This has appeared in an informed audio book podcast. The following is a reading from a book published in the year 1631, Robert Bolton, a treatise for the right comforting of afflicted consciences. We're in section three, part one, three principles of comfort from without us to be applied to afflicted consciences. I come now to the practical part, to a particular application of some special sovereign antidotes to the most grievous ordinary maladies incident to the souls of saints. But first give me leave to premise some general wellheads out of which spring abundance of comfort and overflowing rivers of refreshing for all intents and effects and point of temptation and trouble of mind. First, take a fruitful cluster and heavenly heap of them together, those twelve heads of extraordinary, immeasurable, comfortable matter for spiritual medicines, which I have heretofore erected as so many invincible bulwarks against all assaults of despair, oppositions of Satan, exceptions of distrust. First, the infiniteness of God's mercy, sweetly intimated in Isaiah 55, 6-7. The mercy of God is like himself infinite. All our sins are finite, both in number and nature. Now, between finite and infinite, there is no proportion, and so no possibility of resistance. And therefore, be your sins never so notorious and numberless, yet a truly broken heart thirsting for and throwing itself upon Christ, and faintly resolving upon new obedience and his glorious service for the time to come, can no more withstand or stand before God's mercies than a little spark can withstand the boundless and mighty ocean thrown into the midst of it. nay, infinitely less. If all the sins that all the sons and daughters of Adam have committed since the creation to this time were all upon one soul, yet so affected, as I have said, and put into such a new penitent, gracious temper, it should be most certainly upon good ground and everlastingly safe. I speak not thus to make any secure, for any one sin that the sinner is pleased with, and reigns in them, will ruin a soul for ever. But to assure of mercy enough, how great or many soever the sins have been, if the heart be now truly humbled for them all, and holy turned heavenward. Secondly, the invaluableness of Christ's meritorious blood, which is called the blood of God, and therefore of an estimable price. Understand me aright, it was the blood of God, not of the Godhead, but of Him who is both God and man. For the manhood of Christ was received into the union of the second person, And so it may be called the blood of God, for so Paul speaks in Acts 20 verse 28. God purchased his church with his own blood, that is, Christ God incarnate. Our divines express it thus. It was the Son of God and the Lord of life that died for us upon the cross, but it was the nature of man, not of God in which he died. And it was the nature of God and infinite excellency of the same, whence the price, value, and worth of his passion grew. This blessed blood, then, is of infinite efficacy. And therefore, if you be now turning to the Lord, assure yourself, whatsoever your sins have been, they have not outgone the price that has been paid for them. This blood, upon repentance, did take off the transcendent scarlet guilt from the souls even of those that shed it. Number three, the riches of the word and affording precedence of the saints and of the son of God himself who have surpassed you and that perhaps very far in any kind of misery you can name. You are perhaps consulting with a prodigal to come in, but there comes terribly into your mind the extraordinary heinousness of your former sins and that hinders. Cast your eye then upon Manasseh, a man of prodigious impiety and matchless villainy. He'd shed innocent blood very much until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another. He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, like unto the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. He caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the Sennachinim. Also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with withereds. He wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. 2 Kings 21 verse 16. 2 Chronicles 33, 2 to 6. And yet this great sinner, humbling himself greatly before the God of his fathers, was received to mercy. Verses 12 and 13. 