Another Short Treatise on Comforting an Afflicted Conscience

Another shorte Treatise belonging to the Comfort of an afflicted Conscience.

In all afflictions God's children must look to the end: they are to desire to profit by them, and in them to seek the way of perfect comfort and consolation. Which that they may find, they must know that the afflictions of the godly last but a while; they serve them but for salves and medicines; the end of them is always happy. In them they are not only preserved, and purified from many sins: but also much beautified with the image of Jesus Christ, who is the eldest Son in the house of God. Again the cross of true Christians is the sweet and amiable call of God to repentance, in that he puts us in mind thereby to bethink us of our debts: because we are given to think the day of payment is yet far off; yes we fall asleep until our turn be ended, and while God lengthens our days waiting for our repentance, we never think of our sins until the hour come wherein we perish with shame. The best meeting then with the Lord's visitation, is without delay and in sincerity to pray for our sins to be pardoned. For therefore does the Lord oftentimes shackle us the more with the chains of his chastisements, because we are more careful to be unburdened of our sickness, than to be freed from our sin: which we the rather are loath to confess, because we would not be espied, to be in the wrath of God. Others there be that hearing of their sins in the time of their afflictions, will acknowledge indeed their infirmities to be the mother of such a brood: yet they have no true remorse to restrain themselves from sin, because they have but a confused conceit thereof, and though their ship be never so much tossed and turmoiled, yet think they not that God holds the stern. These men if God bear with them, do as it were settle in their lees, and are as it were soaked in their sins. For prosperity is a drunkenness, to cast ourselves into a dead sleep, and when the Lord sets us alone, we cease not to soothe up ourselves, bearing ourselves in hand, that we are in God's favor, and that he loves us, because he scourges us not. And thus reckless we are while we measure God's love according to our sense and humor. Wherein we bewray our ignorance of the exercise of the cross, in that affliction is the mother of humility, humility breeds repentance, and repentance obtains mercy. Some also there are who usually while the fearful judgment of God is before their eyes, either in themselves or in others, have a few glancing motions, and starting cogitations of their sins and of Christ his passion: yet at all other times their minds are so clasped up from thinking of temptations, and their hearts so locked up from foreseeing or forethinking of judgments, that they feel no godly sorrow. They mock the mourning days of the elect, as of them that be of a melancholy nature; they make a sport of sin, as little remembering the sting which will either prick them to the heart blood most fearfully in the hour of death, or meet them with griping agonies in the day of their visitation more speedily. But happily they think they have given good testimony and word of their repentance and remembrance of God, when they give one deep sigh and away, and pass over God's heavy indignation as over burning coals. So that while the Lord in prosperity affords large pennyworths of his love to them, they dally with his majesty, and make a sport of his mercy. All which imperfections may be better corrected, if in our deepest rest with a reverent and humble fear of God's judgments, we did wait for the day of our trial, and prepare ourselves to the Lord's visitations, as they who by the writing of their own conscience do acknowledge themselves by just title to be fosterers thereof: for the feeling of God's mercy must come from the sight of our misery by sin; which being pardoned, we shall soon have our infirmities healed. Therefore let us first learn to cleanse our souls from sin, and then to sustain the sores of our body. Sure it is that if we have suffered our hearts to be harrowed with the rake of God's judgments, (as occasion from the Lord has been given) that we are become soft and well exercised in the fear of God: we shall come to the feeling of our sins, the sense whereof; if it bring as it were a sickness to the body and a corsey to the soul, it is an undoubted earnest of our regeneration, and happy are we if we find ourselves so diseased and troubled with our sins, that we can hardly (being in the skirmish and agony) make any difference between the motions to any evil, and the consent to the same: for oftentimes evil motions do so possess the souls of God's children, sucking down so strongly in them that though they weep, pray, and meditate (which be the last means and remedies to ease and cure them) yet though they feel them with irksomeness and loathsomeness, as we feel sickness in our bodies: yet those motions will be continually in them without diminishing, the delight only excepted. Therefore for our comfort herein, we are not to martyr ourselves with disquietness of mind, because we are so pestered, thronged with wicked motions and assaults, but rather let us quiet ourselves, and not suffer ourselves to be hindered with sickness either of body or mind: by means whereof we should become more unprofitable to ourselves, and the whole church of God. For the godly shall not be so freed from sin, but that they shall be assaulted with evil motions, suspicions, delusions, vain fancies and imaginations; the body of sin shall never be from us so long as we live. For the scum thereof is almost continually boiling and walloping in us, foaming out such filthy froth and stinking savor into our minds, that it is not only detestable to the mind regenerate and renewed by the Spirit of God, but also it would make abashed the very natural man, to look into so loathsome