Directions and persuasions to a sound conversion for prevention of that deceit and damnation…Directions and perswasions to a sound conversion for prevention of that deceit and damnation…

6. When your sorrow is unseasonable, and will needs thrust in at those times, when you are called to Thankfulness, and Joy, you have then cause to moderate, and restrain it at that season. Not that we should wholly lay by sorrow in any day of Joy and Thanksgiving: unless we could lay by all our sin in the duties of that day: Nor should we wholly lay by Spiritual comfort and delight, in days of greatest Humiliation. For as our state is here mixed, of Grace and sin, so must all our duties be mixed of ⟨p. 166⟩Joy and Sorrow: It is only in Heaven where we must have unmixed Joys, and only in Hell that there are unmixed sorrows; or at least, not in any state of Grace. But yet for all that, there are seasons now, when one of these must be more eminently exercised, and the other in a lower measure. As in times of Calamity, and after a fall, we are ca•led out so much to Humiliation, that Comfort should but moderate our sorrows, and the exercise of it be•veiled for that time; so in times of Special Mercies from the Lord, we may be called out to exercise our Thanks, and Praise, and Joy so eminently, that sorrow should but keep us humble, and be, as it were, serviceable to our Joys. When Grace and Mercy is most eminent, then Joy and Praise should be predominant (which is through the most of a Christians life, that walketh uprightly and carefully with God:) And when sin and Judgments are most eminent, sorrow must be th•n predominant, as being a necessary means to solid Joy. And therefore ordinarily a sinner that is but in the, work of Conversion, and newly coming to God from a rebellious state, must entertain more ⟨p. 167⟩sorrow, and let out himself more to groans and tears then afterward, when he is brought to Reconciliation with God, and walketh in integrity.

6. When your sorrow is unseasonable, and will needs thrust in at those times, when you are called to Thankfullness, and Joy, you have then cause to moderate, and restrain it at that season. Not that we should wholly lay by sorrow in any day of Joy and Thanksgiving: unless we could lay by all our sinne in the duties of that day: Nor should we wholly lay by Spiritual comfort and delight, in daies of greatest Humiliation. For as our state is here mixt, of Grace and sinne, so must all our duties be mixt of