A Continuation of morning-exercise questions and cases of conscience practically resolvedA Continuation of morning-exercise questions and cases of conscience practicaly resolved

2. When they are wrought in a Regular way, by the Spirit as the principal Efficient, and the Word as the Instrument: when the Holy Spirit applies the Promise to those to whom it belongs, and thereby comforts them: they that are qualified according to the Scripture, experience the comfort of the Scripture; the Spirit speaks in their hearts what he speaks in the Word, and Conscience says but the same the Scripture says. Now the Comforts Believers pretend to may, for methods sake, be reduced to two sorts, the truth and reality of both which we shall labour to evince.

2. When they are wrought in a Regular way, by the Spirit as the principal Efficient, and the Word as the Instrument: when the Holy Spirit applyes the Promise to those to whom it belongs, and thereby comforts them: they that are qualified according to the Scripture, experience the comfort of the Scripture; the Spirit speaks in their hearts what he speaks in the Word, and Conscience says but the same the Scripture says. Now the Comforts Believers pretend to may, for methods sake, be reduced to two sorts, the truth and reality of both which we shall labour to evince.

1. Such as proceed from the direct Acts of Grace; by this sort I understand nothing else but that inward delight and pleasure which usually accompanies the exercise of any Grace, or gracious performance of any Duty, and is in a manner intrinsic to it. And the reality of this is confirmed by the Experience of all the Saints; who of them doth not find a secret sweetness, delight and satisfaction in the exercise of •aith on Christ, love to God and Holiness?¹ Nay sorrow for Sin, Mortification, Self-denial, have something of pleasure in them. There is, I dare say, more pleasure in a kindly melting of the heart for sin (where the sorrow is not merely Legal but Evangelical, and mingled with Love) than there is in the Commission of it; more in denying a mans self as to any unlawful Appetite, than in gratifying himself, in resisting a temptation than in yielding to it, in mortifying a Lust than obeying it; and how much more is there in the exercise of Faith, and Love, &c? If our natural faculties are delighted with their proper actions about suitable Objects, why may not our spiritual too? are they less capable of pleasure? or are spiritual Operations less congruous to our faculties when renewed and spiritualized, or the Objects less suited to them, than natural actions and objects are to our Faculties in their mere natural state? If excellent Objects, and intense Operations commonly produce the greatest pleasure in our natural Powers when rightly disposed, why may it not be so in spirituals too? What more excellent Object than God and Christ? what more noble act is there of a renewed Soul than Faith and Love, what delight then may such a Soul take in closing with its chief good in those acts? And so if a natural man may take pleasure in the Contemplation of natural things, why may not a Saint in the meditation of heavenly? If one may delight in the exercise of Moral Virtue, why may not the other in the exercise of Grace? If a just, a generous, a valiant act afford some delight to the Actor, how much more an holy one? If the Excuse or Applause of a natural Conscience, and its testimony of our well-doing affords some delight and sweetness; how much more may the approbation of a renewed Conscience yield to a renewed Soul?