Heaven upon earth in the serene tranquillity and calm composure, in the sweet peace…

We shall but very briefly (to make way for that which we would mainly be at) hint at two or three Observations from both these verses now read, put together; first then▪ Observe, from Chap. 10. v. 22. That a Conscience not purged by the blood of Christ, is a very evil thing: which we will find to be a very sad truth, if we consider the unpurged Conscience, either as its awakened or as its not awakened, but asleep, which is ill both ways; Its ill, if it be awakened, and the terrors of God be fresh upon it; who can express, or adequately conceive the terribleness of such a case? The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity, and wrestle through many crosses, but a wounded, a wrath-wounded spirit, or an ill Conscience, roused by the terrors of the Almighty God, who can bear? This hath made some, with Judas the tray tour, rather to choice death▪ a violent death inflicted by their own wretched hands on themselves, then life; whereby they have desperately run themselves under the wrath of God to the full, O▪ poor silly miserable shift, and evasion, to flee from some smaller fore-parties (as it were) of the wrath of God on earth, into the very strength, and main battle of it eternally in hell, this is infinitely worse then to leap out of the water into the fire; Nay some of the most eminent Saints, by the falling but of some hot scalding drops of Gods fatherly wrath and displeasure have been brought near the length of wishing rather for strangling (though mercifully kept from it, and made to abhor it) then life; As it was with non such holy Job, who looked on death, a violent death as an easy matter, be what it was to be ⟨p. 339⟩under the sense of wrath, and to be set up as the mark for Gods arrows to be shot at, the venom whereof, to his apprehension, drunk up his Spirits; though all the while he was kept up in the faith of his interest in God, and of his love to him▪ To his purpose, Human heavily complains, Psal. 88. I am afflicted, and ready to die from my youth up, while I suffer thy terrors, I am distracted; If it be sometimes done thus in the green trees, even the greenest, what shall be done in the dry? Now the Conscience is in a special manner the receptacle of all the terrors of God; it must therefore certainly be a very ill thing to have an awakened ill Conscience: