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…

Surely such a Testimony or voice in the soul, as the soul sits down satisfied with before ever any work of sanctification can possibly give any evidence, is not an evidence according to the word, but contrary to the word, and therefore not the revealing evidence of the spirit of God, so that in this I must needs dissent from him, for he casts the soul upon a most dangerous precipice, neither is the danger helped, but rather increased by that posterior evidence, or after comfort of sanctification, which he speaks of, for the soul being before set down satisfied with the Testimony of the spirit of the Lord, and Faith receiving that Testimony (so he supposeth) it cannot now examine whether its sanctification be sound or not sound, whether its graces be common or special, seeming or real: It implies a contradiction if I say that I am assured by the evidence of the spirit of God, and by the evidence of Faith that I am in Christ, and in Covenant with God, and that notwithstanding I sit down satisfied with this assurance, yet I am not sure of the soundness of my Sanctification. Therefore to put the soul upon a looking after the evidence of graces, and the comfort of sanctification, when the soul is before hand fully assured and satisfied against all objections and doubtings, is not only to lay no weight at all upon these marks of Sanctification, in the point of resolving or clearing the Conscience, but it is much worse then so, it is a confirming or strengthening of the Soul in such a Testimony or ⟨p. 259⟩assurance, as it hath settled upon contrary to the Scripture. And here is a great difference between these Antinomian principles and ours: We hold the assurance or evidence of marks to be privative, they yield no more but that it is at most cumulative to the evidence of the Spirit of God and of Faith. For my part I dare not think otherwise, but that person is deluded who thinks himself fully assured of his interest in Christ by the voice of the Spirit of the Lord, and by the evidence of Faith, when in the mean time his Conscience cannot bear him witness of the least mark of true grace or Sanctification in him.

Surely such a Testimony or voice in the soul, as the soul sits down satisfied with before ever any work of sanctification can possibly give any evidence, is not an evidence according to the word, but contrary to the word, and therefore not the revealing evidence of the spirit of God, so that in this I must needs dissent from him, for he casts the soule upon a most dangerous precipice, neither is the danger helped, but rather increased by that posteriour evidence, or after comfort of sanctification, which he speaks of, for the soule being before set down satisfied with the Testimony of the spirit of the Lord, and Faith receiving that Testimony (so he supposeth) it cannot now examin whether its sanctification be sound or not sound, whether its graces be common or speciall, seeming or real: It implyes a contradiction if I say that I am assured by the evidence of the spirit of God, and by the evidence of Faith that I am in Christ, and in Covenant with God, and that notwithstanding I sit down satisfied with this assurance, yet I am not sure of the soundnesse of my Sanctification. Therefore to put the soule upon a looking after the evidence of graces, and the comfort of sanctification, when the soule is before hand fully assured and satisfied against all objections and doubtings, is not onely to lay no weight at all upon these marks of Sanctification, in the point of resolving or clearing the Conscience, but it is much worse then so, it is a confirming or strengthning of the Soule in such a Testimony or