The conscience‑touching power of the word attests its divine origin 2/2

     Answer First.  I answer, many sinners who seem so jocund in your eyes, have not such merry lives as you think for.  A book may be fairly bound and gild­ed, yet have but sad stories writ within it.  Sinners will not tell us all the secret rebukes that conscience from the word gives them.  If you will judge of Herod by the jollity of his feast, you may think he wanted no joy; but at another time we see that John’s ghost walked in his conscience.  And so doth the word haunt many a one, who to us appear to lay nothing to heart.  In the midst of their laughter their heart is sad. You see the lightning in their face, but hear not the thunder that rumbles in their conscience.

           Answer Second.  It is enough, that the word doth leave such an impression upon the conscience of any ‘though not of all’ to prove its divinity.  One affirma­tive testimony speaketh louder for the proof of a thing, than many negatives do to the contrary.  The word is not a physical instrument, but a moral, and works not by a virtue inherent in it, but [by a] power impressed on it by the Spirit of God that first indited it.  And this power he putteth forth according to his own good pleasure; so that the same word sets one man a trembling, and leaves another ‘in the same seat may be’ as little moved by it as the pillar he leaneth on.  Thus as two at a mill, so at a sermon, one is taken, and the other left; one is humbled, and another hardened; not from any impotency in the word, but [from the] freeness of God’s dispensing it. His message it shall do to him it is sent, and none else.  It is as a man strikes with a sword, back or edge, a strong or weak blow, that makes it cut or not, gives a slight wound or deep.  The word pierceth the con­science according to the force and divine power that is impressed on it.  The three children walked in the fire, and were not singed, others were consumed as soon as they came within the scent of it.  Shall we say, ‘That fire is not hot,’ because one was burned and the other not?  Some, their consciences do not so much as smell of the word, though the flames of the threatening fly about their ears, others are set all on fire with the terrors of it.

           Answer Third.  The senseless stupidity of some under the stroke of the word, is not to be imputed to its impotency, but to the just judgement of God, wherewith he plagueth them for sinning against the convictions thereof.  For commonly they are of that sort, whose consciences are so impenetrable ‘the with­ering curse of God having lighted upon them’ that there is no wonder their judgments are darkened and their consciences seared.  It was as great a mani­festation of Christ’s power ‘and his disciples judged it so’ when with two or three words the fig‑tree was blasted, as if he had caused it to spring and sprout when withered and dry.  The power of God is as great in hardening Pharaoh’s heart as in melting Josiah’s.