Grace: the truth and growth and different degrees thereof. The sum and substance of…Grace: the truth and growth and different degrees thereof. The summe and substance of…

1. To lose those strong affections which they had at their first Conversion.¹ Holy Greenham complained, that it was very difficult to keep together his old discretion and young zeal.—Young Christians (as hath been already observed) have strong affections, and but weak judgements. Their heat is more then their light. Their present apprehension and sense is great and high, their experience little and low; And so also strong Christians, who may have much grace, yet the flood and flush of affections may be much abated, and it is the fault of old professors, ⟨p. 107⟩that they do not labour to maintain the primitive vigour and vivacity of their first affections;² they are too apt to leave their first love, yet we must know they do not decay so as to be bankrupts, in grace. In the godly the decay and declining, though it may be great, yet it is neither total nor final; though he may fail, yet he is not a bankrupt, he hath still a stock remaining which can never be quite spent, a fountain which can never be quite dry.³ He hath in him a Well of water springing up to eternal life. The water of a fountain may be mudded, but it will clear it self again. It may be dammed up in one place, but it will break out in another; so it is with grace. A tree, you know, in Winter-season, the fruit and leaves fall off, and it seems as if it were dead, but there is life in the root; so it is in Christians, their beauty and blossom may fall off, their fruit dry up, their leaves drop off, the beauty, the exercise and the fruits of grace may cease for a time, and yet the root of the matter is in them. ⁴It often fares with old Professors, as it did with old David, ⁵of whom it is said, that all the clothes he did wear, could not get or keep beat in him: So they, all the duties they perform, and all the Ordinances they enjoy, cannot keep up that youthful heat of vigorous affections which once they had. Many of Gods children have not now as once they had, such complacency in God, such fervency in prayer, such attention in hearing, such