The Soul's Conflict with Itself

The more care we ought to have to maintain our trust in God, because (besides the hardness of it) it is a radical and fundamental grace; it is as it were the mother root and great vein whence the exercise of all graces have their beginning and strength. The decay of a plant though it appears first ¹from the withering of the twigs and branches, yet it arises chiefly from a decay in the root; So the decay of grace may appear to the view first in our company, carriage, and speeches, &c. but the primitive and original ground of the same, is weakness of faith in the heart; therefore it should be our wisdom ⟨p. 334⟩(especially) to look to the feeding of the root; we must 1. look that our principles and foundation be good, and 2. build strongly upon them, and 3. repair our building every day as continual breaches shall be made upon us; either by corruptions and temptations from within or without; And we shall find that the main breaches of our lives arise either from false principles, or doubts, or mindlessness of those that are true; All sin is a turning of the soul from God to some other seeming good, but this proceeds from a former turning of the soul from God by distrust. As faith is the first return of the soul to God, so the first degree of departing from God is by infidelity, and from thence comes a departure by other sins, by which (as sin is of a winding nature) our unbelief more increaseth, and so the rent and breach betwixt our souls and God is made greater still (which is that Satan would have) till at length by departing further and further from him, we come to have that peremptory sentence of everlasting departure ⟨p. 335⟩pronounced against us; so that our departure from God now is a degree to separation for ever from him. Therefore it is Satan's main care to come between God and the Soul, that so unloosing us from God, we might more easily be drawn to other things; and if he draws us to other things, it ²is but only to unloose our hearts from God the more; for he well knows whilst our souls cleave close to God, there is no prevailing against us by any created policy or power.

The more care we ought to have to maintaine our trust in God, because (besides the hardnesse of it) it is a radicall and fundamentall grace; it is as it were the mother root and great veyne whence the exercise of all graces have their beginning and strength. The decay of a plant though it appeares first