A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties

But that we may be moved to abhor this sin of carnal security with greater hatred, let us further consider, that it is a most fearful and pernicious vice, which hath in it all relations of ill, being not only in it self exceeding evil, but also the cause of many & grievous evils. In it self it is a disease of the soul most dangerous and desperate, unless it be cured by unfeigned repentance; for there is no disease more pernicious to the spiritual Patient, sick in sin, then the stone in heart, or if you will an heart of stone; no stone so hard and hardly broken. For though the voice of the Lord be so powerful and full of Majesty, that it breaketh the Cedars, shaketh the earth and maketh it to tremble; yea, renteth the Rocks, turning them into a standing water, ¹and the Flint it self into a Fountain of waters, as the Psalmist speaketh; yet it moveth not the secure and stony heart, nor resolveth it into the tears of repentance; and therefore we read that when the Word of God by the Prophet was so mighty, that it clave in sunder the stony Altar, yet the more hard and stony heart of Jeroboam, was not at all ²affected and pierced with it; but notwithstanding all Gods terrible Threatenings he goeth on securely in his sin. It is (as the Prophet calleth it) that Spirit of deep sleep, which closeth up mens eyes, and depriveth ⟨p. 53⟩