Directions for weak distempered Christians, to grow up to a confirmed state of grace…

Readers,

That you may neither mis-understand this Book nor me, I owe you this pre-advertisement, That it was Preached in a Lecture at Kidderminster in Worcestershire about seven or eight years ago (1658): That the sad experience of the distempers of weak well-meaning people (though not in that place) yet in those times (especially of those who ran after the most gross deceivers, distracted the Churches, reviled, afflicted, and busily attempted to pull down the Pastors, and actually pulled down the higher Powers, whom God forbade them to resist,) was the chief occasion of the Preaching of these Sermons: And that the special reasons for my publishing them now, are these that follow. 1. Because I perceive not that yet people are sufficiently humbled for those miscarriages, or have yet well found out ⟨image 5⟩their sins, which by many and sore Judgments have found them out. 2. Because I perceive that it is too ordinary to speak to Weak Christians only by way of comfort, and too rare to show them the evil of their distempers; and that the very terms are used as if they imported nothing, but what is to be loved, or tenderly gainsaid: And most that hear themselves called [Weak Christians] do take it for a word of honouring-pity, and feel in it no humbling matter of reproof: As if the comfort of being a Living man, did nullify the trouble and pain of Infancy, of a Lethargy, a Leprosy, a Fever, Gout or Stone. The scandals which have dishonoured Religion in this Age, do tell us that it is not all a Preachers work, to convince and convert the Infidels and Profane ones, but that much of it lieth in detecting Hypocrisies, and humbling the weak, and healing their distempers, and saving and raising them from their Falls. The thoughts of the Case of such Christians as these, did tempt Augustine once to doubt whether there were not a Purgatory; It seemed so hard to him to believe, either that men who in the rest of their lives were godly and honest, should go to Hell; or that men so guilty of particular crimes and scandals, (of which their ignorance and error kept them ⟨image 5⟩from repenting) could go strait to Heaven. And no doubt but it was the heinous sins and great distempers, of men professing Godliness, which caused humane reason to invent and entertain this doctrine of Purging-pains: