A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 39m Jeremiah's time; Herodias in John Baptist's time ; andthat other Herodias, improperly called Eudoxia, in .lolmChrysostom's time ; and many thousands even within thepale of the church at all times. Above all, I say, bewareof that crying sin of persecuting the power of godliness,without which never any heart knew what true comfortmeant ;profession of the truth, without which Christ willnot own us at the last day ; conscientious ministers, underwhose unceasing labours we gather our spiritual and heavenlystore against evil times in this harvest of grace ; andthat either with thine heart, by hatred, malice, heart-burning; with thy tongue, by slanders, scoffs, rash censures ;with thine hand, by supplanting, oppression, wrong ; withthy purse, policy, power, misinforming, or any other wayof vexing or violence. If thou wilt needs be wicked, be somore moderately. If there be no help, but thou will go tohell, post not so furiously. If nothing will work, but thouart wilfully bent on destruction, seek at least a iriore tolerabledoom ; for persecutors are transcendents in sin, andshall hereafter be paid home proportionably. Be none ofthem, for such reasons as these —:(1.) All their malice and rancour, all their bitter wordsand scornful jests, all their bloody, merciless mischiefs andmachinations against the power of preaching and God'speople, strike immediately at the face of Jesus Christ."Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou meV (Actsix, 4.)and at the precious ball and apple of God's own eye." For he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of his eye"(Zech. ii, 8). God is our shield (Psalm Ixxxiv, 11). Nowthe shield takes all the blows.(2.) They are hunted many times with furies of conscienceand extreme horror even in this life. J^ashur putblessed Jeremiah in the slocks, but thereupon he had a newname given him, Magor-missabib, Fear round about, lie becamea terror to himself and to all his friends (Jer.XX, 2, 3, 4). Zedekiah smote faithful Micaiah upon theface ; but afterwards, according to that prophetical communication,he was fain to run from chamber to chamber tohide himself (1 Kings xxii, 24, 25). John Baptist's head,which Herod cut off, sate in the eye of the tyrant's consciencewith such grisly forms of guilt and blood, thatwhen he heard of the great things done by (Jhrist, he wasperplexed, and no doubt afraid that John Baptist was risenfrom the dead to be revenged upon him. 1 have heard of aman, who for a time did furiously and desperately set himselfagainst a minister of God ; laboured by all means todisgrace and vex him, both by power and policy ; by slan-