A Treatise on the Comforting of Afflicted Consciences, Robert Bolton, 1620. Three pair of instances confirming the former doctrine, David and Saul, Job and Ahithophel, Luther and Spira. David, having been formerly woefully wasted with great variety and extremity of dangers and distresses, Was at last plunged into a most desperate perplexity, 1 Samuel 30 verse 6, which had been able to have swallowed up into despair the manliest vigor of the greatest spirit upon earth, not supported with grace, The like or a less cause King Saul to fall upon his own sword. First Samuel 31 four. Yet he blessed the man by the power of his spiritual peace and the beams of God's pleased face shining upon a soul did patiently and sweetly comfort himself and the Lord is God and stood like an impregnable rock and shaken with a raging assaults of any tempestuous surges. He was at this time hunted by Saul like a partridge in the mountains, cashiered by the princes of the Philistines as a fellow of suspected fidelity, robbed by the Amalekites of his wives, his sons, and his daughters. The town to which he returned for safety was burnt with fire. And to make his calamity complete and most cutting, even his own men were ready to stone him. Now in this great distress, Upon the first apprehension whereof he wept, as the story saith, until he had no more power to weep, yet coming to himself and recollecting the spiritual forces, His heavy heart, ready to sink and fall asunder in his bosom, did fetch by the hand of faith, comfortably fortified by sense and experience of former favors, such heavenly strength from Jehovah, whom he had made his portion, that thereupon his courage was revived and raised to that height, that he presently pursued his enemies with extraordinary valor and resolution, cut them off and recovered all. And David, saith the text, was greatly distressed, for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters. But David encouraged himself in the Lord as God, and so on. What a bitter sea of unmatched miseries did break out upon blessed Job, which with a sudden unexpected violence bearing down that hedge of protection which God had set about him, The reigns purposely let loose by divine dispensation of Satan's malice in the meantime did fearfully overflow him to that height in horror that he stands registered in God's book as an unparalleled instance of extraordinary sufferings and sorrows, calamities and conflicts to all succeeding ages, no story being able to afford the like. The natural death of one dear child strikes sometimes so heavy to a man's heart, that for grief he falls into a consumption. But all Job's were suddenly taken away at once by a violent stroke. Some petty cross upon his outward state, in cutting off but part of his goods, causes sometimes a covetous whirling to cut his own throat. But Job was robbed of all, so that it is a proverb to this day, as poor as Job. Many wives are passionate and peevish in time of prosperity, whose hearts notwithstanding will melt in compassion and kindness over their husbands in any kind of misery. But Job's wife, though dearly entreated by her most distressed husband, even for their children's sake, no mutual common pledge of sweetest love, yet would not come near him. My breath, saith he, is strange to my wife, though I entreated for the children's sake of mine own body. Chapter 19, verse 17. Satan, I confess, is wont to roar and rage fiercely enough about God's blessed ones to do them all the mischief he can possibly, but rarely hath he so large a reach and his chain so lengthened as he had against Job. The painful anguish of some one part would not only deprive a man of the pleasure of the world's monarchy, if he had it in possession, but also make him weary of his life. And what a taking then was Job, who from the sole of his foot unto his crown, had no part free from sore biles and horribly inflamed ulcers, exasperated and enraged with the stinging smart of Satan's extremist malice, who had power given him to inflict them, got himself frowns many times, and withdraws the beams of his pleased face from the souls of his servants to their great grief, though for their spiritual good, but seldom does he set them up for his mark, hunt them as a fierce lion, set his tears in array against them, and command the poison of his arrows to drink up their spirit, as Job complains in chapter 19, 13. chapter 10 verse 16 chapter six verse four. It is no strange thing. Neither should it much move, but only make us walk more watchfully, to hear men of the world, and drunken bilioles, to belch out from their rotten hearts, upon the ale-bench, such base landers as these, quote, these professors, for all their fair shows, are certainly all of them notorious hypocrites, though they look never so demurely, they are not the men that they are taken for, end quote, and so on. But to have a man's nearest familiar understanding, Christian friends to charge him with hypocrisy, is a most cruel cut to a troubled conscience. And this was Job's case. Thus, as Job was singular