means most happily married to a retired life, must of due redound to his honour, as the sole proprietary of my pains during my present condition. Now, this book is my eldest offspring, which, had it been a son, (I mean, had it been a work of masculine beauty and bigness) it should have waited as a page in dedication to his honour. But finding it to be of the weaker sex, little in strength, and low in stature, may it be admitted (madam) to attend on your ladyship, his honour's sister.

I need not mind your ladyship how God hath measured outward happiness unto you by the cubit of the sanctuary, of the largest size, so that one would be perplexed to wish more than what your ladyship doth enjoy. My prayer to God shall be, that, shining as a pearl of grace here, you may shine as a star in glory hereafter. So resteth,

Your Honour's,

In all Christian offices,

THOMAS FULLER:

Boughton, January 25, 1646.

A

TO THE CHRISTIAN READER.

S one was not anciently to want a wedding garment at a marriage feast, so now-a-days, wilfully to wear gaudy clothes at a funeral is justly censurable as unsuiting with the occasion. Wherefore, in this sad subject, I have endeavoured to decline all light and luxurious expressions and if I be found faulty therein, I cry and crave God and the reader pardon. Thus desiring that my pains may prove to the glory of God, thine, and my own edification, I rest,

Thine in Christ Jesus,

THOMAS FULLER.

THE CAUSE AND CURE OF A

WOUNDED CONSCIENCE.

DIALOGUE I.

What a wounded Conscience is, wherewith the Godly and Reprobate may be tortured.

TIMOTHEUS.

EEING the best way never to know a wounded

neverérience, is speedily

to know it by a sanctified consideration thereof: give me, I pray you, the description of a wounded conscience, in the highest degree thereof.

PHILOLOGUS. It is a conscience frightened at the sight of sin,* and weight of God's wrath, even unto the despair of all pardon during the present agony.

TIM. Is there any difference betwixt a broken spirit and a wounded conscience, in this your acception?

PHIL. Exceeding much for a broken spirit is to be prayed and laboured for, as the most healthful and happy temper of the soul, letting in as

*Psalm xxxviii. 3.

+ Psalm li. 17.

much comfort as it leaks out sorrow for sin : whereas, a wounded conscience is a miserable malady of the mind, filling it for the present with despair.

TIM. In this your sense, is not the conscience wounded every time that the soul is smitten with guiltiness for any sin committed?

PHIL. God forbid : otherwise his servants would be in a sad condition, as in the case of David,* smitten by his own heart, for being, as he thought, overbold with God's anointed, in cutting off the skirt of Saul's garment; such hurts are presently healed by a plaister of Christ's blood, applied by faith, and never come to that height to be counted and called wounded consciences.

TIM. Are the godly, as well as the wicked, subject to this malady?

PHIL. Yes, verily; vessels of honour, as well as vessels of wrath in this world, are subject to the knocks and bruises of a wounded conscience. A patient Job, pious David, faithful Paul, may be vexed therewith, no less than a cursed Cain, perfidious Achitophel, or treacherous Judas.

TIM. What is the difference betwixt a wounded conscience in the godly, and in the reprobate?

PHIL. None at all, ofttimes, in the parties' apprehensions; both, for the time being, conceiving their estates equally desperate: little, if any, in the wideness and anguish of the wound itself, which for the time may be as tedious and torturing in the godly, as in the wicked.

* 1 Sam. xxiv. 5.