave his thoughts contentment, then invaluable ; andhe shall find that all the art, which his elder years have,can draw no other vapour out of these dissolutioris thanheavy, secret, and sad sighs. He shall find nothing remainingbut those sorrows which grow up after our fastspringingyouth, overtake it when it is at a stand, andutterly overtop it when it begins to wither ;insomuch aslooking back from the present time and from our now being,the poor diseased and captive creature hath as little senseof all his former miseries and pains, as he that is mostblessed in common opinion hath of his fore-past pleasiiresand delights ; for whatsoever is cast behind us is justnothing. 3. To ponder also profitably upon eternity, thatwe " may apply our hearts unto wisdom," and so improvethis short moment upon earth that it may go well with usfor ever, let us take notice of and lay to heart this onequickening passage, confidently averred by a great writer." If God," saith he, " should speak thus to a damned soul,' Let the whole world be filled with sand from the earth tothe empyrean heaven, and then let an angel come everythousandth year, and fetch only one grain from that mightysandy mountain ; when that immeasurable heap is so spent,and so many thousand years expired, I will deliver thee outof hell and those extremest horrors;' that most miserableforlorn wretch, notwithstandin,^- that he were to lie throughthat inconceivable length of time in those intolerable tor-