in the universality of his afflictions, so there was a singularity of bitterness above ordinary in every particular affliction. And what of all this? And yet for all this, this holy man, by the help of that precious hoard of grace, which his heavenly heart had treasured up in time of prosperity. Out of that spiritual strength which he had gotten into his soul by his former humble acquaintance in conversation with his God, and knowing full well that though all was gone, yet he still possessed Jesus Christ as fully, if not more feelingly as ever before, he becomes hereupon as rare and admirable a pattern of patience to all posterity, as he was an extraordinary, astonishing spectacle of adversity and woe. Consciousness of his four spent righteous life which he peruses chapter 31 the clearness of a good conscience chapter 16 19 Behold my witnesses in heaven and my record is on high and his invincible faith chapter 19 verses 23 to 25 all that my words were now written all that they were printed in a book and that they were graven with an iron pin and lead in the rock forever? For I know that my Redeemer liveth and so on. Chapter 13, 15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. Did so strengthen and stay his spirit with a divine might that he bore valiantly and stood upright under the heaviest weight and greatest variety of extreme afflictions that ever were laid upon any mere man. But now on the other side, the tithe, nay, the ten hundredths part of Job's troubles, cause graceless Ahithophel to saddle his ass, get himself home, put his household in order, and hang himself. So true is that which the blessed prophet tells us, Jeremiah 17, 5-8. Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land, and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat comes. But her leaves shall be green, and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. This impregnable comfort springing from grace and a good conscience, even in evil times, did still the spirit of blessed Luther with such spiritual stoutness. and so hardened his forehead against the world, nay, a horrible hell of most reproachful and raging oppositions, that he became a spectacle, a miracle of rarest Christian fortitude and invincible courage to the whole world and to all posterity. I am persuaded that holy truth of God which he so gloriously professed, and that power of godliness which he so faithfully practiced, did infuse into the heart of that man as much unconquerableness of resolution and fearlessness of the face of man as ever dwelt in any mortal breast since the time of the apostles. Witness among the rest that one extraordinary expression of his incomparable magnanimity, when his friends were earnest and eager upon him not to venture himself among a number of perfidious papists and bloodthirsty tigers, He replied, thus, as touching me, he says, since I am sent for, I am resolved and certainly determined to enter Worms in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yea, though I knew there were as many devils to resist me as there are tiles to cover the houses in Worms, this man of God did upon a two pillars of his heroic heart, courage and patience, most nobly sustain the malice and hatred almost of the whole world. The devil and the pope did concurrently countermine with all their cruelty and cunning against this victorious champion of heaven, a mighty underminer of their dark and damned kingdoms. Almost all the princes, priests, and people of Christendom did breed and breathe out nothing but thoughts of indignation and threats of death against him. Millions of lazy and lustful monks, having like so many pestilent locusts of the infernal pit, seized upon the face of Europe, with their envenomed swarms, and lying at ease, and cloistered in the vilest crimes, gnashed their teeth at him with hellish fury, and like true fin, spat fire in his face. And yet for all this, this holy saint, which I admire more and prize higher than the victories of a thousand Caesars, Or the most renowned valour of the greatest Alexander, Having so many incarnate devils continually roaring About him with open mouth, ready every hour, And enraged with implacable thirst to drink up his blood, And swallow him up quick, yet, I say, enjoyed such a triumphant tranquillity of mind, an unshaken presence of spirit, that, like a mighty sun of thunder, by his constant and powerful preaching for the space of nine and twenty years, so shook the pillars of potpourri, that I am persuaded the beast will never stand upon his four legs any more, and wrote eloquently and excellently almost, if not as many volumes as Augustine did, that great glory of the Christian world in former times. A petty cross will frequently so emasculate and weaken the elevation of the greatest wit, that its conceit, invention, and style will fall to a far lower strain than ordinary, which contentment and calmness would raise to their highest pitch and possibility. But the terrible earthquake, as it were of all Europe, and contrary commotions of Christendom, did