The Soul's Preparation for Christ

And as it is with a man that is swooning away, they run for strong cordial water, and for this man, and that friend, to succour him, and they cry all, help, help, for the Lords sake, he is clean gone; this is all well, it is a work of mercy and pity.

And as it is with a man that is swounding away, they runne for strong cordiall water, and for this man, and that friend, to succour him, and they cry all, help, help, for the Lords sake, he is cleane gone; this is all well, it is a worke of mercy and pitty.

But men, brethren and fathers you know not the heart breaking sorrows that are in the souls ⟨p. 186⟩of these poor creatures, he lies as it were in childbed, and is in the very pangs of conversion, and his heart is even now at a ha, even now to be converted, and loosened from sin, and to have Christ brought into his soul; O that God would send some amongst you that you might see some experience of it: Oh faith the poor soul, will these and these sins never be pardoned? and will this proud heart never be humbled? thus the soul •ighes, mourns, and saith, Lord, I see this, and feel the burden of it; and yet I have not a heart to be humbled for it, nor to be freed from it; Oh whence will it once be? did you but know this it would make your hearts to bleed to hear him, it is not the swooning away of a man in a qualm; No, No, the sword of the Almighty hath pierced through his heart, and he is breathing out his sorrow, as though he were going down to hell, and he saith; if there by any mercy, any love, any fellowship of the spirit; have mercy upon me a poor creature that am under the burden of the Almighty; O pray and pity these wounds and vexations of spirit, which no man finds nor feels but he that hath been thus wounded.

But men, brethren and fathers you know not the heart breaking sorrows that are in the soules ⟨p. 186⟩