WHEN man is taken and laid under the day of God's power, when Christ
is opening his ear to discipline, and speaking to him that his heart
may receive instruction, many times that poor man is as if the devil
had found him, and not God. How frenzily he imagines; how crossly he
thinks; how ungainly he carries it under convictions, counsels, and
his present apprehension of things! I know some are more powerfully
dealt withal, and more strongly bound at first by the word; but
others more in an ordinary manner, that the flesh and reason may be
seen to the glory of Christ. Yea, and where the will is made more
quickly to comply with its salvation, it is no thanks to the sinner
at all. It is the day of the power of the Lord that has made the
work so soon to appear. Therefore count this an act of love, in the
height of love; love in a great degree.

"I heard thy voice in the garden." Gen. 3: 10. It is a word from
without that does it. While Adam listened to his own heart, he
thought fig-leaves a sufficient remedy; but the voice that walked in
the garden shook him out of all such fancies.

A man's own righteousness will not fortify his conscience from fear
and terror, when God begins to come near to him to judgment.

Few know the weight of sin. When the guilt thereof takes hold of the
conscience, it commands homeward all the faculties of the soul.

It was upon this account that Peter and James and John were called
the sons of thunder, because in the word which they were to preach