never a wit disanimate or shake the heart of this heavenly man, fitly honored by the name of a third Elias. But now Francis Spira, on the other side, having out of his inordinate love to the things of this life, woefully wounded his conscience by that infamous adjuration of the blessed truth which he formerly professed, became a spectacle of such spiritual misery and woe to the whole world, that there is not anything left unto the memory of man more remarkable. Upon the very first revisal of his recantation, in serious consideration and cold blood, what he had done, He acknowledged himself utterly undone and forever. His spirit suddenly smitten with a dreadful sense of divine wrath for his apostasy and split in pieces, as it were, with so grievous a bruise, fainted fearfully, felled him quite and fell asunder in his breast like drops of water. Here's some rueful expressions of his desperate state from his own mouth. Oh, that I were gone from hence as somebody would let out this weary soul. I tell you, there was never such a monster as I am. Never was man alive a spectacle of such exceeding misery. I now feel God's heavy wrath that burns like the torments of hell within me and afflicts my soul with pains unutterable, verily desperation is hell itself. The nine worm of unquenchable fire, horror, confusion, And which is worst of all, desperation itself continually tortures me. And now I count my present estate worse than if my soul separated from my body were with Judas, and therefore I desire rather to be there than thus to live in my body. The truth is, never had mortal man such experience of God's anger and hatred against him as I have. If I could conceive but the leaf-spark of hope in my heart of a better state hereafter, I would not refuse to endure the most heavy wrath of the great God, yea, for two thousand years, so that at length I might emerge out of misery. He professed that his pangs were such, that the damned souls in hell endure not the like misery, that his state was worse than that of Cain or Judas, and therefore desired to die. Oh, that God would let loose his hand from me, and that it were with me now as in times past. I would scorn the threats of the most cruel tyrants, bear torments with invincible resolution, and glory in the outward profession of Christ, till I were choked in the flame and my body turned into ashes. Chapter 4, a first use of the former doctrine for exhortation to store up heavenly comforts in our hearts. Two considerations which press this exhortation upon us. If it be so then, that a heavenly hoard of grace, good conscience, God's favor, and so on, happily treasured up, while it is called today, has a soul and sacred property and privilege to hold up our hearts in times of horror. enabling us in the meantime, patiently and profitably, to master all miseries, pass through all persecutions, conquer all comers, and at length, by the help of God, to pull the heart, as it were, out of hell, with confidence and triumph, to look even death and the devil in the face, and to stand with boldness before the terror of the last day. like an immovable rock, when the sons and daughters of confusion, who have slept in harvests and misspent the gracious day of their visitation, shall entreat the mountains and rocks to fall upon them. I say it being thus, that every one of us, like sons and daughters of wisdom in the short summer's day of our abode upon earth, and in this glorious sunshine of the gospel and precious seasons of grace, employ all means, improve all opportunities, to gather in with all holy greediness, and treasure up abundantly much spiritual strength and lasting comfort against the evil day, to which let us be quickened by such considerations as these. This wise and happy treasuring up of heavenly hordes and comforts of holiness beforehand will sweetly mullify and allay the bitterness and smart of that heaviness and sorrow of those fearful amazements and oppressions of spirit naturally incident to times of trouble and fear, which ordinarily do very grievously sting and strike through the heart of carnal and secure worldlings with full rage and the very flashes and foretastes of hell. Of all other passions of the soul, sadness and grief grates most upon the vital spirits, dries up soonest the freshest marrow in the bones, and most sensibly sucks out the purest and most refined blood in the heart. All the objects of lightsomeness and joy are drowned in a heavy heart, even as the beauty of a pearl is dissolved in vinegar. Now the only cordial and counterpoison against this damp of light-heartedness and destroyer of life is the sacred sweetness and shining pleasure of that one pearl of great price. Matthew 13, 46. Free-orient rays were of her righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Romans 14, 17. treasured up in the cabinet of a good conscience. The glory, preciousness, and power of which hidden treasure, purchased with the sale of all sin, does many times shine most fairly upon the soul in the saddest times, inspires for the most part