2. Suppose, which yet were a horrible thing, that after conversion by extraordinary violence of temptation, strong ensnarement of some sudden sensual offer and opportunity, treacherous insinuation of your own false heart, and furious reassault of your former bosom's sin. You should be overtaken grossly with some grievous sin and scandalous fall, and then, upon illumination, remorse, and meditation of return, reason thus within yourself. Alas! What shall I do now? I have undone all. I have woefully again defiled my soul, so fairly washed in my Savior's blood. With that disavowed sin of my unregenerate time, I have shamed my profession, disgraced religion forever. I have broken my vows, lost my peace and my wanted blessed communion with God. And therefore, what hope can I have of any acceptance again at the throne of grace? I say in this case, to keep you from sinking, cast your eye upon Aaron, David, Peter, who returning with sound and hearty repentance were mercifully received into as great favor as they were before. But God forbid that any professor of religion should ever fall so foully, especially in this glorious midday of evangelical light. Number three, are you languishing under the heavy desolations of a spiritual desertion? and deprived of your former comfortable feelings of God's favorable countenance. Look upon David. I remembered God and was troubled. I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. My soul refused to be comforted. Psalm 77. Nay, upon Jesus Christ himself, crying, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew 27, 46, 4. Are you haunted with some of Satan's most hateful and horrible injections, grisly to the eye, even of corrupted nature, thoughts framed by himself immediately and put into you, perhaps tending to atheism or to the dishonor of God in the highest degree or of his blessed word to self-destruction or the like? thoughts which you cannot remember without horror, and dare not reveal their name for their strange and prodigious monstrousness. If it be thus with you, consider how this malicious fin dealt with the Son of God himself, He offered to his most holy and unspotted imaginations these propositions. First, murder and make away with yourself, Matthew 4, 6. Secondly, fall down and worship the devil, verse 9. Then which a fowler thought, I think, was never injected, that Jesus Christ, blessed forever, in whom the Godhead dwelt bodily, should fall down and worship the devil, the vilest of creatures. And yet this was suggested to our blessed Savior, to which his purest heart, infinitely incapable of sin, was as a brass wall to an arrow, beating it back presently with infinite contempt, and himself did utterly conquer and confound the tempter. and that for you and your sake also. Therefore, if your humble soul abominates and abandons them from the heart root to the pit of hell, they shall never be laid to your charge, but set on Satan's score. Extremely then do those wrong themselves and gratify the devil to the height who suffers such injections, which they heartily hate and stand against with all their strength. to hold their heart still upon a rack of extraordinary astonishment and distraction, at which they are unnecessarily discouraged and disabled for a cheerful discharge of both their callings, which is the thing Satan especially aims at in vexing so many of God's dearest servants with this most fiery dart. Number five, it may be that many years after your new birth, when you think the worst has passed, You may be revisited and afflicted afresh with perhaps sore spiritual pains and more horror than at first. And what then? Hear how David, a man after God's own heart, cries out, My bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer, Psalm 32, 3 and 4. And Job, a God-fearing man and most upright, wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy? Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro, and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble? For you write bitter things against me and make me to possess the iniquities of my youth. The arrows of the Almighty are within me. The poison of it drinks up my spirit. The terrors of God set themselves in array against me. Job 13, 24 to 26. Hezekiah, that walked before God in truth and with a perfect heart, said, I reckon until morning that as a lion so will he break all my bones. From day even to night will you make an end of me, like a crane or a swallow. So did I chatter, I did mourn as a dove. Mine eyes fell with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me. Isaiah 38, 13 and 14. Number six, do you day after day pour out your soul in prayer before the throne of grace? with all the earnestness your poor dead heart, as you call it, can possibly? And do you still rise up dull, heavy-hearted, and uncomfortable without any sensible answer from God, or comfortable sense of His favor and love shed into your heart? Be it so. Yet for all this, pray still in obedience unto your God against all discouragements and oppositions whatsoever. Still press hard, too, and ply God's mercy seat, if it be but with sighs and groanings. Assuredly at length and in the fittest time ye shall be gloriously refreshed and registered in the remembrance of God for a Christian of excellent faith. See a pattern of rare and extraordinary patience this way in Matthew 15, 23. There that woman of Canaan, having received many grievous repulses and cutting discouragements. The solicited was silent. The disciples grumbled. She was not