The sound believer. A treatise of evangelical conversion. Discovering the work of Christ's spirit,…

Answ. If the Lord keeps you poor and low, yet the same Motive that made thee come, let it make thee stay; it may be the Lord sees thou wouldst grow full and lifted up if he should give thee a little, and therefore keeps thee low; better be humble than full and proud. Let us go unto the Lord, because he hath wounded, broken, and slain us, Hos. 6.2, 3. But they might object, we do come, but find no Help, no Cure. It may be so; yet it is said, After two Days he will revive us, and the third Day we shall live in his Sight, and we shall know him, if we shall follow on to know him, Verse 6. His goings forth are prepared as the Morning, it may be Night for a Time, but the Sun of Righteousness will arise gradually and gloriously upon thy Soul.

Truly, Brethren, when I see the Curse of God upon many Christians that are now grown full of their Parts, Gifts, Peace, Comforts, Abilities, Duties; I stand adoring the Riches of the Lord's Mercy ⟨p. 159⟩to a little Handful of poor Believers, not only in making them empty, but in keeping them so all their Days; and therefore come to the Lord poor, empty, naked, nothing, cursed in the Sense or their Want of all Things, but for all Things, and then receive with Gladness, yet Boldness and holy Confidence, not only Pardon of some Sins, but of all; believe, answer not to some Prayers, but all. Embrace in thy Bosom, not some few Promises, but all. It is a great Ease of Conscience, when may a Christian take a Promise without Presumption as spoken to him, and given to him in particular? And the Rule is very sweet, but certain: When he takes all the Scripture and embraceth it as spoken unto him, he may then take any particular proper Promise boldly; my Meaning is, when Christian takes hold and wrestles with God for the Accomplishment of all the Promises of the new Testament, when he sets all the Commands before him, as his Rule and Compass and Guide to walk after, when he applies all the Threatenings to drive him nearer unto Christ the End of them; this no Hypocrite can do, this the Saints shall do, and by this may know when the Lord speaks in any particular to them; go I say again therefore unto the Lord for all, and in the Sense of all your Emptiness be abundantly comforted, that tho' you do not find supply from Christ, yet you come unto the Lord Christ for it: It is a certain Rule, you shall not alway want that Good which you come to Christ to supply, nor always be mastered with that Sin which you come to Christ with, to take away; only then be sure you come for all; otherwise you do not come truly: Come first for Christ himself, and then (as I said) for all his Benefits.