The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32…

6. Our Graces and holy Actions must needs Rejoice us in respect of their Objects. For the object of our Love, Trust, Hope, Meditation, Prayer, Conference, &c. is God himself, and the Lord Jesus, and the Joys of Heaven. And how can such Actions choose but Rejoice us!

6. Our Graces and holy Actions must needs Rejoice us in respect of their Objects. For the object of our Love, Trust, Hope, Meditation, Prayer, Conference, &c. is God himself, and the Lord Jesus, and the Joyes of Heaven. And how can such Actions choose but Rejoice us!

7. Yea Rejoicing it self, and Delighting our selves in God, is not only one part of our Duty, but that great Duty wherein lieth the height of our Christianity: And how vain a speech is it, to say, that we may not take up our Comforts from our own works, nor Rejoice in any thing of our own; when even Rejoicing it self, and Delighting, and Comforting our selves is one part of our Duty?

8. As God in Christ is the chief object and ground of our Comfort (so that we must Rejoice in nothing but God, and the Cross of Christ, in that kind, or in coordination with them,) so it is the office of every Grace and holy Work, and Ordinance, and Means, to be subservient to Christ, either for the attaining of Christ, or applying his merits, or they are the effects of his merits. Now if we must Love and Rejoice in Christ principally, then must we needs Love and Rejoice in all those things that stand in a necessary subordination to him, in their places. And therefore to say, We must Rejoice in Christ only and therefore not in any Graces or Duties of our own; is as wife as if a wife should cast her husbands clothes and meat out of doors, and say, You charged me to admit none into my chamber but your self: Or as if a Physician, having told his patients, I will cure you, if you will trust me only for the cure;