of the fold. She was a dog. Yet for all this, by her constancy in crying after Christ, her petition at last was not only granted, but herself also crowned with the singular and admirable eulogy from the Lord's own mouth. Oh, woman! Great is your faith, be it unto you even as you will. What an honor and comfort was this, to be thus commended by Jesus Christ, and that with an admiration, O woman. Number seven, has your faith lost its feeling? Do you for the present feel nothing but anger, wrath, and great indignation? Is God's face in favor? were in his life turned away from you and quite hid from your sight, nay, Has he broken you asunder, taken you by the neck, and shaken you to pieces, and set you up for his mark? Yet for all this let your truly humble soul be so far from losing, or leaving its hold fast, and sure repose upon the person, passion, and promises of Jesus Christ, that in such a case it cleave and cling faster to that blessed rock. and far more immovably. For in this especially is the strength and glory of faith improved and made illustrious. It is one of the most noble and heroical acts of faith to believe without feeling. He who believes most and feels least is he who glorifies God most. It is nothing to swim in a warm bath, but to endure the surges and tumbling billows of the sea. That is to man. To believe when God does fairly and sensibly shine upon the soul with the love and light of His countenance is no great manner. But to rest invincibly upon His mercy through Christ when He grinds you to powder that is the faith you have before you for this purpose a matchless precedent thus cries holy joe vexed not only with an unparalleled variety and extremity of outward afflictions but also with a venom of the almighty's arrows drinking up his spirit though he slay me yet will i trust in him chapter 18 15 and so abraham romans 4 18 Number eight, have you given your name stoutly to the Christian religion? And do you stand on God's side with resolution? And are you therefore villainously traduced with slanderous, odious nicknames of Puritan, precision, hypocrite, humorous, dissimilar, and so on? Consider then for your comfort the graceless wretches when he was upon earth called your blessed Lord and Savior the devil. Matthew 10, 25, John 7, 20, which passes all, I am persuaded that any drunken belial overfastened upon you. Contemn thou therefore forever, and trample upon with a humble and triumphant patience all their contumalies and contempts. Pass by nobly, without touch or trouble, without wound or passion, the utmost malice of the most girlish tongues, the basest taunts of the most impure drunkard. Mernind is a world, carnal men, Your own friends, formal teachers, suppose and declare you to be a dissembler in your profession, and one needs concurrently and confidently yet falsely fasten upon you the imputation of hypocrisy, a heavy charge. Yet for all this, Let your truly humbled heart, conscious to itself of its own sincerity and holy services, like a strong pillar of brass, beat back all their poisoned arrows of malice and mistake without any dejection or discouragement. Only take occasion in which to search more thoroughly and walk more warily. Job may be a right noble pattern to you in this point also. He had against him not only the devil, his enemy, pushing at him with his poisoned weapons, but even his own friends, scourging him with their tongues. His own wife, a thorn, pricking him in the eye. Yea, his own God running upon him like a giant and his terrors setting themselves in array against him. Powerful motives to make him suspect himself of former halting and hollow heartedness in the ways of God. Yet notwithstanding his good and honest heart, having been long before acquainted with and knit to his God and truth, makes him break out boldly and resolutely protest. Until I die, I will not remove my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast and will not let it go. Behold, my witness is in heaven and my record is on high." Job 27, 5 and 6. Job 16, 19. Number 10. Are you a loving and tender-hearted mother to your children? And have you lost the dearest, the greatest outward cross, I confess, that ever the sons and daughters of Adam tasted, and goes nearest to the heart? Yet your sorrow is not singular, but outgone in this also, for the blessed mother of Christ did buy, and saw her only son. Dear innocent son, the Lord of life most cruelly and villainously murdered upon the cross before her eyes. John 19.25 Have you lost your goods or children? Does your wife that lies in your bosom set herself against you? Do your nearest friends charge you falsely? Are you pained extremely from top to toe? Do the arrows of the Almighty stick fast in your soul? Your affliction is grievous enough if you taste any of these severally. But do they all in greatest extremity concur upon you at once? Have you lost all your children and all