hese lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden
noises; these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of his senses;
these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood,
sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself only therefore, that he hath
enough in himself, not only to destroy and execute himself, but to
presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to antedate
the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable by sad
apprehensions, and, as if he would make a fire the more vehement by
sprinkling water upon the coals, so to wrap a hot fever in cold
melancholy, lest the fever alone should not destroy fast enough without
this contribution, nor perfect the work (which is destruction) except we
joined an artificial sickness of our own melancholy, to our natural, our
unnatural fever. O perplexed discomposition, O riddling distemper, O
miserable condition of man!

I. EXPOSTULATION.

If I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the
Lord's hand made me of this dust, and the Lord's hand shall re-collect
these ashes; the Lord's hand was the wheel upon which this vessel of
clay was framed, and the Lord's hand is the urn in which these ashes
shall be preserved. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the
Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and
ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul. And being so, the breath of God,
I may breathe back these pious expostulations to my God: My God, my God,
why is not my soul as sensible as my body? Why hath not my soul these
apprehensions, these presages, these changes, these antidates, these
jealousies, these suspicions of a sin, as well as my body of a sickness?
Why is there not always a pulse in my soul to beat at the approach of a
temptation to sin? Why are there not always waters in mine eyes, to
testify my spiritual sickness? I stand in the way of temptations,
naturally, necessarily; all men do so; for there is a snake in every
path, temptations in every vocation; but I go, I run, I fly into the
ways of temptation which I might shun; nay, I break into houses where
the plague is; I press into places of temptation, and tempt the devil
himself, and solicit and importune them who had rather be left
unsolicited by me. I fall sick of sin, and am bedded and bedrid, buried
and putrified in the practice of sin, and all this while have no
presage, no pulse, no sense of my sickness. O height,