than the brethren of Dives, if I should not believe one risen from the dead, for such in effect I conceive to be his condition.

TIM. But waiving these digressions, I pray proceed to give me good advice.

17.

PHIL. First thankfully own God thy principal restorer, and comforter paramount. Remember that, of ten lepers, one only returned Luke xvii. to give thanks, which shows, that by nature, without grace overswaying us, it is ten to one if we be thankful. Omit not also thy thankfulness to good men, not only to such who have been the architects of thy comfort, but even to those who, though they have built nothing, have borne burthens towards thy recovery.

.

TIM. Go on, I pray, in your good counsel.

PHIL. Associate thyself with men of afflicted minds, with whom thou mayest expend thy time to thine and their best advantage. O how excellently did Paul comply with Aquila and Priscilla! As their hearts agreed in the general profession of piety, so their hands met in the trade of tent-makers, they abode and wrought Acts xviii. together, being of the same occupation. Thus I count all wounded consciences of the same company, and may mutually reap comfort one. by another; only here is the difference; they (poor souls) are still bound to their hard task

3.

2 Cor. i. 4.

32.

and trade, whilst thou (happy man) hast thy indentures cancelled, and, being free of that profession, art able to instruct others therein.

TIм. What instructions must I commend unto them?

PHIL. Even the same comfort wherewith thou thyself wast comforted of God: with David, tell them what God hath done for thy soul; Luke xxii. and with Peter, being strong, strengthen thy brethren conceive thyself like Joseph, therefore, sent before, and sold into the Egypt of a wounded conscience, (where thy feet were hurt in the stocks, the irons entered into thy soul,) that thou mightest provide food for the famine of others, and especially be a purveyor of comfort for those thy brethren, which afterwards shall follow thee down into the same doleful condition.

TIM. What else must I do for my afflicted brethren?

PHIL. Pray heartily to God in their behalf: when David had prayed, Psalm xxv. 2, O my God, I trust in thee, let me not be ashamed; in the next verse, (as if conscious to himself, that his prayers were too restrictive, narrow, and niggardly,) he enlarges the bounds thereof, and builds them on a broader bottom: Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed. Let charity in thy devotions have Rehoboth, room enough:

beware of pent petitions confined to thy private good, but extend them to all God's servants, but especially all wounded consciences.

TIM. Must I not also pray for those servants of God, which hitherto have not been wounded in conscience?

PHIL. Yes, verily, that God would keep them from, or cure them in, the exquisite torment thereof. Beggars, when they crave an alms, constantly use one main motive, that the person of whom they beg may be preserved from that misery whereof they themselves have had woful experience. If they be blind, they cry, Master, God bless your eyesight; if lame, God bless your limbs; if undone by casual burning, God bless you and yours from fire. Christ, though his person be now glorified in heaven, yet he is still subject, by sympathy of his saints on earth, to hunger, nakedness, imprisonment, and a wounded conscience, and so may stand in need of feeding, clothing, visiting, comforting, and curing. Now when thou prayest to Christ for any favour, it is a good plea to urge, edge, and lenforce thy request withal, Lord, grant me such or such a grace, and never mayest thou, Lord, in thy mystical members, never be tortured and tormented with the agony of a wounded conscience, in the deepest distress thereof.

TIM. How must I behave myself for the time to come?

PHIL. Walk humbly before God, and care

fully avoid the smallest sin, always rememberJohn v. 14. ing Christ's caution: Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

DIALOGUE XX.

Whether one cured of a wounded Conscience be subject to a Relapse.

M

TIMOTHEUS.

AY a man, once perfectly healed of a wounded conscience, and for some years in peaceable possession of comfort, afterwards fall back into his former disease?

PHIL. Nothing appears in Scripture or reason to the contrary, though examples of real relapses are very rare, because God's servants are careful to avoid sin, the cause thereof; and being once burnt therewith, ever after dread the fire of a wounded conscience.

TIM. Why call you it a relapse?

PHIL. To distinguish it from those relapses more usual and obvious, whereby such who have snatched comfort before God gave it them, on serious consideration that they had usurped that to which they had no right, fall back again into the former pit of despair; this is improp

erly termed a relapse, as not being a renewing, but a continuing of their former malady, from which, though seemingly, they were never soundly recovered.

TIM. Is there any intimation in Scripture of the possibility of such a real relapse in God's servants?

PHIL. There is; when David saith, Psalm lxxxv. 8, I will hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints, but let them not turn again to folly this imports that if his saints turn again to folly, which by woful experience we find too frequently done, God may change his voice, and turn his peace, formerly spoken, into a warlike defiance to their conscience.

TIM. But this methinks is a diminution to the majesty of God, that a man, once completely cured of a wounded conscience, should again be pained therewith: let mountebanks palliate, cures break out again, being never soundly, but superficially healed: He that is all in all never doth his work by halves, so that it shall be undone afterwards.

PHIL. It is not the same individual wound in number, but the same in kind, and perchance a deeper in degree: nor is it any ignorance or falsehood in the surgeon, but folly and fury in the patient, who, by committing fresh sins, causes a new pain in the old place.