a sty of sin, and sinkhole of iniquity. Yes it makes us often to quail, and if it were possible, it would corrupt the very part regenerate. For mighty is the power, and raging is the strength of sin. Neither for all this must we cease to sorrow for our sins, nor despair on the other side, although our sorrow be but small. For if we be sorrowful for the hardness of our hearts, if we can be grieved for that we are no more grieved for our sins, if we can but sigh and groan because we feel our iniquities; it is so much a greater comfort to us, as it is a greater testimony that our hearts are not altogether hardened: so that if we feel sorrow indeed, although we weep not, yet we may gather comfort, considering that this sorrow is for sin with a love and hunger after righteousness: yes if our assaults be distrust, pride, arrogancy, ambition, envy, concupiscence, as whole as the fire in the furnace all our days, and though Satan lays out oil in great measure and out of measure, that it is the wonderful mercy of the Lord that we stand; and though our prayers be dull and full of wearisomeness, if the striving and straining of ourselves to goodness be so hard, that we know not whether we strive for fear of punishment or for love of so good a Father: yet if we feel this in ourselves that we would fain love the Lord, and be better, and being wearied and tired with our sins, long gladly to enjoy the peace of righteousness, and desire to please God in a simple obedience of faith; then let us comfort ourselves; there is no time too late to repent in. For he comes quickly to Christ (although in the hour of death) that comes willingly, and in a desire of a better life: however sin and Satan at that time would especially persuade him. For as the humming bee having lost her sting in another, does still notwithstanding make a fearful and grievous noise by her often buzzing about us, but is nothing able to hurt us: so sin and death, having lost their stings in Christ Jesus, do not cease at all, even in the height of the parching heat of our consciences, to make a murmuring: and with furious storms of temptations to terrify us and our consciences, albeit they can never sting us. Therefore if Satan charge our consciences with sin (if we can feel the things a little before mentioned, in our consciences) let us bid him, not tell us what we have been, but what we would be. For such we are by imputation as we be in affection, and he is now no sinner, who for the love he bears to righteousness, would be no sinner. Such as we be in desire and purpose, such we be in reckoning and account with God, who gives that true desire and holy purpose to none but to his children whom he justifies. Neither undoubtedly can the guiltiness of sin break the peace of our conscience, seeing it is the work of another who has commended us as righteous before God, and saved us. It must indeed be confessed, that our own works will do nothing in the matter of justification, which from Christ, and in Christ is freely given to us: it must be granted that in ourselves we are weaker than that we can resist the least sin, so far off is it, that we can encounter with the law, sin, death, hell and Satan: and yet in Christ we are more than conquerors over them all. When the law accuses you because you have not observed it; send it to Christ and say, there is a man that has fulfilled the law: to him I cleave, he has fulfilled it for me, and has given the fulfilling of it to me; I have nothing to do with you, I have another law which strikes you down, even the law of liberty which through Christ has set me free. For my conscience which henceforth serves the law of grace, is a glorious prince to triumph over you. If sin come and would have you by the throat, send it to Christ, and say, as much as you may do against him, so much right you shall have against me. For I am in him, and he in me: therefore (O sin) I am righteous through my Christ, which is a condemning sin, to condemn you which are a condemned sinner. If death creep upon you and attempt to devour you, say to it, Christ has overcome you, and opened to me the gates of everlasting life: you would have killed him, with the sting of sin, but the same being of no force, your purpose (O death) has failed, and he being my life, is become your death. If Satan summon you to answer for your debts, send him also to Christ and say, that the wife is not suable, but the husband: enter your action against Christ mine husband, and he will make you a sufficient answer: who then shall condemn us? Or what judge shall daunt us, seeing God is our judge and acquitted us, and Christ was condemned, and justifies us? He is our judge that wills not the death of a sinner; he is our man of law who to excuse us, suffered himself to be accused for us. O gluttonous hell where is your defense? O cruel sin, where is your tyrannous power? O ravening death where is your bloody sting? O roaring Lion, why do you fret and foam? Christ my law fights against you O law, and is my liberty. Sin against you O sin, and is my righteousness: Christ against you O devil, and is my Savior? Death against you O death and is my life. You did desire to pave my way to the burning lake of damned souls: but contrary to your will, you are constrained to lift up the ladder whereby I must ascend into the new Jerusalem. Therefore if we shall find ourselves forsaken of God, so as we perceive nothing but matter of despair, let us still hold our own; and in the certainty of our faith stay ourselves, seeing Christ is given us of God that he might extinguish sin, triumph over the law, vanquish death, overcome the devil, and destroy hell, for our only comfort and consolation. But peradventure some will say, my faith is weak and cold, and my conscience is as a flaming lamp and burning furnace: I fear the Lord will still pursue me with his wrathful indignation: you do well to fear, but fear and sin not.

