And I was moved to declare to the people how all people in the fall were from the image of God and righteousness and holiness, and they was as wells without the water of life, clouds without the heavenly rain, trees without the heavenly fruit and in the nature of beasts and serpents, and tall cedars and oaks, and bulls and heifers, so they might read this nature within as the prophet described to people that were out of truth, and how that they was in the nature of dogs and swine biting and rending, and the nature of briars, thistles and thorns, and like the owls and dragons in the night, and like the wild asses and horses snuffing up, and like the mountains and rocks and crooked and rough ways, so I exhorted them to read these without and within in their nature and the wandering stars, read them without and look within all that was come to the bright and morning star, so as their fallow ground must be ploughed up before it beared seed to them, so must the fallow ground of their heart be ploughed up before they bear seed to God. So all these names were spoken to man and woman since they fell from the image of God. And as they do come to be renewed again up into the image of God they come out of the nature and so out of the name.
(C. J., 1652, pp. 53, 54.)
A place of repentance ye cannot find, though ye wash your altar with tears, being in the stained life.
(Works, VII., p. 211.)
The Lord is coming upon the wicked in his thundering power, for they are ripe.
(Works, VII., p. 273.)
Discouragement.
And, friends, though you may have tasted of the power and been convinced and have felt the light; yet, afterwards, you may feel a winter storm, tempest, hail (and be frozen), frost and cold and wilderness and temptations, be patient and still in the power and still in the light that doth convince you. Keep your minds unto God, in that be quiet that you may come to the summer, that your flight be not in the winter. For if you sit still in the patience which overcomes in the power of God there will be no flying. For the husbandman after he hath sown his seed he is patient, for by the power and by the light you will come to see through and feel over winter storms tempests and all the coldness barrenness, emptiness; and the same light and power will go over the tempter’s head which power and light was before he was. And so in the light standing still you will see your salvation, you will see the Lord’s strength, you will feel the small rain, you will feel the fresh springs.
(C. J., I., pp. 224-225.)