into the hearts of the owners. the great courage and constancy of spirit, even in the days of adversity and vexation, and enables them to digest and bear without any great wound or passion those crosses and cruelties which would break the back and crush the heart of the stoutest temporizer. Was there not a great deal of difference, think you, between the heart of Hezekiah, who had walked before God in truth and with a perfect heart, Isaiah 38, verse 3, when he heard the news of death from the mouth of the prophet, and the heart of Belshazzar when he saw the handwriting upon the wall, Daniel 5, verses 5 and 6? Give me a great man who carries away the credit and current of the times with all bravery and triumph, wallows and tumbles himself in the glory and pleasures of the present, throw him from the transitory top of his heaven upon earth, upon his last bed, present unto his eye at once the terrible pangs of approaching death, the rageful malice of the powers of hell, the crying wounds of his bleeding conscience, the hideous forms of his innumerable sins, his final farewell with all worldly delights, the pit of fire and brimstone into which he is ready to fall, and I tell you true, I would not endure an hour's horror of his woeful heart for his present paradise to the world's end. But on the other side, let me be the man whom the corruptions of the time confine to obscurity, who mourns in secret for the horrible abominations and crying sins that reign among us, who thinks that day best spent wherein he has gathered most spiritual strength against that last and sorest combat. And by the mercies of God and humble dependence upon His omnipotent arm, I will look in the face the cruelest concurrence of all those former terrors with confidence and peace. 2. By this spiritual hoarding of comfortable provision against the evil day, we may prevent a great deal of impatience. Dependence upon the arm of flesh. base fears, sinkings of heart, unmanly dejections of spirit, desperate resolutions, and many passionate distempers of such raging and distracted nature, which are wont to seize upon and surprise unholy and unprepared hearts, when the hand of God is heavy upon them. How bravely and heroically did patient Joe Barron break through a matchless variety of extremity of calamities and conflicts, the softness of whose sufferings would have struck full hold to the heart of many a carnalist, and made it to die within him like a stone, as Nabels did. One of the least, the loss of his goods, I am persuaded would have caused many covetous worldlings to have laid violent hands upon themselves. For instance, Ahithophel, only because the glory of his state wisdom was obscured and overtopped at the council board, saddled his ass, got himself home, put his household in order, and hanged himself. The only cause of his fainting in a day of disgrace and non-acceptation was his false and rotten heart in matters of religion. While the crown sat with security and safety upon David's head, he walked with him as a companion unto the house of God. But when the wind began to blow a little another way, and upon Absalom's side, like a true time-server, he follows the blast and turns his sails according to the weather. And therefore his hollow heart, having made the arm of flesh his anchor, and a vanishing blaze of honor his chiefest blessedness, shrinks at the very first sight in suspicion of a tempest, and sinks this miserable man into a sea of horror. Now on the contrary, what was the cause that Job's heart was not crushed in pieces under the bitter concurrence of such a world of crosses, of which any one severally was sufficient to have made a man extremely miserable? The true reason of his patient resolution amid so many pressures was the spiritual riches he had hoarded up in a time of his happiness, amongst which the divinest and dearest jewel lay nearest unto his heart, as a counterpoison to the venom and sting of the devil's deadliest malice. I mean a sound and strong faith in Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world, which now began to shine the fairest in the darkest midnight of His miseries, and sweetly to dart out many heavenly sparks of comfort, and such glorious ejaculations as these. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. Chapter 13, 15. And that in chapter 19, 23, O that my words were now written, O that they were printed in a book, that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever. For I know that my Redeemer liveth and so on. There were two cutting and cruel circumstances largely insinuated, chapter 29 and 30, which did keenly sharpen the edge and mightily aggravate the weight of Job's miseries. The one was this, he had been happy. Now is that man's happiness is hold in the greatest who has been in a miserable condition. For he tastes the double sweet of remembering his four past misery and enjoying his present felicity. So on the contrary, it is accounted the greatest misery to have been happy. The other was that which most nettles in a generous nature, he being