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It has been very common, that the deep and fixed concern on
persons minds, has had a painful influence on their bodies, and given
disturbance to animal nature. The awful apprehensions persons have had
of their misery, have for the most part been increasing, the nearer they
have approached to deliverance; though they often pass through many
changes and alterations in the frame and circumstances of their minds.
Sometimes they think themselves wholly senseless, and fear that the
Spirit of God has left them, and that they are given up to judicial
hardness; yet they appear very deeply exercised about that fear, and are
in great earnest to obtain convictions again.
Together with those fears, and that exercise of mind which is rational,
and which they have just ground for, they have often suffered many
needless distresses of thought, in which Satan probably has a great
hand, to entangle them, and block up their way. Sometimes the distemper
of melancholy has been evidently mixed; of which, when it happens, the
tempter seems to take great advantage, and puts an unhappy bar in the
way of any good effect. One knows not how to deal with such persons;
they turn every thing that is said to them the wrong way, and most to
their own disadvantage. There is nothing that the devil seems to make so
great a handle of, as a melancholy humor; unless it be the real
corruption of the heart.
But it is very remarkable, that there has been far less of this mixture
at this time of extraordinary blessing, than there was wont to be
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