For fear which subdues the security of the flesh, is in all most requisite, in that the weaker we are in ourselves, the stronger we are in God. But that fear is dangerous, which hinders the certainty of faith, in that it encourages our enemy more fiercely to set upon us; when we (coming into the camp) will cast away our armor especially which should defend us. Comfort yourself, the Lord will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed, he looks not on the quantity but on the quality of our faith. For as a good mother does not reject her child because through some infirmity it is weak, feeble and not able to go alone, but rather does pity and support it lest peradventure it should fall, and recompenses that with more motherly affection, which in her child is wanting by occasion: in like manner the Lord God our most gracious father does not cast us off, because through our imperfections we are unable or afraid to draw nearer to the throne of grace; but rather pities us, and seeing us a far off desirous to come to him, meets us by the way, and by grace and strength of his own hand, directs our steps to his kingdom. And as he which freely purposes to give a wedge of gold, will not withdraw his gift because the hand of him that should receive it, is weak, troubled with the gout, palsy, or leprosy, so that by any means, though in great weakness, he be able to hold it: even so the Lord purposing in free mercy to bestow on us an immortal weight of glory, will not deprive us of it, though many filthy blemishes have polluted and weakened our faith, so that in any small measure we be able to take hold of his promises. Neither are we to look on our faith which the Gospel has called us to, because we never believe as we ought; but rather on that which the Gospel offers and gives, that is on God's mercy and peace in Christ: in whose lap if we can lay our heads with Saint John, then we are in felicity, security, and perfect quietness. Contrariwise there be some, who (notwithstanding that a tormented conscience is a stinging serpent, that it were much better that all the creatures rose up against us, every one bringing their bane; then once to come before the dreadful face of God) are so blockish that they are wholly resolved into hardness. If they be pricked with sickness, they cry alas; if they be pinched with poverty you can complain: but as for the torment of mind they cannot skill of it: and even to talk of a bruised, contrite and broken heart, is a strange language. For proof whereof our consciences are rocked asleep so that not one among a thousand knows what it is to be pressed and harrowed with the rake of God's judgments. But blessed are they that to their own salvation feel this in their bodies, while sin may be both punished and purged. For though God spare us for a time, yet we know what he keeps for our end. Therefore it is the best for us to run to the Lord in this life with a troubled mind, lest we tarry till the Lord have locked us up with the heavy fetters of desperation, when he shall summon us to the bar of his judgment, in the sight of his Angels, and impanelling the great inquest of his Saints against us, shall denounce our fearful and final sentence of eternal condemnation, for we see many that have been careless and have made good cheer all their life long, yes, and when men have labored to make them feel the judgments of God, they have turned all to mockery, but whose jollity the Lord has so abated when they draw towards death, that in stead of resting and sporting (whereunto they had been given) they have felt the terror of death, hell, and damnation, and lapping up their joys in final desperation, have forced out cursings against their filthy pleasures. Therefore if we in the tempest of our temptations will sail a right course, neither shrinking nor slipping into the gulf of desperation, neither battering our bark against the rock of presumption; let us in a contrite spirit cry to the Lord: Have mercy upon me, heal my soul for I have sinned against you, forgive all mine iniquities, and heal all mine infirmities. You heal those that are broken in heart and bind up their sores: why are you cast down my soul, and why are you disquieted within me, wait on God, for I will yet give him thanks, he is my present help, and my God. Yet my soul keep you silence before God, of him comes my salvation, he is my strength, therefore I shall not much be moved, his mightiness is enough to give me courage, yes and shall be even when I am forlorn, I know that the diminishing of my body, goods, friends, or any other thing is a calling of me, to that which never shall diminish nor decay. I believe that my Lord and my God allures me daily there; that I might not doubt that when my body is laid in the grave, and there consumed as it were to nothing, yet notwithstanding my soul resting in the bosom of the Lord, shall return to me and shall rise to glory: even as it (resting in this life, in the mercies of Christ) did rise to grace. Verily I see, and that with joy, that my flesh must go to decay for look what freshness soever was in it, it diminished day by day. And I need not go far to seek for death, for I feel not so small an infirmity in my body, but the same is to me a messenger of dissolution. Yet for all this I shall see my God, and when I am covered in the belly of the grave with molds, I am assured, that he will reach me his hand to lift me up again to the beauty of his inheritance: so that this small cottage and shed of leaves, being brought to the grave, shall be carried