a man of so great honor and worth, whose rare and incomparable wisdom even the princes and nobles adored, with a secret and silent admiration, as appears in chapter 29, 9 and 10, was now contemned of the most contemptible. The children of fools and the children of base men, that were viler than the earth, make him their song and their byword. Chapter 30, verses 8 and 9. For when true nobleness and worth is down, And any one of the Lord's champions dejected, It is ordinary with all these cowardly dispositions To whom his sincerity was an eyesore, His power and authority a restraint to their lewdness, The glory of his virtues fuel to their envy, To run as a raven to the fallen sheep, To pick out his eyes, I mean, which yet taste Of a truly cowardly and merciless constitution, to wound his very wounds and to vex his vexations. This was Job's case. But what now ministers comfort to Job's heart against these corrosives? Even consciousness of his graces and integrities treasured up and exercised in the days of his peace. He reckons up fourteen of them, chapter 31. From consideration hereof, he gathers towards the end this triumphant resolution against the sorest of his sufferings. I would even crown my head with the bitterest invective of my greatest adversary. So it is clear that the two potent pillars of Job's strong and strange patience, which generations will admire to the world's end, were a sound faith, and the sanctified fruits thereof prepared and practiced in the time of his prosperity. Chapter 5 A Third Consideration Pressing the Former Exhortation Defendant Against MacEvil's Position By previous provision of God's favor, grace, good conscience, and such spiritual store, we shall be able worthily to adorn and honor our profession. Truly to a noble and win a great deal of glory and reputation to the state of Christianity. When the ambitious rufflers and boisterous nimrods of the world shall see and observe that there is a gracious and visible vigor and strength of heaven, which mightily supports the heart of the true Christian in those times of confusion and fear. When theirs shall be like the heart of a woman in her pangs, and fall asunder in their breasts, even like drops of water. that he is as bold as a lion and immovable like Mount Zion in the day of distress and visitations of God, when they shall tremble at the shaking of a leaf and call upon the mountains to cover them, that he shall be able then to say with David, the Lord is my refuge and my strength. Psalm 46 verse one. The Lord is my refuge and my strength, therefore I will not fear, though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. But they shall cry out of the bitterness of their spirits with the hypocrites, Isaiah 33, 14, who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings. God is much honored and His truth glorified when it appears in the face of men that a poor, neglected Christian, or in the world's language, a precise fool, is able by the power of grace and influence of His favor to affront and outface all the frowns and malignant aspects of the proud giants of the world. And He is the Lord's noblest champion and a professor of the truest and heavenliest die, that holds out in the wetting and shrinks not in a day of adversity. Chrysostom speaks to the people of Antioch like himself, a man of an invincible spirit, against the tyrannies of his times. And this, he says, should a gracious differ from a graceless man, that he should bear his cross courageously, and, as it were, with the wings of faith, outsoar the height of all human miseries, He should be like a rock being incorporated into Jesus Christ, impregnable and unshaken with the most furious incursions of the waves and storms of worldly troubles, pressures, and persecutions. And blessed be God that even here upon earth, in this veil of tears, there is such a visible and vast difference between a wicked and godly man. The one is like the raging sea that cannot rest. The other stands fast like a rock which shall never be removed. An unregenerate heart is ever restless, commonly in these three regards at the least. Number one, by reason of an endless and insatiable appetite after pleasures, riches, honors, revenge, or what other darling delight it is singled out and made special choice of, to follow and feed upon with greatest contentment and sensual sweetness. God has justly put that property, or rather poison, into all earthly things, doted upon and desired immoderately, that they shall plague the heart which so pursues them, by filling it still with a furious and fresh supply of more greediness, jealousies, and many miserable discontentments, so that they become unto it as a drink unto a man in a dropsy or burning fever. Serve only to inflame it with new heat and fiery additions of insatiable thirst and inordinate longings. 2. Because of the many secret drumlings and stinging reclamations of a galled conscience against its present guilty courses and forbidden pleasures. 