Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

If the stream of our affections was never thus turned; we are, doubtless, going down the stream into the pit. If the lust of the •ye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, have the throne in our hearts, which should be possessed by the Father, Son, and holy Ghost; if we never had so much love to God, as to ourselves; if sin has been somewhat bitter to us, but never so ••ter as suffering, never so bitter as the pain of being weaned from it: truly we are strangers to this saving change For grace turns the affections upside-down, whenever it comes into the heart.

Fourthly, The conscience is renewed. Now, that a new light is set up in the soul in regeneration; conscience is enlightened▪ instructed, and informed That candle of the Lord, (Prov xx. 27) is now snuffed and brightened; so as it shines, and sends forth its light into the most retired corners of the heart; discovering sins which the soul was not aware of before: and, in a special manner, discovering the corruption or depravity of nature, that seed and spawn whence all actual sins proceed This produces the new complaint, Rom vii 24. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver m• from the body of this death? That conscience, which lay sleeping in the man's bosom before, is now awakened, and makes its voice to be heard through the whole soul: and therefore there is no more rest for him in the sluggard's bed; he must get up and be doing, arise, haste and escape for his life. It powerfully incites to obedience; even in the most spiritual acts, which lay not within the view of the natural conscience; and powerfully restrains from sin, even from these sins which do not lie open to the observation of the world. It urgeth the sovereign authority of God, to which the heart is now reconciled and which it willingly acknowledges: and so it engageth the man to his duty, whatever be the hazard from the world; for it fills the heart so with the fear of God, that the force of the fear of man is broken. This hath engaged many to put their life▪ in their hand, and follow the cause of religion they once contemned, and resolutely walk in the path they formerly abhorred,