The mischiefs of self-ignorance and the benefits of self-acquaintance opened in divers sermons at…

When you are sweetly refreshed at the Table of the Lord, and have there received a sealed pardon as from Heaven into your bosoms, and have found delightful entertainment with the Lord, remember that the day may come, when dullness and unbelief and fears may so prevail, as to make that an Ordinance of greatest terror to you, and you may sit there in trembling, lest you should eat and drink your own damnation: and you may go home in fears lest Satan have there taken possession of you, or lest it have sealed you up to wrath: or you may fly from that feast which is your due, and Christ invites you to, through fears lest it belong not to you, and should but harden you more in sin: For, alas, this sad and sinful case, is too oft the case of true believers, that little feared it in their spiritual prosperity. So that the very high expectations of such workings of soul, which they cannot oft or ordinarily reach, and the frustrating of those expectations, doth so often turn the Table of the Lord into the bitterness of wormwood, into distracting fears and troubles, that I cannot tell whether any other part of worship occasion so much distress to many that are upright at the heart, as this ⟨p. 314⟩doth, which is appointed for their special consolation.

When you are sweetly refreshed at the Table of the Lord, and have there received a sealed pardon as from Heaven into your bosoms, and have found delightfull entertainment with the Lord, remember that the day may come, when dulness and unbelief and fears may so prevail, as to make that an Ordinance of greatest terror to you, and you may sit there in trembling, lest you should eat and drink your own damnation: and you may go home in fears lest Satan have there taken possession of you, or lest it have sealed you up to wrath: or you may fly from that feast which is your due, and Christ invites you to, through fears lest it belong not to you, and should but harden you more in sin: For, alas, this sad and sinfull case, is too oft the case of true believers, that little feared it in their spiritual prosperity. So that the very high expectations of such workings of soul, which they cannot oft or ordinarily reach, and the frustrating of those expectations, doth so often turn the Table of the Lord into the bitterness of wormwood, into distracting fears and troubles, that I cannot tell whether any other part of worship occasion so much distress to many that are upright at the heart, as this ⟨p. 314⟩