Christ crucified, or, The marrow of the gospel, evidently holden forth in LXXII sermons,…

4. Beware of that which ye ordinarily call a certain assurance, or sure knowledge of your Salvation, and that all the Promises are yours, whereby ye think your selves in no hazard; a hope and assurance of Heaven that ye can give no ground for, nor proof of, only ye think ye are sure of Pardon of Sin, and coming to Heaven, and that ye are obliged to maintain that groundless hope; but that is not Saving Faith, for it's a hope of Heaven that can give you no right to Christ; there must first be a fleeing to Him, and closing with Him, before the can have any true and well-grounded hope of Heaven; but your hope and confidence is, never to question the matter, ye are like Laodicea, who thought her self rich, and to stand in need of nothing, when she was beggarly Poor; or like these Men, who, when God was threatening them with Judgement, yet would needs presume to think that they leaned on the Lord: I think, among all the Persons that God hath indignation against, it's in a special manner against these: who have this sort of hope, and to whom God discovereth the groundlessness of it, and yet they will still stoutly maintain, and stand fast by their hope; it's to these He speaks, Deut. 29.19. who despise and tush at God's Threatenings, and say, We shall have peace, though we walk in the imagination of our own hearts, and add drunkenness to thirst; the Lord there pronounceth a Curse, and to the Curse addeth an Oath, that He will not spare such Persons, but will separate them for Evil, and cause all the curses of the Law to overtake them; judge ye now, what a condition this is for Persons to be in, to be believing that all the Promises are theirs, and yet in steed of that, to be (in the mean time) liable to all the curses threatened in the Word of God; it's this that we call presumption, and the hope of the Hypocrite that will perish, Job 8.13. the confidence of such shall be rejected and sweeped away as a Speeders Web, and shall be rooted out of their Tabernacles, and bring them to the King of Terrors; they think they Believe always, when they are not troubled nor disquieted, they never want Faith, but have a great deal of it, which yet is but a guessing, which cannot support and uphold them when they come to a strai•;

4. Beware of that which ye ordinarily call a certain assurance, or sure knowledge of your Salvation, and that all the Promises are yours, whereby ye think your selves in no hazard; a hope and assuance of Heaven that ye can give no ground for, nor proof of, only ye think ye are sure of Pardon of Sin, and coming to Heaven, and that ye are obliged to maintain that groundless hope; but that is not Saving Faith, for it's a hope of Heaven that can give you no right to Christ; there must first be a fleeing to Him, and closing with Him, before ye can have any true and well-grounded hope of Heaven; but your hope and confidence is, never to question the matter, ye are like Laodicea, who thought her self rich, and to stand in need of nothing, when she was beggerly Poor; or like these Men, who, when God was threatning them with Judgement, yet would needs presume to think that they leaned on the Lord: I think, among all the Persons that God hath indignation against, it's in a special manner against these: who have this sort of hope, and to whom God discovereth the groundlesness of it, and yet they will still stoutly maintain, and stand fast by their hope; it's to these He speaks,