Such as forsake the best fellowship, and wax strange to holy
assemblies, (as now the manner of many is) how can they but take colde?
Can one coale alone keepe it selfe glowing?
Though it goe not out for want of matter, yet may it bee put out by
sundry accidents; when it is newly kindled, it may be put out with
scoffes and reproaches, if _Peter_ take not heede, and fence himselfe
well against them; but if once throughly growne, such breath will but
spred and encrease it.
It is possible fire may bee oppressed with too much wood, and heat
suffocated with too much nourishment: over-much prayer, reading, and
study, may bee a wearinesse both to flesh and spirit: but it so rarely
happeneth, that I neede not mention it; and yet the soule hath its
satiety. There be some such perchance over-nice men in this sense also,
who have not learned that God will have them mercifull to themselves: It
is often smoothered for want of vent and exercise. Let such as use not
and expresse not their zeale, bragge of their good hearts; surely they
have none such, or not like to have them such. If _Nicodemus_ had not
buried Christ by day, we might have feared his zeale had gone out, for
all his comming by night.
Yet this is not so ordinary, as to extinguish it by the quench-coale of
sinne; grosse sinne every man knowes will waste the conscience, and make
shipwracke of zeale: but I say, the least known evill unrepented of, is
as a theefe in the candle, or an obstruction in the liver.
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