3. Some out of their high and airy imaginations, and out of their iron and fliaty philosophy, will needs think outward good and ill, together with the affections of grief and delight stin-ed up thereby, to be but opinions and conceits of good and evil only, not true, and really so founded in nature, but taken up of ourselves. But though our fancy be ready to conceit a greater hurt in outward evils than indeed there is, as in poverty, pain of body, death of friends, &c., yet we must not deny them to be evils. That wormwood is bitter, it is not a conceit only, but the nature of the thing itself, yet to abstain from it altogether, for the bitterness thereof, is a hurt- ful conceit. That honey is sweet, it is not a conceit only, but the natural quality of it is so ; yet out of a taste of the sweetness, to think we cannot take too much of it, is a misconceit paid home with loathsome bitterness. Outward good and outward e'vdl, and the aflections of delight and sorrow rising thence, are naturally so, and depend not upon our opinion. This were to offer violence to nature, and to take man out of man, as if he were not flesh but steel. Universal experience, from the sensibleness of our nature in any outward grievance, is sufiicient to damn this conceit.
The way to comfort a man in grief, is not to tell him that it is only a conceit of evil, and no evil indeed that he sufiers. This kind of learning ■will not down with him, as being contrary to his present feeling. But the
190 THE soul's conflict.
way is, to yield unto him that there is cause of grieving, though not of over- grieving, and to shew him grounds of comforts stronger than the grief he suffers. We should weigh the degi'ees of evil in a right balance, and not suffer fancy to make them greater than they are ; so as that for obtaining the greatest outward good, or avoiding the greatest outward ill of suffering, we should give way to the least evil of sin. This is but a policy of the flesh to take away the sensibleness of evil, that so those checks of conscience and repentance for sin, which is oft occasioned thereby, might be taken away ; that so men may go on enjoying a stupid happiness, never laying anything to heart, nor afflicting their souls, until their consciences awaken in the place of the damned, and then they feel that grief return upon them for ever, which they laboured to put away when it might have been season- able to them.
§ VII. I have stood the longer upon this, because Satan and his instru- ments, by bewitching the imagination with false appearances, misleadeth not only the world, but troubleth the peace of men ' taken out of the world,' James i. 27, 1 John iv. 5, 6, whose estate is laid up safe in Christ, who, notwithstanding, pass their few days here in an uncomfortable, wearisome, and unnecessary sadness of spirit, being kept in ignorance of their happy condition by Satan's juggling and their own mistakes, and so come to heaven before they are aware. Some again pass their days in a golden dream, and drop into hell before they think of it. But it is far better to di-eam of ill, and when we awake to find it but a dream, than to dream of some great good, and when we awake to find the contrary.
As the distemper of the fancy — la;sa phantasia — disturbing the act of reason, oftentimes breeds madness in regard of civil conversation ; so it breeds, likewise, spiritual madness, carrying men to those things, which, if they were in their right wits, they would utterly abhor. Therefore we can- not have too much care upon what we fix our thoughts. And what a glo- rious discovery is there of the excellencies of religion that would even ravish an angel, which may raise up, exercise, and fill our hearts ! We see our fancy hath so great a force in natural conceptions, that it oft sets a mark and impression upon that which is conceived in the womb. So, likewise, strong and holy conceits of things, having a divine virtue accompanying of them, transform the soul, and breed spiritual impressions answerable to our spiritual apprehensions. It would prevent many crosses, if we would con- ceive of things as they are. When trouble of mind, or sickness of body, and death itself cometh, what will remain of all that greatness which filled our fancies before ? Then we can judge soberly, and speak gravely of things. The best way of happiness, is not to multiply honom's or riches, &c., but to cure our conceits of things, and then we cannot be very much cast down with anything that befalls us here.
Therefore, when anything is presented to our souls, which we see is ready to work upon us, we should ask of ourselves upon what ground we entertain such a conceit, whether we shall have the same judgment after we have yielded to it as now we have ? and whether we will have the same judgment of it in sickness and death and at the day of reckoning as we have for the present ? That which is of itself evil, is always so at one time as well as another. If the time will come when we shall think those things to be vain, which now we arc so eagerly set upon, as if there were some great good in them, why should we not think so of them now, whenas the reform- ing of our judgment may do us good, rather than to bo led on with a