A Christian Library, Section 35
Sect. XXXV.
Convert. It was not your case alone, but so it fares with the worst of sinners: Only it much rejoyces me, that it hath pleased God to open your eyes, to see all this in your self. For flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto you. Yea we are naturally so blind, and deaf, and dead in sin and in soul: that we can no more discern our spiritual filthinesse, nor feel sin to be a burden, than a blind Aethiopian can see his own blacknesse, or than a deadman can feel the weight of a burthen, when it is laid upon him, Act. 28.27. Isa. 6.9, 10,
And this common experience shews; for if you observe it, who more jocond, confident and secure, than the worst of sinners; they can strut it under an unsupportable Mass of oaths, blasphemies, thefts, murthers, adulteries, drunkenness and other the like sins; yea can easily swallow these spiders with Mithridates, and digest them too: when one that is regenerate, shrinkes under the burden of wandring thoughts, and want of proficiency. But why is it? they are dead in sin, Ephes. 2.1. Revel. 3.1. Now lay a mountain upon a dead-man, he feels not once the weight.
To a Christian that hath the life of grace, the least sin lyes heavy upon the conscience: but to him that is dead, let his sins be as heavy as a mountain of lead; he feels in them no weight at all.
Again▪ They are … for what the eye seeth not, the heart rueth not. Security makes worldlings merry, and therefore are they secure, because they are ignorant. A dunce we know, seldome makes doubts: yea a fool, saies Solomon, boasteth and is confident, Prov. 14.16. neither do blind men ever blush. And the truth is, were it not for pride and ignorance, a world of men would be ashamed to have their faces seen abroad. For take away from mens minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations, and the like; you will leave the minds of most men and women, but poor shrunken things; full of melancholy, indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves. Ignorance is a veil or curtain to hide away their sins: whereupon they are never troubled in conscience, nor macerated with cares about eternity; but think that all will be well.
The Devil and the flesh, prophesie prosperity to sin, yea life and salvation, as the Pope promised the powder-traitors: but death and damnation (which Gods Spirit threatens) will prove the crop they will reap. For God is true, the Devil and all flesh are lyers.
When we become regenerate, and forsake sin, then the Devil strongly and strangely assaults us: as he did Christ, when he was newly baptized; and Pharaoh the children of Israel, when they would forsake Aegypt; and Herod the children, when Christ was come to deliver his people. Whence, commonly it comes to passe, that those think best of themselves, that ave least cause; yea the true Christian, is as fearfull to entertain a good opinion of himself, as the false is unwilling, to be driven from it. They that have store of grace, mourn for the want of it: and they that indeed want it, chant their abundance. None so apt to doubt their adoption, as they that may be assured of it: nor none more usually fear, then they that have the greatest cause to hope. We feel corruption not by corruption, but by grace: and therefore the more we feel our inward corruptions; the more grace we have.
Contraries, the nearer they are to one another, the sharper is the conflict betwixt them: now of all enemies, the spirit and the flesh are nearest one to another, being both in the soul of a regenerate man; and in all faculties of the soul, and in every action that springeth from those faculties. The more grace, the more spiritual life; and the more spiritual life, the more antipathy to the contrary: whence none are so sensible of corruption, as those that have the most living souls.