The real Christian, or, A treatise of effectual calling wherein the work of God…

That the heart must needs be much moved, appears upon these two grounds.

First, The greatness of the evil which now it is convinced of, and feeleth it lieth under. Let a man see and feel himself under the bonds of guilt, in danger of hell, under the power of his lusts, enmity against God, and God a stranger to him, let but the sense of this condition lye upon his heart, and let him go on in his jollity if he can: What a woeful Creature doth a man see himself now to be? He envies the happiness of the beasts that are filled, and play in their pastures. We have heard of him, who ⟨p. 72⟩when he saw a Toad, stood weeping, because God had made him a Man, so excellent a Creature, and not a Toad, so abominable; the goodness of God then, it seems, as he apprehended it, made him weep: but this man he meets a Toad, and he weeps also; but why? because he is a man, who thinks his estate infinitely worse then the condition of a Toad, and if it were possible to obtain it, would change states with the Toad, that hath no guilt of sin, fears no wrath of God, is not under power of lusts or creatures; God is no enemy to it, which is his miserable state: We shall need no other man to dispute with Doctor Twice upon that strange position, of which I know no need in that Controversie, Miserum esse quacunque miseria poenae magis est eligibile, ¹quam omnino non esse. I have thought many times, had Doctor Twice felt what others have done, he would never have asserted such a Position: whatever a man may say for such an Assertion in Aristotle's School, from some Philosophical notions, yet in the Divinity Schools, those notions will be contemned, by him who lies under the sense of his miserable, undone and damned state by sin, let the Doctor tell him never so often he lies, as he doth a few lines before: Whether non-entity be eligible or not? or what truth there may be in those notions taken in the abstract, I dispute not: what they are in the concrete, I know full well: to dispute against sense is nonsense.

First, The greatness of the evil which now it is convinced of, and feeleth it lieth under. Let a man see and feel himself under the bonds of guilt, in danger of hell, under the power of his lusts, enmity against God, and God a stranger to him, let but the sense of this condition lye upon his heart, and let him go on in his jollity if he can: What a woful Creature doth a man see himself now to be? He envies the happiness of the beasts that are filled, and play in their pastures. We have heard of him, who