3. In respect of a continual ebullition, as it were, of confused and contrary lusts, out of the poisoned fountain of original corruption, which fill it with many distractions and tumultuations of hell. But now, if besides this inward boiling, it be also tossed with outward troubles, what a miserable creature is a carnal man! Even as the sea, if besides its internal agitations by the restless motions of estuation, dissension, revolution, and reflection, it be also outwardly troubled with storms and tempestuous winds, how rageful and roaring will it be! But the other is like a strong immovable mountain that stands impregnable against the rage of wind and weather. and all the cruel incursions and ungodly oppositions made against it, either by men or devils, are but like so many proud and swelling waves which dash themselves against a mighty rock. The more boisterously they beat against it, the more are they broken and turned into a vain foam and froth. Come what will, his heart is still in his breast, and his resolution as high as heaven. Pestilent, then, is that principle of Machiavelli, one not to be named but by way of detestation, and savors rankly of cursed atheism, whereby he teaches and sins in some, that heathenish religion did inspire her worthies of old with invincible and victorious spirits. But Christian religion begets effeminacy, dejections, and fears. He speaks to this purpose, which to me seems strange, that such a profound professor of the depths, or rather devilishness, of policy should dote so sottishly. And yet it is no such strange thing, for many times we may observe, that deepest policy, by the curse of God upon it for opposition to goodness, turns into extremist folly, and all counsels and politic constitutions against Christ are but the brainless infatuations of a hythophile. For that which he holds is strongly contradictory both to common sense and a thousand experiences to the contrary. For the first, and in a word, let that great master of mischief and of most abhorred atheistical principles of state tell me, Whether a real assurance of a crown of life and endless joys in another world be not more powerful to raise a man's spirit to the highest pitch of undaunted nobleness of spirit and unconquerable resolution than a vain breath of immortal fame among miserable men after this life. And in this lies the sinew of its proof. For the second, let the acts of the ancient Jews be impartially weighed, from whose magnanimity, in causes of most extreme hazard, those strange and unwanted resolutions have grown, which for all circumstances, says the great Divine, no people under the roof of heaven did ever hitherto match. and that which did always animate them was their mere religion. That the chronicles also of later times be searched, and we shall find from time to time many renowned worthies, to have forever ennobled the matchless incomparable courage of Christianity, with inimitable impressions of valor and visible transcendency, above all human boldness, and affected audacities of the most valiant pagans. To begin with great Constantine, the first mighty commander of a Christian army, with what victorious glory did he confound and cut off many potent heads of paganism. Thrice was a whole world most famously fought for, between Alexander and Xerxes, Caesar and Pompey, Constantine and Licinius. This last was most illustrious, wherein Constantine the Great did mightily conquer and triumphantly carry all before him. the heroical and royal spirit of Christianity trampling victoriously upon the desperate rage of the most furious, foolhardy, pagan tyrants. Rubber Bolton A Treatise on the Comfort of Afflicted Consciences A second use of the former doctrine for reproof to several sorts of people. The first whereof are the careless, with the first consideration to admonish them. Since a stock of grace and the comforts of a sound conscience are only able to crush all crosses, outface all adversaries, take the sting out of all sorrows and sufferings, and serve in the evil day as a sovereign antidote to save the soul from sinking into the mouth of despair and extremist horror, then three sorts of people here offer themselves to be censored, and are to be frightened out of their security and cruel ease, number one. Those fools, sons and daughters of confusion and sloth, who haven't a price in their hands to get wisdom, yet want hearts to lay it out for spiritual provision beforehand. They enjoy by God's rare and extraordinary indulgence and favor life, strength, wit, health, and many other outward blessings. Nay, the most glorious day of a gracious visitation that did ever shine upon earth. Many golden and goodly opportunities, many blessed seasons and sermons to enrich their souls abundantly with all heavenly treasures. And yet they are so far from spending their abilities. entertaining those merciful offers and apprehending such happy advantages for their true and eternal good, that they most unworthily and unthankfully abuse, misbend, and misemploy all their means, time, and manifold mercies to serve their own turns, attain their sensual ends, and