An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

Fourthly, All experimental workings of the soul, are to be judged and tried by ¹the Scripture. Our hearts being full of guile and imposture, the devil also transforming himself into an Angel of light, hence it may come about that we may have the experience of much joy, of many enlargements, and yet all the while be in the devils ways. Hence it is that all Sectaries almost, will tell us of the great support and comfort they have had, and that ever since they embraced those new ways; yea, some make themselves to be the only spiritual men, that all other are in the flesh: as Tertullian wrote a Book against the Orthodox, stilling it Contra Psachicos, as those that were merely natural, in the mean time he pretended to private revelations. The experiences therefore which we find in our souls, we must examine and try, lest we make that to be of God, which is indeed of the devil. No doubt many deluded souls, in dangerous and damnable ways, comfort others of the same way with them, by that comfort wherewith they are comforted, not of God, but of the devil. Therefore let our experiences, especially of comfort, be judged by the Word, in these Particulars.²

Fourthly, All experimental workings of the soul, are to be judged and tryed by ¹the Scripture. Our hearts being full of guile and imposture, the devil also transforming himself into an Angel of light, hence it may come about that we may have the experience of much joy, of many inlargements, and yet all the while be in the devils waies. Hence it is that all Sectaries almost, will tell us of the great support and comfort they have had, and that ever since they embraced those new waies; yea, some make themselves to be the only spiritual men, that all other are in the flesh: as Tertullian wrote a Book against the Orthodox, stiling it Contra Psachicos, as those that were meerly natural, in the mean time he pretended to private revelations. The experiences therefore which we find in our souls, we must examine and try, lest we make that to be of God, which is indeed of the devil. No doubt many deluded souls, in dangerous and damnable waies, comfort others of the same way with them, by that comfort wherewith they are comforted, not of God, but of the devil. Therefore let our experiences, especially of comfort, be judged by the Word, in these Particulars.