406 DIRECTIONS AND PERSUASIONS you should be labouring to break your hearts, you will be studying to heal them; and will be hearken- ing after present comforts, when you have more need of godly sorrow. It will fill your mouths in prayer with pharisaical thanksgivings for the mercies of rege- neration, justification, adoption, sanctification, which you never received. Little doth many a soul know what sanctification and the several graces of the Spirit are, that use to give God thanks for them : there is many and many a one, that must for ever be in hell, that were used to give God thanks for their hopes of glory. And the common cause of all this deceit and misery is, that men do run from under the hands of their Physician, before he ever went to the bottom of their sore, and go away with a half-con- version ; and so spend all the rest of their lives in a mere delusion, as verily thinking they are converted, when they are not. How confidently will such re- ceive the Lord's supper, and thrust themselves into the communion of the saints, as if they had as good right as others to be there! Till the Lord of the feast shall take them to task and say, Friend, how cagiest thou in hither, not having on a wedding-gar- ment? And then they will be speechless.(w) How many false deceiving comforts, and perhaps even seeming raptures and assurances, may these have in themselves, as verily thinking their case is good, when, alas, they never yet laid the foundation ! Yea, and it is to be observed, that Satan is a friend to the comforts of this kind of men, and therefore will do all that he can to promote them. For he would wil- lingly keep his garrison in peace.(x) And, therefore, he may possibly be a comforting spirit to them him- self, and imitate the Holy Ghost, the comforter of the saints; and, it may be, give them such raptures as seem higher than those which the Spirit of holiness doth give. He envieth the saints their peace and comfort, because he forsees how durable they will prove: but he can be content that deluded hypocrites may have joy, because their comforts do not weaken, (w) Matt. xxii. 12. (x) Luke xi. 21.
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