The application of redemption

The fourth sort is your complaining Hypocrite, whose §4Conscience hath been awakened with horrors and fears, and the heart startled with the terrors of the Almighty, and affected with the sight and sense of his sins, and the venom and dread of those Curses that the Truth hath revealed, and fastened upon the soul; he sees he is now in Gods hand, and that he hath him at an infinite advantage; to bear it, is beyond his power; to avoid it, is beyond his Skill; to resist is bootless, and against Reason and Sense, that were to hasten his own ruin; his heart is filled with grief, and his eyes with tears, and his mouth with heavy complaints to God, to man, and he is free and full this way, and that usually, and this he hopes may move the Lord to pity, and to spare him, and abate him of those plagues which he hath denounced in his holy Word, and he cannot but confess he hath deserved by reason of his sin; and he presumes this will go for good pay with the Lord, considering those many human infirmities that do attend us since the Fall, and that ⟨p. 426⟩it is beyond our power to help our selves, and free our selves from our corruptions; thus he keeps his complaints and keeps his sins, he mourns over his distempers, and maintains them while he doth so; thus they bath their sins, as he said, but do not drown them with those heart-breaking Sorrows, which in truth are poison to them: thus it was with Ahab when he had received that dreadful Message from the mouth of the Lord, That he would require the Blood of Naboth at his hand, and cut off his house, he rent his clothes, and put on Sackcloth, and fasted, &c. 1 Kings, 21. 27. the Lord himself observes how he acts this work of […], and that in a comely manner, Stage-Player like, and abates him for the present execution of the plague; the Lord loves his own Work and Ordinances; that as it is with a Parent that affects a Child, the very Picture of it pleaseth him; so it is with God, he likes his Ordinances, and the acting and using of them: but this did not cure, but increase his corruption, for he that was an Enemy to Elijah, verse 20, he professed after, 1 Kings, 22. 8. He hated Micaiah, his sorrow was too overly and slighty, he rent his clothes when he should have rent his heart. Thus it was with those Hypocrites,