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conscience, which is man's inner judge, condemns the sinner and declares to
him God's wrath. Therefore his heart, fearing the day of reckoning, is filled
with disquiet and fear and dread, because on that day God, the just and the
holy, will requite every sin. If not, why does the sinner fear his Creator, and
why is he uneasy when he remembers the last day? It is self-evident that, were
man sinless, he would assuredly not dread God, but, on the contrary, loving Him
perfectly, he would have neither fear nor anxiety about death and the day of
judgement.
Although in some men's breasts there is not so much fear and disquiet after
committing sin as has been mentioned, but, on the contrary, in the case of some
this disquiet has been overcome to such a degree that they boldly assert that
they feel no uneasiness about sin and have no fear of death and of the
resurrection day, yet this assertion of theirs, if true, proves merely this
that, on account of their numberless sins and acts of disobedience, their hearts
have grown hard and shallow. Therefore it is that disquiet and fear are not felt
by them, and, since they have long disregarded their conscience, it has, so to
speak, become dead annihilated. Such people's conscience is like a member of the
body which on account of disease has become paralysed, and therefore does not
experience pain. This is not a healthy state of either body or spirit. Hence
this condition of the |
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absence of pain and fear is the fruit and part of the punishment of their
sins. And, just as such people's conscience sometimes wakens up either before
death or in their death-agony, and then their disquiet and inward terror reach
their acme, so doubtless after death they will awake from the sleep of
indifference, and, as it were, intoxication with the pleasures of this mortal
life, in the extremity of terror, and will then be exposed to the danger of
falling into a condition of everlasting unrest and eternal misery. Regarding
such a condition, see what the Lord Jesus Christ says in the Parable of the Rich
Man and Lazarus1 about the state in which the sinful worldling found
himself immediately after death.
The second result which comes from sin is that, as sin springs from self-will
and selfishness and unbelief and carnal lusts, so, on account of every sin which
a man commits, his self-pleasing and unbelief and want of reliance upon God and
his carnal lusts increase and grow stronger. And in this manner the desire of
goodness in man becomes less, and his inclination towards evil increases. Thus
he gets still further away from God, so that, in proportion as a man obeys his
own lusts, those lusts day by day acquire strength; and finally they will become
his masters to such a degree that his conscience and reason will be vanquished
by his passions, and that man will become the captive
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