The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance

If the proof of the first confident assertion concerning the grounds of judging such as afterwards have apostatized, ¹to be true believers, were called into question, I suppose it would prove one instance, how much easier it is confidently to affirm any thing, then soundly to confirm it. And perhaps it will be found to appear, that in the most, if not all of those glorious apostates of whom he speaks,² if they were throughly traced and strictly eyed, even in those things which are exposed to the view of men, for any season or continuance, ³such warpings and flaws might be discovered, in positives, or negatives, as are incompatible with truth of grace. But if this be granted, that they have all the visible lineaments of a true faith in their faces, ⁴as far as the eye of man is able to judge, and therefore men were bound to esteem them for true believers, doth it therefore follow, that they were such indeed? This at once instates all secret hypocrites in the ancient and present Churches of Christ, into a condition of sanctification and justification, which the Lord knows they were, and are remote from. Shall the esteem of men translate them from death to life, and really alter the state wherein they are? What ever honour then and esteem we may give to the characters of holiness and faith instamped, or rather painted on them, as tis meet for us to judge well of all, who professing the Lord Christ, walk in our view in any measure suitable to that profession, and with Jonadab to honour Jehu, in his fits and hasty passions of zeal, yet this (alas) is no evidence unto them, nor discovery of the thing it self, that they are in a state of faith and holiness. To say, that we may not be bound to judge any to be believers, and Godly, unless they are so indeed and in the thing it self, is either to exalt poor worms into the ⟨p. 12⟩throne of God, and to make them searchers of the hearts and triers of the reins of others, who are so often in the dark to themselves, and never in this life sufficiently acquainted with their own inward chambers: or else at once to cut off and destroy all communion of Saints, by rendering it impossible for us to attain satisfaction, who are so indeed, so far as to walk with them upon that account,