your goods? Does your wife afflict your afflictions? If this be not your case and rueful condition, you come yet short of Job, a most just man, and one of God's dearest jewels. Following reading is the next chapter in a book called The Right Comforting of Afflicted Consciences by Robert Bolton. This book was originally published in the year 1631, chapter two of section three, the exceeding greatness and preciousness of the promises and every one of which it is incredible to consider what abundant manner of unspeakable and glorious joy lies wrapped up. Oh, how sweet are they to a thirsty soul in a time of anguish and trouble. They're like a cloud of rain that comes in the time of a drought. Their very glimpses of heaven shed into the heart many times as dark as hell. They are even rocks of eternity upon which every bruised reed may sweetly repose with impregnable safety. A truly humbled spirit, relishing spiritual things, would not exchange any one of them for all the riches and sweetness of both the Indies. Tell me, dear heart, you that in your unregenerate time, though not happily changed, lay soaking in sins of cruelty and blood, whether that merciful promise come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Isaiah 1 verse 18. Be not far dearer to you than thousands of gold and silver, or you who formerly polluted yourself villainously with such secret excrucible lusts, which now you cannot remember without horror. Tell me if it were utterable by the tongue of man with what dearest sweetness and blessed peace your broken heart was bound up and revived. when you cast your eye considerably and believingly upon that precious place. I will sprinkle water upon you, and you shall be clean, and from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. Ezekiel 36.25. There is beyond the seas, as my author reports, a Christian matron of excellent parts and piety. who languished and longed under the horrible pressure of most furious and fiery temptations, woefully at length yielded to despair and attempted the destruction of herself. After often and curious seeking occasion for the fulfillment of her design, at last, having put off her apparel, she threw herself headlong from a high promontory into the sea. But having received no hurt by the fall, she was there by a most extraordinary mercy, strangely preserved for the space of two hours at the least, though all the while she labored industriously to destroy herself. Afterwards, drawn out with much ado and recovered, she yet did conflict with that extreme, desperate horror almost a whole year. But by God's good providence, which sweetly and wisely orders all things, listening on a time, though very unwillingly at first, to her husband, reading amongst other places, Isaiah 57, 15 and 16, thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in a high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. For I will not contend forever, neither will I always be wroth, for the spirit should fail before me in the souls which I have made. I say, listening to these words, the Holy Ghost drawn her heart, she began to reason thus with herself. God does here promise to revive and comfort the heart of the contrite and spirit of the humble, and that he will not contend forever. neither always be wroth. But I have a very contrite heart and a spirit humbled even unto the dust out of the acknowledgment and sense of my sins and divine vengeance against him. Therefore, peradventure, God will vouchsafe to revive and comfort my heart and spirit and not contend with me forever, nor be wroth against me still. Hereupon, by little and little, there flowed by God's blessing into her dark and heavy heart abundance of life. lightsomeness, spiritual strength and assurance, in which she continued with constancy and comfort many a year after, crowned those happy days and a blessed old age with a glorious and triumphant death, and went to heaven in the year 1595. What heart now but hers had felt it can possibly conceive the depth of that extraordinary, unutterable refreshing which sprung out of that promise upon her forlorn and fearful soul, or the excess of that love which she bore ever after to those blessed lines, to the mercy that made them, and to the blood that sealed them. Another terrified in conscience for sin resolves to turn on God's side, but the cry of his good fellow companions, strength of corruption, and cunning of Satan carry him back to his former courses. A good number of years after, he was so thoroughly wounded that whatsoever came of him he would never return again to folly. Then comes into his mind the first of the Proverbs, once he reasoned against himself, So many years ago God called and stretched out his hand in mercy, but I refuse, and therefore now, though I call upon him, he will not answer. Though I seek him early, I shall not find him. Whereupon was his heart filled with much grief, terror, and