A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many useful questions and cases of conscience are…A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many usefull questions and cases of conscience are…

But secondly will you see these men falling yet more foully in the ditch they have digged for others? While they object so much against a believers examining or assuring his conscience by fruits of sanctification, sincerity of heart, hatred of sin, respect to all the commandments, love to the Brethren; while they tell us that none of these can be sure evidences to the soul, and while they pretend to show other soul satisfying evidences, which can resolve, quiet, comfort, and assure the conscience, they do but more and more lead¹ the soul into a labyrinth, and make the spirits of men to wander from mountain to hill, and to forget their resting place. I might here take notice of the six remedies against doubting, which one of them offereth, as an antidote and preservative against all objections whatsoever, yet all the six put together cannot resolve nor clear the conscience in the point of a personal or particular interest in Christ; I hear much (will the perplexed soul say) of the nature of faith, of free justification, of the things sealed in Baptism, &c. But oh I cannot see that I have any interest for my part in these things. Not to insist upon these six remedies, which are indeed most insufficient as to this point, my present work shall be, to speak unto those personal and particular evidences of an interest in Christ, which are held forth by their chief writers. Do but observe their way, and you shall see that either they fall in at last into our way of gracious marks and qualifications, or otherwise leave the Conscience much more perplexed and² unsatisfied, then they found it. They tell us of two evidences, a revealing evidence, and a receiving evidence: that by the spirits testimony, this by faith. The revealing evidence of interest in the privileges of Christ, which will put an end to all objections, is the voice of the Spirit of God to a mans own spirit. This is the great evidence indeed and the evidence which at last doth determine the question, and put an end to all objections. Well: But doth the ⟨p. 257⟩Spirit of God give testimony to the soul, any otherwise then³ according to the word of God? No, saith the same writer, by no means, for it is most certainly true, (saith he) that every voice in man speaking peace, being contrary to the word of grace, that voice is not the voice of the spirit of the Lord,—it is the voice of the spirit of delusion.