judgment. The devil shall accuse the brethren, that is, the saints
and servants of God, and shall tell concerning their follies and
infirmities, the sins of their youth and weakness of their age, the
imperfect grace and the long schedule of omissions of duty, their
scruples and their fears, their diffidences and pusillanimity, and all
those things which themselves by strict examination find themselves
guilty of and have confest all their shame and the matter of their
sorrows, their evil intentions and their little plots, their carnal
confidences and too fond adherences of the things of this world, their
indulgence and easiness of government, their wilder joys and freer
meals, their loss of time and their too forward and apt compliances,
their trifling arrests and little peevishnesses, the mixtures of the
world with the thing of the Spirit, and all the incidences of
humanity he will bring forth and aggravate them by circumstances of
ingratitude, and the breach of promise, and the evacuating all their
holy purposes, and breaking their resolutions, and rifling their vows,
and all these things, being drawn into an entire representment, and
the bills clogged by numbers, will make the best man in the world seem
foul and unhandsome, and stained with the characters of death and evil
dishonor. But for these there is appointed a defender. The Holy Spirit
that maketh intercession for us shall then also interpose, and against
all these things shall oppose the passion of our blest Lord, and upon
all their defects shall cast the robe of righteousness; and the sins
of their youth shall not prevail so much as the repentance of their
age, and their omissions be excused by probable intervening causes,
and their little escapes shall appear single and in disunion, because
they were always kept asunder by penitential prayers and sighings, and
their seldom returns of sin by their daily watchfulness, and their
often infirmities by the sincerity of their souls, and their scruples
by their zeal, and their passions by their love, and all by the