The sovereign and final happiness of man with the effectual means to obtain itThe soveraign and final happiness of man with the effectual means to obtain it

But the Soul being the chief Sinner, shall be the chief Mourner in those Regions of Sorrow. An Image of this we have in the Agonies of Spirit, which sometimes the Saints themselves are in here, and which the most stubborn Sinners can neither resist nor endure. Job was afflicted in that manner that he complains, The Arrows of the Almighty are with me, ¹the Poison whereof drinks up my Spirit, the Terrors of God set themselves ⟨p. 244⟩in Array against me. If a Spark of his Displeasure falls on the guilty Conscience, it tears and blows up all, as a Fire-ball cast into a Magazine. All the Diversions in the World, Business, Pleasures, Merry Conversation, Comedies are as ineffectual to give freedom from those Stings and Furies in the Breast, as the sprinkling of Holy Water is to expel a raging Divil from a possest Person. Those who in their Pride and Jollity, have despised serious Religion, either as a fond Transport and Ecstasy towards God, or a dull Melancholy and Dejection about the Soul, or an idle Scrupulosity about indifferent things, yet when God has set their Sins with all their killing circumstances in order before their Eyes, how changed, how confounded are they at that Apparition? How restless with the dreadful expectation of the doom that attends them! Belshazzar in the midst of his Cups, and Herd of Concubines, by a few Words written on the Wall, containing his Process and Judgment, was so terrified by his guilty jealous Conscience, that his Joints were loosed, Nature sunk under the apprehension. Now all these troubles of Mind, are but ⟨p. 245⟩the beginnings of Sorrows, but the Smoke of the infernal Furnace, but earnests of that terrible Sum which divine Justice will severely exact of the Wicked in Hell.

But the Soul being the chief Sinner, shall be the chief Mourner in those Regions of Sorrow. An Image of this we have in the Agonies of Spirit, which sometimes the Saints themselves are in here, and which the most stubborn Sinners can neither resist nor endure. Job was afflicted in that manner that he complains, The Arrows of the Almighty are with me, ¹the Poison whereof drinks up my Spirit, the Terrors of God set themselves