A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

;AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 11Thus as Job was singular in the universality of his afflictions,so there was a singularity of bitterness above ordinaryin every particular affliction. And what of all this?And yet for all this, this holy man, by the help of that precioushoard of grace which his heavenly heart had treasuredup in the time of prosperity, out of that spiritual strengthwhich he had gotten into his soul by his former humble acquaintanceand conversation with his God, and knowingfull well that though all was gone, yet he still possessedJesus Christ as fully, if not more feelingly, as ever before,he becomes hereupon as rare and admirable a pattern ofpatience to all posterity, as he was an extraordinary, astonishingspectacle of adversity and woe. Consciousnessof his forespent righteous life, which he peruseth chap.xxxithe clearness of a good conscience, chap, xvi, 19 ;" Beholdmy witness is in heaven, and my record is on high ;" andhis invincible faith, chap, xix, 23, 24, 25, "Oh that my wordswere now written! oh that they were printed in a book!that they were graven with an iron pen, and lead in therock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth,"&c. ; chap, xiii, 15; " Though he slay me, yet will I trustin him ;"— did so strengthen and stay his spirit with a divinemight, that he bore valiantly and stood upright underthe heaviest weight and greatest variety of extreme afflictionsthat ever were laid upon any mere man. But now,on the other side, the tithe, nay the ten hundredth part ofJob's troubles, caused graceless Ahithophel to saddle hisass, get himself home, put his household in order, and hanghimself. So true is that which the blessed prophet tells us,Jer. xvii, 5—8, " Cursed be the man that trusteth in man,and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth fromthe Lord. Por he shall be like the heath in the desert, andshall not see when good comeih, but shall inhabit theparched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, andwhose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree plantedby the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by theriver, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leafshall be green ; and shall not be careful in the year ofdrought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit."This impregnable comfort springing from grace and agood conscience, even in evil times, did steel the spirit ofblessed Luther with such spiritual stoutness, and so hardenedhis forehead against a world, nay a horrible hell ofmost reproachful and raging oppositions, that he became aspectacle, a miracle of rarest Christian fortitude and invinciblecourage to the whole world and to all posterity. I