The Soul's Preparation for Christ

Oh do not cozen your own souls; it is not the tears of the eye, but the blood of the heart that your sins must cost, and if you come not to ⟨p. 195⟩this, never think that your sorrow is good; and therefore you that find your selves guilty, lay your hands upon your hearts & say, Good Lord, this is my portion, the Lord knows I have confessed my sins, and yet have taken liberty to sin: but my heart was never burdened with this evil and vileness of sin; and therefore to this day I never had this true sorrow.

Oh doe not cozen your owne soules; it is not the teares of the eye, but the blood of the heart that your sinnes must cost, and if you come not to ⟨p. 195⟩this, never thinke that your sorrow is good; and therefore you that finde your selves guilty, lay your hands upon your hearts & say, Good Lord, this is my portion, the Lord knowes I have confessed my sinnes, and yet have taken liberty to sin: but my heart was never burthened with this evill and vilenesse of sinne; and therefore to this day I never had this true sorrow.

There is a third sort of sorrowers which is the worst of all, they are such as heretofore have drunk deep of this sorrow, and have been extraordinarily strucken and yet they are grown so much the more hardened in their sins by all these blows that God hath laid upon them; these are in a desperate condition, even such as God hath made howl in the congregation, yet afterwards fall into the same courses again, and return to their old bias, and now they can outface God and his ministers and all; and think it a matter of baseness to be disquieted in heart, as they have been: such novices and children they were once, that they could not sleep nor be quieted, but now they care not what all the ministers under heaven say against them; nay, they can fleer in our faces, and be drunk and vile, & be never troubled for it, they have gotten the skill of it, This is the most fearful condition that almost a poor creature can fall into.