and tokens they shall discern and try themselves, whether they be God’s true children elect, an sint reprobi, praedestinati, &c., with such scrupulous points, they still aggravate sin, thunder out God’s judgments without respect, intempestively rail at and pronounce them damned in all auditories, for giving so much to sports and honest recreations, making every small fault and thing indifferent an irremissible offence, they so rent, tear and wound men’s consciences, that they are almost mad, and at their wits’ end.

“These bitter potions” (saith [6714]Erasmus) “are still in their mouths, nothing but gall and horror, and a mad noise, they make all their auditors desperate:”  many are wounded by this means, and they commonly that are most devout and precise, have been formerly presumptuous, and certain of their salvation; they that have tender consciences, that follow sermons, frequent lectures, that have indeed least cause, they are most apt to mistake, and fall into these miseries.  I have heard some complain of Parson’s Resolution, and other books of like nature (good otherwise), they are too tragical, too much dejecting men, aggravating offences:  great care and choice, much discretion is required in this kind.

The last and greatest cause of this malady, is our own conscience, sense of our sins, and God’s anger justly deserved, a guilty conscience for some foul offence formerly committed,—­[6715]O miser Oreste, quid morbi te perdit?  Or:  Conscientia, Sum enim mihi conscius de malis perpetratis.[6716] “A good conscience is a continual feast,” but a galled conscience is as great a torment as can possibly happen, a still baking oven, (so Pierius in his Hieroglyph, compares it) another hell.  Our conscience, which is a great ledger book, wherein are written all our offences, a register to lay them up, (which those [6717]Egyptians in their hieroglyphics expressed by a mill, as well for the continuance, as for the torture of it) grinds our souls with the remembrance of some precedent sins, makes us reflect upon, accuse and condemn our own selves. [6718]"Sin lies at door,” &c.  I know there be many other causes assigned by Zanchius, [6719]Musculus, and the rest; as incredulity, infidelity, presumption, ignorance, blindness, ingratitude, discontent, those five grand miseries in Aristotle, ignominy, need, sickness, enmity, death, &c.; but this of conscience is the greatest, [6720]_Instar ulceris corpus jugiter percellens_:  The scrupulous conscience (as [6721]Peter Forestus calls it) which tortures so many, that either out of a deep apprehension of their unworthiness, and consideration of their own dissolute life, “accuse themselves and aggravate every small offence, when there is no such cause, misdoubting in the meantime God’s mercies, they fall into these inconveniences.”  The poet calls them [6722]furies dire, but it is the conscience alone which is a thousand witnesses to accuse us, [6723] Nocte dieque suum gestant in pectore testem.