slavish fear, but the Spirit of God leading him at length to that place in Luke 17.4. If your brother trespassed against you seven times in a day, And seven times in a day turn again to you, saying, I repent, you shall forgive him. He thence happily argued thus for himself. Must I, a silly, sinful man, forgive my brother as often as he repents and will not thence a father of mercies, and a God of all comfort entertain me, seeking again in truth his face and favor? God forbid. From which he blessedly drew such divine sweetness and secret sense of God's love, that his trembling heart at first received some good satisfaction, and afterward was settled in a sure and glorious peace. Another godly man, passing through his last sickness with such extraordinary calmness of conscience and absolute freedom from temptation, that some of his Christian friends, observing and admiring the singularity of his soul's quiet, at that time especially questioned him about it. He answered that he had steadfastly fixed his heart upon that sweet promise, Isaiah 26, 3. You will keep him in perfect peace. His mind has stayed on you because he trusts in you. And as God had graciously made it fully good to his soul. And so must every saint do who would sound the sweetness of a promise to the bottom, and make it the arm of God to him for sound and thorough comfort, even settle his heart fixedly upon it and set his faith on work to brood it, as it were, with its spiritual heat, that quickness in life may thence come into the soul indeed. For God is wont to make good his promises to his children proportionally to their trust in them, and dependence upon His truth and goodness for a seasonable performance of them. All these promises in God's blessed book, which adds infinitely to their sweetness and certainty, are sealed with the blood of Jesus Christ, Hebrews 9 verse 16, and confirmed with the oath of Almighty God, Hebrews 6, 17 and 18. God willing more abundantly to show to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. O what a mighty and precious invitation is this, to believe perfectly! The special aim of God's oath, whereas His promise has been more than infinitely sufficient, was to strengthen our consolation, and therefore every heart true unto Christ ought hence to hold fast, not a faint, wavering, and constant, but a strong, steadfast, and unconquerable comfort. Otherwise it sacrilegiously, as it were, robs God of the glorious end for which He swore. Number five, the free love of God, which how rich and glorious, how bottomless and boundless a treasure it is of all gracious sweetness, abundant comfort, and endless bounty appears in this, that Jesus Christ, blessed forever, that invaluable and comparable jewel came out of it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life, John 3, 16. And therefore every sincere servant of Christ, who upon a serious and sad survey of his Christian ways, finds himself to come so far short of that which God requires and himself desires, that his prayers are very faint, his sorrow for sin very scant, his love unto the brethren too cold, his spending of Sabbaths very unfruitful, his spiritual growth, since he gave his name to Christ, very poor, his profiting by the means he enjoys, most unanswerable to the power and excellence thereof, his new obedience, almost nothing, and so on. For so he is wont to vilify himself, whereupon he is much cast down, and out of this apprehension of his manifold unworthiness, concludes against himself that he has little cause to be confident in the promises of life, or to presume of any part and interest in Jesus Christ, and so begins to retire the trembling hand of his already very weak faith from any more laying hold of comfort. I say, in such a case, being true-hearted, he may safely and upon sure ground have recourse to this ever-springing fountain of immeasurable mercy. and raise up his drooping soul against all contrary oppositions, with unspeakable and glorious refreshing from such places as these. I will love you freely. Hosea 14.4 O everyone that thirsts, come you to the waters, and he that has no money, come you buy and eat, yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. I, even I, am he that blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. Revelation. 21.6. God never set the promise on sale, or will He ever sell His Son to any. He never said, just so much sorrow, so much sanctity, so much service, or no Christ. But He ever gives Him freely every truly humbled heart, which will take him at the hands of God's free love as a husband to be saved by him, and to serve him in truth may have him for nothing. Yea, I must add this, there was never any who received the Lord Jesus savingly, but he labored sincerely to sorrow as much for sin, to be as holy, to do him as much service as he could possibly, and when he reflected upon his best, he ever desired it had been infinitely better.