possess the present with all the carnal contentment they can possibly devise. These vassals of self-love and slaves of lust are so lulled upon the lap of pleasure by the siren songs of Satan's solicitors and so drunk with worldly prosperity by swimming down the current of these corrupt times with full sail of sensuality and ease, that they fall asleep all the time of the happy harvest in this life, for bringing grace into the soul under the sunshine of the gospel, wasting their precious time of gathering spiritual manna in grasping cold, clasping about the arm of flesh. crowning themselves with rosebuds, and tumbling voluptuously in the pleasures and glory of this false and flattering world. But alas, poor souls, what will they do in the evil day, when after the hot gleam of earthly glory, in a short common cut over the sea of this world, they are coming to the port of death, to which all winds drive them? And stopping there, they drop that last anchor, which can never be weighed again, shall be set in the land of darkness, the dust whereof is brimstone, and the river's burning pitch, where they shall meet with whole armies of tempestuous and fiery plagues, and the envenomed arrows of God's unquenchable anger shall stick fast forever in their soul and flesh, where they shall nevermore see the light nor the land of the living, but be drowned in everlasting perdition in the lake, even a boiling sea of fire and brimstone, where they can see no bank, nor fill no bottom. What will these sleepers and harvests say when they shall be awakened at that dreadful hour out of their golden dreams? and in their hands shall find nothing but the judgment of God drawn upon their thoughts as an impestuous storm, death standing before them irresistible like an armed man, sin lying at the door like a bloodhound, and a guilty conscience gnawing at the heart like a vulture. when they shall lie upon their last beds like wild bulls in a net, as a prophet speaks full of the wrath of God, saying in the morning, would God it were even, and it even would God it were morning, for the fear of their heart wherewith they shall fear, and for the sight of their eyes which they shall see. I say, in what case will they be then? Then, but my words do fail me here, and so doth my imagination. For as none knows the sweetness of the spouse's kiss, but the soul that receives it, so neither can any one conceive this horror but he that suffers it. The Lord of heaven and mercy awakens them in the meantime with a piercing thunder of his sacred and saving word, that they may be happily frightened out of their amazed soul-murdering sloth, before they feel in hell those fearful things we so faithfully forewarned them of. To rouse them out of their cruel carnal security, let them entertain in their most serious thoughts such considerations as these, Consider number one. Why thou camest into this world? There is not so much as one age past since you have laid hid in the low state of being nothing. Above, five thousand years were gone after the creation before there was any news of you at all, and you might never have been. God has no need of you. He gave you a being only out of his own mere bounty. Infinite millions shall never be which might have been as well as you. God's omnipotency is equally able and active to have produced them. you and no parts of the vast abyss of nothing can possibly make any resistance to all mightiness and Besides being so that you must needs have a being there is not any creature that ever issued out of the hands of God but you might have been that either for the kind or for the particular or all is one to him, to make an angel or an ant, to create the brightest cherub or the most contemptible fly. For in every creation no less than omnipotency must needs be the efficient, and no more than nothing is ever the object. Now what a miraculous mercy was this, that passing by such an unnumbered variety of incomparably inferior creatures, He should make you an everlasting soul, like an angel of God, capable of grace and immortality, of incorporation into Christ, in fruition of Jehovah Himself, blessed forever. Nay, and yet further, Though you were to have the being of a reasonable creature, yet there was not an hour from the first moment of time unto the world's end, but God might have allotted that to you for your coming into this world, and therefore your time might have been within the compass of all those four thousand years, or thereabouts, from the creation until the coming of Christ in the flesh. when all without the pale and partitioned wall were without the oracles and ordinances of God, and all ordinary means of salvation? Or since the gospel revealed under the reign of Antichrist, and then a thousand to one, you had been choked and forever perished in the mists of his devilish doctrines? What a high honor was this, to have your birth and abode here upon earth! appointed from all eternity in the very best and most blessed time, upon the fairest day of peace and which is infinitely more, in the most