A27009:393
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.
Perhaps you will marvel why I run so far in this Point; It is both to give you as much light as I can, what sins they be which be to be called Infirmities, and so what sins they be that do forbid that gentle, comforting way of cure, when the soul is troubled for them, which must be used with those that are troubled more then needs, or upon mistakes: and also to convince you of this weighty Truth, That Our Comfort yea and Assurance hath a great dependence on our actual obedience: yea so great that the least obedient sort of sincere Christians cannot by ordinary means have any Assurance: and the most obedient (if other necessaries concur) will have th• most Assurance: and for the middle sort; their Assurance will rise and fall, ordinarily ⟨p. 271⟩with their obedience: so that there's no way to comfort such offending Christians but by reducing them to fuller obedience by Faith and Repentance, that so the evidences of their Justification may be clear, and the great impediments of their Assurance and Comfort be removed.
Perhaps you will marvell why I run so farre in this Point; It is both to give you as much light as I can, what sins they be which be to be called Infirmities, and so what sins they be that do forbid that gentle, comforting way of cure, when the soul is troubled for them, which must be used with those that are troubled more then needs, or upon mistakes: and also to convince you of this weighty Truth, That Our Comfort yea and Assurance hath a great dependance on our actual obedience: yea so great that the least obedient sort of sincere Christians cannot by ordinary means have any Assurance: and the most obedient (if other necessaries concurre) will have th• most Assurance: and for the middle sort; their Assurance will rise and fall, ordinarily ⟨p. 271⟩with their obedience: so that there's no way to comfort such offending Christians but by reducing them to fuller obedience by Faith and Repentance, that so the evidences of their Justification may be clear, and the great impediments of their Assurance and Comfort be removed.