Reading the Classics with Challies - The Bruised Reed - Final Post

Well, we have finished another book in Tim Challies online-book-reading-program I call Reading the Classics with Challies. The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes now gets filed under "Books We've Read in 2010".

For the final post, I'm simply going to share a paragraph from the last chapter that I have been creative with; I've added my own line breaks and emphasis. Enjoy!

Thus the desperate madness of men is laid open,

that they would rather be under the guidance of their own lusts,
and in consequence of Satan himself,

to their endless destruction,

than put their feet into Christ's fetters and their necks under his yoke;

though, indeed, Christ's service is the only true liberty.

His yoke is an easy yoke,
his burden but as the burden of wings to a bird which make her fly the higher.

Satan's government is rather a bondage than a government, to which Christ gives up those that shake off his own, for then he gives Satan and his agents power over them.

Those that take the most liberty to sin
are
the greatest slaves,
because
the most voluntary slaves.

The will is either the best or the worst part in anything.

The further men go on in a willful course,
the deeper they sink in rebellion;
and the more they oppose Christ,
doing what they will,
the more they shall one day suffer what they would not.

In the meantime, they are prisoners in their own souls, bound over in their consciences to the judgment after death of him whose judgment they would not accept in their lives.

And is it not just that they should find him a severe judge to condemn them when they would not have him as a mild judge to rule them?