A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

:AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 31down so insatiably, shall turn to gravel and the " gall ofasps in their bowels," to fiery enraged scorpions in theirconsciences; where, lurking in the mean time in the mudof sensuality and lust, breed such a never-dying worm,which if God think fit to awake upon their last bed, is ableto put them into hell upon earth, to damn them aboveground, to gnaw upon their soul and flesh with that unheardofhorror which seized upon Spira's woful heart, who protested,being fully in his right mind, that he would ratherbe in Cain or Jiidas's place in hell than endure the presentunspeakable torment of his afflicted spirit.To beat them from this desperate course of greedy hoardingup such horrible things unto themselves against theirending hour, let them consider —:1. Besides the eternity of joys for the one, and of tormentsto the other, hereafter, the vast and invaluable differencein the mean time, in respect of true sweetness and soundcontentment, between the life of a saint and a sensualista puritan, as the world calls him, and a good-fellow, as heterms himself; — let us for the purpose peruse the differentpassages of one day, as Chrysystom excellently delineatesthem and represents to the life. " Let us produce two men,"saith he, "the one drowned in carnal looseness, sensualities,and riotous excess; the other crucified and dead to suchsinful courses and worldly delights. Let us go to theirhouses and behold their behaviour. We shall find the onereading the scriptures and other good books, taking timefor holy duties and the service of God ; sober, temperate,abstemious, diligent also in the necessary duties of his calling,having holy conference with God, discoursing ofheavenlythings, bearing himself more like an angel than a man.The other, jovial, a vassal of luxury and ease, swaggeringup and down ale-houses, taverns, or other such conventiclesof good-fellowship, hunting after all the ways, means, andmen to pass the time merrily, plying his pleasures withwhat variety he possibly can all the day long, railing androaring as though he were enraged with a devil, though hebe really dead while he is alive : which is accompaniedwith murmurings of the family, discontent of the wife,chiding of friends, laughing to scorn of enemies," &c.Whether of these courses now do you think were the morecomfortable! I know full well the former would be crieddown by the greatest part as too precise, and the latterwould carry it by a world of men. But hear the puritanfather's impartial holy censure, quite cross to the commonconceit and humour of flesh and blood. It is excellent andemphatical, arguing his resolute abomination of the ways of