A grain of mustard-seed or, the least measure of grace that is or can…A graine of musterd-seede or, the least measure of grace that is or can…

Understand this conclusion as the former, namely that grief of the hart for the want of any grace necessary to salvation, is as much with god as the grace it self. When being in distress, we cannot pray as we ought God accepts the very groans, sobs, and sighs of the perplexed ⟨p. 43⟩heart, as the prayer it self. Rom. 8. 26. When we are grieved, because we cannot be grieved for our sins, it is a degree & measure of godly sorrow before God.¹ Augustine saith well: Sometimes our prayer is lukewarm, or rather cold and almost no prayer: nay sometime it is altogether no prayer at all, and yet we cannot with grief perceive this in our selves: for if we can but grieve because we cannot pray, we now pray indeed. Hierom saith,² Then we are just when we do acknowledge our selves to be sinners: Again, this is the true wisdom of man, to know himself to be imperfect: And (that I may so speak) the perfection of all just men in the flesh is imperfect: Augustine again saith ⟨p. 44⟩That the virtue which is now in a just man is thus far forth perfect, that unto the perfection thereof, there belongs a true acknowledgement and an humble confession of the imperfection thereof. A broken and contrite heart after an offence, is as much with God, as if there had bin no offence at all. And therefore so soon as David after his grievous fall, in heaviness of heart confessed his sin, saying in effect but thus much: I have sinned, the Prophet in the name of the Lord pronounceth the pardon of his sin in heaven, and that presently.