into an incorruptible tabernacle. Thus communing with our own hearts, and being still in the peace of a good conscience, concerning our outward sufferings, we shall find that the Lord by his fatherly and loving chastisements, intends nothing more than to prove our obedience, as good reason it is that he should, and to confirm our faith, as also is most necessary. Howbeit still as I said, he uses a fatherly correction, that is, in mercy, measure, and judgment. For as he strikes us down in anger for our sins with the one hand, so he raises us up again in love for our salvation with the other hand. For albeit his corrections be wearisome wounds to flesh and blood, yet are they sovereign medicines to the soul and conscience, especially when the Lord gives us that privilege of his children, that by his holy Spirit he does overmaster us, lest that finally we should be his judge, and he not ours. And for this cause the Lord is often times provoked to put on (as it were) a contrary face, and to lock us up in a prison of adversity, to restrain us from the liberty of our sins, which Satan fain would make us violently to rush into. And surely though the wisdom of the flesh persuades us that nothing is better than to be spared and not to be espied when the Lord calls us to reckoning; yet the Spirit showing our desperate estate, without the fire of affliction, and bolter of adversity, teaches us that we cannot of all the blessings of God sufficiently esteem this, being the mother of humility, and nurse of true repentance. Again, the Lord fits us often by inward temptations and outward crosses, to flit us from the stake of security and untowardness to good works; lest in time we should lose the experience of our knowledge and faith in Christ, and seek some easier kind of life for flesh and blood. Neither can we truly repent, until by some cross we know this world to be a place of sorrow, and not of mirth and delight. For so long as we make our prosperity a bulwark to beat down all harms, we are to look for adversity to beat down the high sail of our proud hearts, whereby we gad after our own lusts, and leave the anchor of peace, which is our trust in God. Let us learn then, when the world begins to favor us, and we have as it were a hundred thousand soldiers, to bear us up; not to be secure; for there is nothing more easy for a man, than for to make himself believe that he shall always continue in happy estate, and think he shall die in the nest. But we must be as birds on a bough, to remove at God's pleasure, and that without resistance when the Lord shall visit us. And because we are given too much to think that we have the things in our own right, which we hold of the free goodness of God: we are taught in affliction how heinous unthankfulness it were to bind the Lord continually to entertain us in this life at so full charge and cost, without respect of his free and undeserved gifts: or to hold plea against, and sue him as it were by an obligation, at whose hands we ought to beg daily; and at whose gate we receive all our maintenance: or to make a rent charge of all that which he gives of his free liberality. Thus in the end we make a challenge of ownership of God's gifts, and make account to have their company to the grave, whereby we provoke the Lord often to prove to our faces, that all that we have is but lent and borrowed. Let us then have such an eye to every blow, that whenever the Lord shall lay any cross upon us, we be ready to receive it and to yield up our bonds to him, the condition whereof is, that we be ready to remove whenever he pleases, knowing that God's providence forces us always to the best, and as most may make for the hastening of our souls to our everlasting inheritance. Let us learn not to reckon without our host, and that we hold our prosperity of the Lord not in fee simple, but as tenants at will, that is, from day to day, resigning to God the sovereignty of revoking us when it pleases him. Thus it becomes the Lord to change our estate that we be not ensnared in the gifts of prosperity, and become so foolish as not to keep on our way to the heavenly life. Our natural inclination is to forget that we are on earth as pilgrims; to leap up into the clouds; and to promise to ourselves the whole course of our lives to be in prosperity; and so long as God lets us alone at our ease, we take ourselves (as it were) to be petty gods. But when we see ourselves shut up, and know not what will be the end of our misery, finding ourselves to be entertained in this life but as journey men, waged for the present day, but not knowing what will become of us the day following: we desire to take our rest in the bosom of God's providence, and so much we strike our sails the lower, when the Lord proclaims war with our secure prosperity: which persuades us that we shall live for ever, and drives us from bethinking us of our miseries and frailties. Therefore let us cut out our prosperity by the pattern of humility, and in our best estate, put ourselves in readiness to suffer adversity, and when we are well, to look for worse, and keep a good watch when God handles us most gently, that in abounding we may foresee our wants, in health our sickness, and in prosperity our calamity: concerning things of this life the faithful are to stand in a doubt, that that which they hold with one hand, may be taken away with the other. We must not think that we shall ever be shut up in a mew, so that we should see no cross: but we must lay open ourselves to receive stripes from the Lord, knowing that our