glorious light of grace that ever shone from heaven upon the children of men. And so of the place, be it so, that you must needs be in this golden age of the gospel and gracious day, Yet your lot of living in the world at this time might have lighted, for any part of the earth might have received you where you could have set but your two feet, amongst Turks, pagans, infidels, a whole world to Christendom. or if your appearing upon earth must necessarily be within the confines of Christendom, yet you might have sprung up in the popish parts of it, or in the schismatical or persecuted places of the true church in it. It was a very singular favor that you should be born and bred and brought up in this little neglected nook of the world, yet very illustrious by the presence of Christ in a mighty ministry, where you have or might have enjoyed in many parts thereof the glorious gospel of our blessed God, and all saving truth with much purity and power. Now put all these together and tell me coolly, and after a sensible and serious pondering, upon it. Do you think that all this ado was about you, all this honor done unto you, and when all is done you are to do nothing but seek yourself, serve your own turn, and live sensually? Camest thou out of nothing into this world, to do just nothing but eat and drink and sleep, to game, walk into fashion and play, the good fellow, to laugh and be merry, to grow rich and leave tokens of your pleasure in every place? If any, after so much enlightening, be so prodigiously mad as to continue in such a conceit, I have nothing to say to him but leave him as an everlasting madman, abandoned to that folly which wants a name to express it. Turn then your course for shame. Nay, as you have any care to be saved and to see the glory of the new Jerusalem, As you desire to look the Lord Jesus in the face with comfort at that great day, and you fear to receive your portion in hell fire with the devil and his angels, even most intolerable and bitter torments forever and ever, at least in this your day, in this heat and height of your spiritual harvest, awake out of your sensual sleep. come to yourself with a prodigal, strike upon your thigh, and for the poor remainder of a few unevil days address yourself with a resolution and constancy to pursue the one necessary thing, and to treasure up much heavenly strength and store against your ending hour. Get you under the most likely means in a quickening ministry, and there gather grace as greedily as the most griping usurer grasps gold. Contend with a holy ambition as earnestly for the keeping of God's favor and a humble familiarity with his heavenly highness by keeping faith and a good conscience as that proud Haman for a high place and pleased face of an earthly prince. And why not infinitely more? This was the end for which you were sent into this world. This only is a way to endless bliss and this alone will help us and hold out in the evil day. End of Chapter 6 A Treatise for Instructions for Comforting Afflicted Consciences Robert Bolton Stillwater's Revival Books is now located at PuritanDownloads.com. It's your worldwide, online Reformation home for the very best in free and discounted classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books, MP3s and videos. For much more information on the Puritans and Reformers, including the best free and discounted classic and contemporary books, mp3s, digital downloads and videos, please visit Still Waters Revival Books at PuritanDownloads.com. Stillwater's Revival Books also publishes The Puritan Hard Drive, the most powerful and practical Christian study tool ever produced. All thanks and glory be to the mercy, grace, and love of the Lord Jesus Christ for this remarkable and wonderful new Christian study tool. The Puritan hard drive contains over 12,500 of the best Reformation books, MP3s, and videos ever gathered onto one portable Christian study tool. An extraordinary collection of Puritan, Protestant, Calvinistic, Presbyterian, Covenanter, and Reformed Baptist resources, it's fully upgradable and it's small enough to fit in your pocket. The Puritan hard drive combines an embedded database containing many millions of records with the most amazing and extraordinary custom Christian search and research software ever created. The Puritan Hard Drive has been produced to assist you in the fascinating and exhilarating spiritual, intellectual, familial, ecclesiastical, and societal adventure that is living the Christian life. It has been specifically designed so that you might more faithfully know, serve, and love the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as to help you to do all you can to bring glory to His great name. If you want to love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, then the Puritan Hard Drive is for you. Visit PuritanDownloads.com today for much more information on the Puritan Hard Drive and to take advantage of all the free and discounted Reformation and Puritan books, mp3s, and videos that we offer at Still Waters Revival Books.