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

1. From the nature of the thing. Small things are hardly discerned. A little is next to none. 2. From the great darkness of mans understanding, and his unacquaintedness with himself (both the nature, faculties and motions of his soul naturally considered, and the moral state, dispositions and motions of it;) and is it likely that so blind an eye can discern the smallest thing, and that in so strange and dark a place? every purblind man cannot see an atom, or a pin, especially ⟨p. 126⟩in the dark. 3. The heart is deceitful above all things as well as dark; full of seemings▪ counterfeits and false pretences: And a child in Grace is not able to discover its jugglings, and understand a book where almost every word is equivocal or mysterious. 4. The heart is most confused, as well as dark and deceitful: It is like a house or shop of tools, where all things are thrown together on a heap, and nothing keeps its own place: There are such multiplicity of cogitations, phantasies and passions, and such irregular thronging in of them, and such a confused reception and operation of objects and conceptions, that it is a wonderful difficult thing for the best Christian to discern clearly the bent and actions, and so the state of his own so••. For in such a crowd of cogitations and passions, we are like men in a Fair or crowd of people, where a confused noise may be heard, but you cannot well perceive what any of them say, except either some one near you, that speaks much louder then all the rest, or else except you single out some one from the rest, and go close to him to confer with him of purpose. Our Intellect and Passions are like the lakes of water in the common roads, where the frequent passage of Horses doth so muddy it, that you can see nothing in it, especially that is near the bottom; ⟨p. 127⟩when in pure untroubled waters you may see a small thing. In such a confusion and tumult as is usually in mens souls, for a poor weak Christian to seek for the discovery of his sincerity, is according to the proverb, to seek for a needle in a bottle of hay. 5. Besides all this, the corrupt heart of man, is so exceeding backward to the work of self-examination, and the use of other means by which the soul should be familiarly acquainted with it self, that in a case of such difficulty, it will hardly ever overcome them, if it were a thing that might be done.