for experienced Christians; yea, perhaps take upon them to be teachers in Israel, to be the guides of other souls. Accordingly they know and use but one medicine, whatever be the cause of the distemper. They begin immediately to apply the promises, to preach the gospel, as they call it. To give comfort is the single point at which they aim: in order to which they say many soft and tender things, concerning the love of God to poor, helpless sinners, and the efficacy of the blood of Christ. Now this is quackery indeed, and that of the worst sort, as it tends, if not to kill men's bodies, yet without the peculiar mercy of God, to destroy both their bodies and souls in hell. It is hard to speak of these daubers with untempered mortar, these promise-mongers, as they deserve. They well deserve the title which has been ignorantly given to others: they are spiritual mountebanks. They do, in effect, make the blood of the covenant an unholy thing. They vilely prostitute the promises of God, by thus applying them to all, without distinction. Whereas indeed the cure of spiritual, as of bodily diseases, must be as various as are the causes of them. The first thing therefore is, to find out the cause, and this will naturally point out the cure.
2. For instance. Is it sin which occasions darkness? What sin? Is it outward sin of any kind? Does your conscience accuse you of commiting any sin, whereby you grieve the Holy Spirit of
