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

DIRECTION XVII.

17. My next advice to you is this, For the strengthening your apprehensions of the Probability of your Salvation. Gather up and improve all your choicest Experiences of Gods good will and mercy to you: And observe also the Experiments of others in the same kind.

WE do God and our selves a great deal of wrong by forgetting, neglecting and not improving our Experiences. How doth God charge it on the Israelites, especially in the wilderness, that they forgot the Works of God, by which he had so often manifested his Power and Goodness? Psal. 78. & 107. see 105, 106. When God had by one Miracle silenced their unbelief, they had forgotten it in the next distress. It was a sign the disciples hearts were hardened when they forgot the Miracles of the loaves, and presently after were distrustful and afraid, Mar. 6.52. God ⟨p. 180⟩doth not give us his mercies only for the present use, but for the future: nor only for the body, but for the soul. I would this truth were well learned by Believers. You are in sickness, in troubles, and dangers, and pinching straits, in fears and anguish of mind: In this case you cry to God for help, and he doth in such a manner deliver you, as silenceth your distrust, and convinceth you of his love; at least of his readiness to do you good. What a wrong is it now to God and your self to forget this presently, and in the next temptation to receive no strengthening by the consideration of it? Doth God so much regard this dirty flesh, that he should do all this merely for its ease and relief? No, he doth it to kill your unbelief, and convince you of his special Providence, his care of you, and love to you, and power to help you, and to breed in you more loving, honourable and thankful thoughts of him: Lose this benefit and you lose all: You may thus use one and the same Mercy a hundred times. Though it be gone as to the body; it is still fresh in a believing, thankful, careful soul. You may make as good use of it at your very death, as the first hour. But O the sad forgetfulness, mutability and unbelief of these hearts of