others think he doth most spare and love; that is, God plagues and punishes them most with spiritual judgments, (which are the greatest, the sorest, and the heaviest) whom he least punishes with temporal punishments; there are no men on earth so internally plagued, as those that meet with least external plagues.* Oh! the blindness of mind, the hardness of heart, the searedness of conscience, that those souls are given up to, who, in the eye of the world, are reputed the most happy men, because they are not outwardly afflicted and plagued as other men. Ah souls! it were better that all the temporal plagues that ever befell the children of men since the fall of Adam, should at once meet you, than that you should be given to the least spiritual plague, to the least measure of spiritual blindness, or spiritual hardness of heart. Nothing will better or move that man, who is given up to spiritual judgments; let God smile or frown, stroke or strike, cut or kill, he minds nor regards it not; let life or death, heaven or hell, be set before him, they stir him not; he is mad upon his sin, and God is fully set to do justice upon his soul; this * Ps. lxxxi. 12. lxxviii. 26, to 31. cvi. 15. "He gave them their request but sent leanness into their soul. It is a heavy plague to have a fat body and a lean soul; a house full of gold and a heart full of sin." † It is better to have a sore, than a seared conscience. It is better to have no heart, than a hard heart; no mind, than a blind mind." man's preservation is but a reservation unto a greater condemnation; this man can set no bounds to himself, he is become a brat of fathomless perdition; he hath guilt in his bosom, and vengeance at his back, wherever he goes; neither ministry, nor misery, neither miracle, nor mercy, can molify his heart, and if this soul be not in misery on this side hell, who is? who is? Rem. 8. Lastly, dwell more upon that strict account that vain men must make for all the good that they do enjoy.* Ah! did men dwell more upon that account that they must ere long give for all the mercies they have enjoyed, and for all the favours they have abused, and for all the sins they have committed, it would make their hearts tremble, and their lips quiver, and rottenness to enter into their bones; it would cause their souls to cry out, and say, Oh! that our mercies had been fewer and less, that our account might have been easier, and our torment and misery (for our abuse of so great mercy) not greater than we are able to bear. O, cursed be the day wherein the crown of honour was set upon our heads, and the treasures of this world cast into our laps; O, cursed be the day wherein the sun of prosperity shone so strong upon us, and this flattering world smiled so much upon us, as In this day shall men give an account" of good things committed unto them, of good things neglected by them, of evil committed by them, and of evils suffered by them." to occasion us to forget God, to slight Jesus Christ, to neglect our souls, and to put far from us the day of our account. 6 Philip the third of Spain, whose life was free from gross evils, professed, That he would rather lose all his kingdom, than offend God willingly' yet being in the agony of death, and considering more particularly of the account he was to give to God,* fear struck into him, and these words came from him: 'Oh! would to God I had never reigned, Oh that those years that I have spent in my kingdom, I had lived a solitary life in the wilderness! Oh that I had lived a solitary life with God! How much more securely should I now have died? How much more confidently should I have gone to the throne of God? What doth all my glory profit me, but that I have so much the more torment in my death?' God keeps an exact account of every penny that is laid out upon him and his, and in this the day of account men shall know and feel, though now they wink, and will not understand. The sleeping of vengeancet causeth the overflowing of sin, and the overflowing of sin causeth the awaking of vengeance; abused mercy "Then (in the judgment day) shall a good conscience be more worth than all the world's good."-Berne. † Hieram still thought that voice was in his ears, Arise ye dead, and come to judgment." As oft as I think on that day, how doth my whole body quake, and my heart within me tremble. will certainly turn into fury; God's forbearance is no acquittance; the day is at hand, when he will pay wicked men for their abuse of old and new mercies; if he seem to be slow, yet he is sure; he hath leaden heels, but iron hands; the farther he fetcheth his blow, or draweth his arrow, the deeper he will wound in the day of vengeance. Men's actions are all in print in heaven, and God will in the day of accounts read them aloud in the ears of all the world, that they may all say, Amen to that righteous sentence that he shall pass upon all despisers and abusers of mercy. CHAPTER IX. The ninth Device that Satan hath to draw the soul to sin, is, BY presenting to the soul the crosses, losses, reproaches, sorrows, and sufferings that daily attend those that walk in the ways of holiness. Saith Satan, you see there are none in the world who are so deeply afflicted, as those who walk more circumspectly and holily than their neighbours; they are a bye-word at home, and a reproach abroad; their miseries come upon them like Job's messengers, one upon the back of another, and there is no and of their sorrows and troubles; therefore, saith Satan, you had better walk in ways that are less troublesome and afflictive, though they be more sinful; for who but a madman would spend his days in sorrow and affliction, when it may be prevented by walking in the ways that I set before him? Now the remedies against this device of Satan, are these: Remedy 1. Against this device of Satan consider, That all the afflictions that attend the people of God, are such as shall turn to their profit, and glorious advantage; they shall hereby discover that filthiness and vileness in sin, that yet they have never seen. It was a speech of a German divine in his sickness: In this disease I have learned how great God is, and what the evil of sin is, I never knew to what purpose God was before, nor what sin meant, till now.' Afflictions are a crystal glass, wherein the soul hath the clearest sight of the ugly face of sin: in this glass it comes to see sin to be but a bitter sweet: yea, to see sin not only to be an evil, but to be the greatest evil in the world, to be an evil far worse than hell itself. Is. i. 15, and xxvii. 8, 9. Again, they shall contribute to the mortifying and purging away of their sins. Afflictions are |