He
speaks our sin at every word; our guilty conscience knows it. He
speaks our death at every word; our doubting conscience feels it.
2. Besides this, there do now arise even in the heart such defiling
and soul-infectious thoughts, as put the tempted to his wit's end,
For now it seems to the soul that the very flood-gates of the flesh
are opened, and that to sin there is no stop at all; now the air
seems to be covered with darkness, and the man is as if he was
changed into the nature of a devil. Now, if ignorance and unbelief
prevail, he concludeth that he is a reprobate, made to be taken and
destroyed.
3. Now also he feeleth in him a readiness to fall in with every
temptation--a readiness, I say, continually present. Romans 7:21.
This throws all down. Now despair begins to swallow him up; now he
can neither pray, nor read, nor hear, nor meditate on God, but fire
and smoke continually burst forth of the heart against him; now sin
and great confusion puts forth itself in all. Yea, and the more the
sinner desireth to do a duty sincerely, the further off he always
finds himself; for by how much the soul struggleth under these
distresses, by so much the more doth Satan put forth himself to
resist, still infusing more poison, that if possible it might never
struggle more, for stragglings are also as poison to Satan.
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