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

Among all Duties, I think the soul is naturally most backward to these following: 1. To secret Prayer: because it is spiritual, and requires great reverence, and hath nothing of external pomp or form to take us up with, and consisteth not much in the exercise of common gifts, but in the exercise of special Grace, and the breathings of the Spirit, and searchings, pantings and strivings of a gracious soul towards God. (I do not speak of the heartless repeating of bare words, learned by rote, and either not understood, or not uttered from the feeling of the soul.) 2. To serious Meditation, also is the soul very backward: that is, either to meditate on God, and the promised Glory, or any spiritual subject, to this end, that the heart may be thereby quickened and raised, and graces exercised: (though to meditate on the same subject, only to know or dispute on it, the heart is nothing near so backward.) Or else to meditate on the state of our own hearts, by way of self-examination, or self-judging, or self-reprehension, or self-exciting. 3. Also to the Duty of faithful dealing with each others souls, in secret reproof and exhortation, plainly (though lovingly) to tell each other of our sins and danger, to this the heart is usually very backward; partly through a sinful bashfulness, partly for want of more believing ⟨p. 97⟩lively apprehensions of our duty and our brothers danger, and partly because we are loath to displease men and lose their favour; it being grown so common for men to fall out with those (if not hate them) that de•l plainly and faithfully with them. 4. Also to Take a Reproof, as well as to Give it, the heart is very backward: Even godly men (through the sad remainders of their sinfulness,) do too commonly frown, and snarl, and retort our reproofs, and study presently how to excuse themselves and put it by, or how to charge us with something that may stop our mouths, and make the reprover seem as bad as themselves: Though they dare not tread our reproofs under feet, and turn again and all to rent us, yet they oft show the remnants of a dogged nature, though when they review their ways, it costs them sorrow.

Among all Duties, I think the soul is naturally most backward to these following: 1. To secret Prayer: because it is spiritual, and requires great reverence, and hath nothing of external pomp or form to take us up with, and consisteth not much in the exercise of common gifts, but in the exercise of special Grace, and the breathings of the Spirit, and searchings, pantings and strivings of a gracious soul towards God. (I do not speak of the heartless repeating of bare words, learned by rote, and either not understood, or not uttered from the feeling of the soul.) 2. To serious Meditation, also is the soul very backward: that is, either to meditate on God, and the promised Glory, or any spiritual subject, to this end, that the heart may be thereby quickned and raised, and graces exercised: (though to meditate on the same subject, only to know or dispute on it, the heart is nothing neer so backward.) Or else to meditate on the state of our own hearts, by way of self-examination, or self-judging, or self-reprehension, or self-exciting. 3. Also to the Duty of faithfull dealing with each others souls, in secret reproof and exhortation, plainly (though lovingly) to tell each other of our sins and danger, to this the heart is usually very backward; partly through a sinfull bashfulness, partly for want of more beleeving