The Soul's Conflict with Itself

6. Moreover, hence we see it is no ¹easy thing to bring God and the heart together: David here as he often checks his heart, so he doth often charge his heart; Doubts and troubles are still gathering upon him, and his faith still gathering upon them. As one striving to get the haven, is driven back by the ⟨p. 255⟩waves, but recovering himself again, gets forward still, and after often beating back, at length obtains the wished haven, and then is at rest. So much ado there is to bring the soul unto God, the harbour of true comfort. It were an easy thing to be a Christian, if Religion stood only in a few outward works and duties, but to take the soul to task, and to deal roundly with our own hearts, and to let conscience have its full work, and to bring the soul into spiritual subjection unto God; this is not so easy a matter, because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into it self, least it should have other thoughts of it self then it would have; David must bid his soul trust and trust, and trust again before it will yield. One main ground of this difficulty, is that contrariety which is in the soul by reason of contrary principles: The soul so far as it is gracious commands, so far as it is rebellious, resists; which drew holy Austen to ²a kind of astonishment; The soul commands the body and it yields (saith ⟨p. 256⟩he) it commands it self, and is resisted by it self; it commands the hand to move and it moveth with such an unperceivable quickness that you can discern no distance betwixt the command and the motion: Whence comes this? but because the soul perfectly wills not and perfectly enjoins not that which is good, and so