My God, my God, allow me a just indignation, a holy detestation of the
insolency of that man who, because he was of that high rank, of whom
thou hast said, _They are gods_, thought himself more than equal to
thee; that king of Aragon, Alphonsus, so perfect in the motions of the
heavenly bodies as that he adventured to say, that if he had been of
counsel with thee, in the making of the heavens, the heavens should have
been disposed in a better order than they are. The king Amaziah would
not endure thy prophet to reprehend him, but asked him in anger, _Art
thou made of the king's counsel?_[127] When thy prophet Esaias asks that
question, _Who hath directed the spirit of the Lord, or being his
counsellor, hath taught him?_[128] it is after he had settled and
determined that office upon thy Son, and him only, when he joins with
those great titles, the mighty God and the Prince of peace, this also,
the Counsellor;[129] and after he had settled upon him the spirit of
might and of counsel.[130] So that then thou, O God, though thou have no
counsel from man, yet dost nothing upon man without counsel. In the
making of man there was a consultation; _Let us make man_.[131] In the
preserving of man, _O thou great Preserver of men_,[132] thou proceedest
by counsel; for all thy external works are the works of the whole
Trinity, and their hand is to every action. How much more must I
apprehend that all you blessed and glorious persons of the Trinity are
in consultation now, what you will do with this infirm body, with this
leprous soul, that attends guiltily, but yet comfortably, your
determination upon it. I offer not to counsel them who meet in
consultation for my body now, but I open my infirmities, I anatomize my
body to them. So I do my soul to thee, O my God, in an humble
confession, that there is no vein in me that is not full of the blood of
thy Son, whom I have crucified and crucified again, by multiplying many,
and often repeating the same, sins; that there is no artery in me that
hath not the spirit of error, the spirit of lust, the spirit of
giddiness in it;[133] no bone in me that is not hardened with the custom
of sin and nourished and suppled with the marrow of sin; no sinews, no
ligaments, that do not tie and chain sin and sin together. Yet, O
blessed and glorious Trinity, O holy and whole college, and yet but one
physician, if you take this confession into a consultation, my case is
not desperate, my destruction is not decreed. If your consultation
determine in writing, if you refer me to that which is written, you
intend my recovery: for all the way, O my God (ever constant to thine
own ways), thou hast proceeded openly, intelligibly, manifestly by the
book. From thy first book, the book of life, never shut to thee, but
never thoroughly open to us; from thy second book, the book of nature,
where, though subobscurely and in shadows, thou hast expressed thine own
image; from thy third book, the Scriptures, where thou hadst written all
in the Old, and then lightedst us a candle to read it by, in the New,
Testament; to these thou hadst added the book of just and useful laws,
established by them to whom thou hast committed thy people; to those,
the manuals, the pocket, the bosom books of our own consciences; to
those thy particular books of all our particular sins; and to those, the
books with seven seals, which only _the Lamb which was slain, was found
worthy to open_;[134] which, I hope, it shall not disagree with the
meaning of thy blessed Spirit to interpret the promulgation of their
pardon and righteousness who are washed in the blood of that Lamb; and
if thou refer me to these books, to a new reading, a new trial by these
books, this fever may be but a burning in the hand and I may be saved,
though not by my book, mine own conscience, nor by thy other books, yet
by thy first, the book of life, thy decree for my election, and by thy
last, the book of the Lamb, and the shedding of his blood upon me. If I
be still under consultation, I am not condemned yet; if I be sent to
these books, I shall not be condemned at all; for though there be
something written in some of those books (particularly in the
Scriptures) which some men turn to poison, yet upon these consultations
(these confessions, these takings of our particular cases into thy
consideration) thou intendest all for physic; and even from those
sentences from which a too late repenter will suck desperation, he that
seeks thee early shall receive thy morning dew, thy seasonable mercy,
thy forward consolation.