he unquenchable flame, the dark prison, the rayless
darkness, the bed of live coals, the unwearied worm, the indissoluble
chains, the bottomless chaos, the impassable wall, the inconsolable cry.
And none to stand by me; none to plead for me; none to snatch me out."
Now, no Temporary ever possessed anything like that in his own
handwriting among his private papers. A meditation like that, written
out with his own hand, and hidden away under lock and key, will secure
any man from it, even if he had been appointed to backsliding and
reprobation. Bishop Andrewes, as any one will see who reads his _Private
Devotions_, was the chief of sinners; but his discovered and deciphered
papers will all speak for him when they are spread out before the great
white throne, "glorious in their deformity, being slubbered," as his
editors say, "with his pious hands, and watered with his penitential
tears."

Thomas Shepard's _Ten Virgins_ is the most terrible book upon Temporaries
that ever was written. Temporaries never once saw their true vileness,
he keeps on saying. Temporaries are, no doubt, wounded for sin
sometimes, but never in the right place nor to the right depth. And
again, sin, and especially heart-sin, is never really bitter to
Temporaries. In an "exhortation to all new beginners, and so to all
others," "Be sure," Shepard says, "your wound for sin at first is deep
enough. For all the error in a man's faith and sanctification springs
from his first error in his humiliation. If a man's humiliation be
false, or even weak or little, then his faith and his hold of Christ are
weak and little, and his sanctification counterfeit. But if a man's
wound be right, and his humiliation deep enough, that man's faith will be
right and his sanctification will be glorious. The esteem of Christ is
always little where sin lies light." And Hopeful himself says a thing at
this point that is quite worthy of Shepard himself, such is its depth and
insight. He speaks of the righteous actually _loving_ the sight of their
misery. He does not explain what he means by that startling language
because he is talking all the time, as he knows quite well, to one who
understood all that before he was born. Nor will I attempt to explain or
to vindicate what he says. Those of you who love the sight of your own
misery as sinners will understand what Hopeful says without any
explanation; while those who do not understand him would only be the more
stum