promise, if any one particular saint should everlastingly go without his reaping- time. ' He that goeth forth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him,' Psa. cxxvi. 6. And therefore, you who think so basely of the gospel, and the professors of it, because at present their peace and comfort is not come, know, it is on the way to them, and comes to stay everlastingly with them ; whereas your peace is going from you every moment, and is sure to leave you without any hope of returning to you again. Look not how the Christian begins, but ends ; the Spirit of God by his convictions comes into the soul with some terrors, but it closoth with peace and joy. As we say of the month of March, it enters like a lion, but goes out like a lamb. ' Mark the peifect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace,' Psa. xxxvii. 36.
Section III. — Thirdly, This proves those that think to heal their con- sciences with other than gospel-balm ; who leave the waters of living comfort that flow from this fountain opened in the gospel by Christ, to draw their peace and comfort out of cisterns of their own hewing ; and they are two, a carnal cistern, and a legal cistern.
First, Some think to draw their peace out of a carnal cistern. There is not a greater vai'iety of plaisters and foolish medicines used for the cure of the ague of the body, than there is of carnal receipts used by self-deceiving sinners to rid themselves of the shaking ague which the fear of God's wrath brings upon their guilty consciences ; some, if they be but a little awakened by the word, and they feel their hearts chill within them, from a few serious thoughts of their wretched undone condition, fall to Felix's physic ; who, as soon as his conscience began to be sick at Paul's sermon, had enough of the preacher, and made all the haste he could to get that unpleasing noise out of his head. Acts xxiv. : ' Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way.' Thus many turn their back off" God, run as far as thej' can from those ordinances, that companj', or anything else that is likely to grate upon their consciences, and revive the thoughts of their deplored state, which all their care is to forget. Such a one I have heard of, that would not be present at any funeral ; could not bear the sight of his own grey hairs, and therefore used a black-lead comb to discolour them, lest by these the thoughts of death (which he so abhorred) should crowd in upon him. A poor cowardly shift, God knows; yet all that this wretch had, and many more have, betwixt them and a hell above-ground in their con- sciences. Others, their light is so strong, and glares on them so constantly, that this will not do, but wherever they go, though they hear not a sermon in a month, look not on a Bible in a year, and keep far enough from such company as would awake their consciences, yet thej' are haunted with their own guilt; and therefore they do not only ' go from the presence of the Lord,' as Cain did, Gen. iv. 16, but, as he also made diversion of those musing thoughts which gathered to his guilty conscience, by employing them another way, in ' building a city,' ver. 17, so do they labour to give their consciences the slip in a crowd of worldly businesses. This is the great leviathan that swallows up all the thoughts of heaven and hell in many men's hearts. They are so taken up with that project and this, that conscience finds them not at leisure to exchange a few words with them for a long time together. Conscience is as much kicked and spited among sinners, as Joseph was among the patriarchs. That which conscience tells them, likes them no better than Joseph's dream did his bre- thren ; and this makes many play the merchants with their consciences, as they did with him ; which they do by bribing it with the profits of the world. Bvit this physic is found too weak also; and therefore Saul's harp and Nabal's feast is thought on by others ; with these they hope to drown their cares, and lay their raving consciences asleep, like some ruffian that is under an arrest for debt, and hath no way, but now to prison he nuist go, except he can make the sergeant drunk in whose hand he is ; which he doth, and so makes an escape. Thus many besot their conscience with the brutish pleasures of sin ; and when they have laid it as fast asleep in senseless stupidity as one that is dead drimk, then they may sin without control, till it wakes again. This is the height of that peace which any carnal receipt can help the sinner unto ; to give a sleep- ing potion that shall bind up the senses of conscience for awhile, in which time the wretch may forget his miser}', as the condemned man doth when he
THE GOSPEL OF PEACE. 383