A27009:231
The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32…
The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32 directions : written for the use of a troubled friend / and now published by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for T. Underhil, 1653
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
9. Yet I here add, that it must be a settled Resolution: And that to intimate, that it must be a Habituated Willingness or Resolution. The Prevalency of Christs Interest in the soul must be a Habitual Prevalency. If a man that is terrified by a rousing Sermon, or that hath in expectation of present death, should ⟨p. 105⟩actually Resolve to forsake sin, or perform duty; without any further change of mind, or habit, or fixedness of this Resolution, it would be of no great value, and soon extinguished. Though yet I believe that no unsanctified man doth ever attain to that full Resolution for Christ, which hath a complacency in Christ accompanying it, and which may be termed, the Prevailing part of the Will: Those that seem Resolved to day to be for Christ, and to deny the world and the flesh, and the next day are unresolved again, have cause to suspect that they were never truly Resolved. Though the Will of a godly man may lye under declinings in the degrees of Resolution, yet Christ hath always his Habitual Resolutions, and usually his Actual in a prevalent degree.
9. Yet I here add, that it must be a setled Resolution: And that to intimate, that it must be a Habituated Willingness or Resolution. The Prevalency of Christs Interest in the soul must be a Habitual Prevalency. If a man that is terrified by a rowsing Sermon, or that h•th in expectation of present death, should ⟨p. 105⟩actually Resolve to forsake sin, or perform duty; without any further change of minde, or habit, or fixedness of this Resolution, it would be of no great value, and soon extinguished. Though yet I believe that no unsanctified man doth ever attain to that full Resolution for Christ, which hath a complacency in Christ accompanying it, and which may be termed, the Prevailing part of the Will: Those that seem Resolved to day to be for Christ, and to deny the world and the flesh, and the next day are unresolved again, have cause to suspect that they were never truly Resolved. Though the Will of a godly man may lye under declinings in the degrees of Resolution, yet Christ hath alwaies his Habitual Resolutions, and usually his Actual in a prevalent degree.