The safety of appearing at the day of judgement, in the righteousness of Christ

But I am afraid that God has given me up to judicial hardness of heart, that he has taken his spirit away from me; and if so he does not intend me in the call of the gospel:

Answer.

1. There is an hardness of heart that is not judicial: indeed every man by nature is under the power of an hard heart: there may be abundance of hard heartedness in you though no judicial hardness: there may be some legal softness, and tenderness, and relenting where there is judicial hardness, as it was with Pharaoh: so there may be hardness where there is no judicial hardness: this is an evidence of it, because God promises them to take away the hardness of their hearts, Ezek. 11.19. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 2. Many others have feared that they have been judicially hardened, that have afterwards been converted: they that are judicially hardened do not use to be perplexed with this fear: the judgment it self is wont to deliver them from fears of this kind: but it is a frequent thing for souls under trouble to be afraid of this: others have seen afterwards that they have been mistaken, and so may you. 3. The reasons why persons under the work of conversion fear that they are given up to hardness, and ⟨p. 298⟩that the Spirit of God has forsaken them, is because the spirit does after a while change its way of working: when the Spirit begins to work upon them, his manner is to discover their danger, and after a while to give them some encouragement, whereby they come to have strong affections, sorrow, desire, delight, and now they are easily persuaded that the Spirit is at work with them, and don't look upon themselves hardened, but after a while, when these affection fail them, and they find themselves dull and senseless, now they are afraid that the Spirit has left them: whereas the reason is, the spirit has changed his work, and is about to show them what hearts they have in order, to the work of Humiliation: if men could maintain their lively affections they would never come to Christ: therefore the Spirit of God does leave them unto, and lead them into an experimental knowledge of the hardness of their hearts: so that this is no sign of the Spirits leaving you, but an effect of the presence of the Spirit: his manner is to convince men that they are poor and wretched, and blind, and miserable,