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

§. 6 That carnal security is a disease hardly cured.

§. 6 That carnall securitie is a disease hardly cured.

And as this security is a dangerous and grievous disease, so in this respect it is the more pernicious, because it is hardly cured, and that in a double respect; first, because insensible diseases are in themselves most desperate, as the Lethargy, dead palsy, apoplexy. And even in acute sicknesses, as Fevers and burning Agues, we account the patient most hopeless and helpless, when as he is past feeling of his sickness. Thus also the wounded members are most hardly cured, when by much effusion of blood and spirits they are become stiff and benumbed. And whereas green wounds, which are most sharp and painful to sense, are soon healed; those which are full of dead flesh, gangrened or turned into Cankers, as they are freest from pain, so are they furthest from curing. And thus it also fareth with those who are spiritually sick, and wounded with the sores of sin; the more sensible they are of their grief, the more hope there is of their recovery; and contrariwise, the more senseless and stupid, the more hardly can they be restored to their spiritual health. For as Augustine saith, ¹that wound which paineth not, is not to be esteemed sound, but dead. Secondly, because he who is not sensible of his disease, thinking himself already well enough, doth use no means whereby he may be recovered; the which is also the condition of those who are sick of this senseless security; they think they are in good case, rich in all things, and have need of nothing, as we see in the example of the Angel of the Church of Laodicea; and therefore seek not to better their ²estate till God open their eyes, and giveth them the sight and sense of their poverty and wretchedness. In which regard we may fitly say to those who are sick of this security, as Bernard to Eugenius, there is