least cries will stay his greatest scourges. Let us love to be assaulted, but not unmeasurably because God will assist us. Let us look to fall, but on our knees, because God's hand does hold us up. Let us look to be humbled but in mercy, because the Lord sustains us, and as we are assured where misery hems us about on every side, to have an out-gate in every danger; so it is our part continually to confess before the Lord, that we ever give new occasions that he should follow us with new punishments; and that our sins do often shake off the wings of God's mercy, under the which we have been long comforted. For God's children acknowledge themselves without ceasing, that God has rods in a readiness (though they see no present evil) to beat them from their sins: and bend all their care, how they may rather suffer adversity to God's glory, than to sleep securely in prosperity to their own pleasure. Now when the Lord does, as it were hold us on the rack for these causes before named, we must pray to him, that (however he keeps us in the press) we may have a breathing while to consider our days spent in pleasure, and to examine our unthankfulness, which shuts up the door of God's mercy from us. And because our afflictions are the sorer when they come the nearer to the soul, we may with ourselves conclude to hold on the way of our thorough-fare and though we see nothing but thorns of temptations, and briars of evil affections, so as we must be fain to leap over hedges, rocks, and ditches; yet must we not cease to continue in God's service. For if that were not, what trial and examination of our faith should there be, were we as in a fair meadow that we might run on a long by the water side in a shade, and that there might be nothing but pleasure and joy all our life time: who could vaunt that he had served God with good affection? But when God does send us things clean contrary to our desires, that we must be fain one while to enter into a quagmire, and another while to march upon ragged rocks and stones; then we shall have the use of a well exercised mind in prayer, in repentance, and in contempt of this life. And why does the Lord some time suffer us to pine away, and to languish in continuance of grief, seeing that he could clean rid us at the first, doubtless to this end, that we might confess his mercy more freely, and bite of his justice more sharply. Let us now learn to hold all the passions of impatience in bondage, both by comparing our evils with the wonderful mercies of God, and our small sufferings with the intolerable conflicts of our forefathers. For there is no greater cause of our despairing under the cross, than when Satan persuades us: that never any were handled so roughly, or else would bear us in hand, that although God afflicted the faithful that have been before us, yet they were not so weak as we. But let us remember that God has so pinched his servants, even them whom he loved, and whose welfare was dear and precious in his sight, and has often brought them to such extremities, as they were not able to look up any more, nor wist how to speak nor how to hold their peace. Therefore lest our infirmities should overmaster us, and when temptations are fierce upon us, we know not where to become: let us call to mind the Saints of God, who were constrained with sighs and groans to stoop under the hand of God; whose martyrs and tormented children ought to be our looking glasses, to the end that by them we may learn, that according as God deals forth the gifts of the Spirit, thereafter does he send greater afflictions; both to make them the more esteemed, and also to cast up a more plentiful fruit of their faith. How did God deal with Abraham, not a common man, but rather an angel, the tenth part of whose sufferings would make a stout heart to quail. How was David the servant of God, exercised in God's school, who felt all God's darts, and had all his arrows shot at him. Thus it is requisite that God's graces should not be idle in his children, but set on work by afflictions, whereby they may be known in due time and place. How did God play the lion with Hezekiah, who (as with paws and teeth) bruised and crushed his bones; not that we may accuse God of cruelty, but that we may see with what anguish the Lord does sometimes exercise his children, and with what patience he does arm them: who notwithstanding his vehement trials, do stay themselves upon God, accusing themselves (Matthew 7:9) I will bear the wrath of the Lord, because I have sinned against him: and excusing the Lord with all humbleness with David (Psalms 114) I know O Lord that your judgments are right, and that you have afflicted me justly, etc. It is much available to mortification and Christian patience also, to occupy our hearts in the house of mourning even in our greatest banqueting, and to betake ourselves to some serious meditation of adversity, when present pleasures would most divorce us from the remembrance thereof. So though we have much in possession, we shall have little in affection and when God does most advance us, we shall fear our wants of humility: and then especially be ransacking our infirmities, when the Lord for our trial enriches us most with his benefits. For if the Lord God by multiplying his mercies increases our account; we are often to suspect, to call to judgment, and to arraign ourselves for the using of God's creatures; who often gives that in judgment, which he might deny us in mercy and often weans us from some things in his love, which he might give to us in his anger.

FINIS.