N04855:46
Some select cases resolved. Specially, tending to the right ordering of the heart, that…
Some select cases resolved. Specially, tending to the right ordering of the heart, that we may comfortably walk with God in our general and particular callings: &c. In a letter to a pious friend in England. / By Thomas Shepard, M.A. Formerly of Emmanuel-College in Cambridge in England: afterward Minister of Cambridge in New-England. ; Corrected by four several editions.
Boston: printed by Rogers and Fowle, 1747
Case 1: CASE I. Of ordering the Thoughts in Civil Employments.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
CASE I. Of ordering the Thoughts in Civil Employments.
Your first Trouble is, concerning your disturbances in Civil affairs, by the secret injection of religious thoughts; so that you know not how to follow the one, without hazard of grieving the spirit, and breaking your peace, in not maintaining and nourishing at the same time the other: and hence being drawn to go two ways at the same time, which you cannot well do, your heart is disquieted, and your peace much interrupted.
This of yours, puts me in mind of the complaint of an honest, yet plain man, to an able Minister once, who in bewailing his condition to him, among other miseries, this was not the least; (viz) that he was exceedingly troubled with good thoughts, so that he could not follow his place, unless very oft he did stand still and pray, for fear of grieving the Spirit, (as he thought) and losing his season of being heard in heaven: For said Conscience oft unto him, How dost thou know but this may be thy accepted time, and if thou dost not take it, it may be thou shalt never have it again? I have forgot the Minister's answer; but I am sure in these complaints you go not alone: I have lately known one very able, wise, and godly, put upon the Rack in these kind of thoughts, by him, that envying God's people's peace, knows how to change himself ⟨p. 4⟩into an Angel of light. For it being his usual course in the time of his health, to make a Diary of his hourly life, and finding much benefit by it, he was in conscience pressed by the power and delusion of Satan, to make and take the same daily survey of his life in the time of his sickness; by means of which, he spent his enfeebled spirits, cast on fuel to fire his sickness: and had not a friend of his convinced him of his erroneous conscience, misleading him at that time, he had murdered his body, out of conscience to save his soul, and to preserve his grace. And do you think these were the motions of God's spirit, which like those Locusts,