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

'tis so little that they can scarce see it by the Help of Spectacles; or if they do, they doubt continually of the Truth of it; and hence because it can speak little, and that little very darkly and obscurely for them; they have no great Mind that it should be brought in as any Witness for them. Others I think may have much Grace and Holiness, yet for a Time ⟨p. 224⟩cast it by as an Evidence unto them, because they have Experience how difficult and troublesome it is to find this Evidence; and when 'tis found, how troublesome to read it, and keep it fair, and thereby have constant Peace and Quietness; and hence arise those Speeches, Why do you look to your Sanctification, a blotted Evidence? You may have it to Day, and lose it to Morrow, and then where is your Peace? And I do believe the Lord deprives many of his precious Saints from the Comfort of this Evidence; either because they look only to this, and not unto Christ and their Justification by Faith, Rom. 5.1. or else because there is some secret Lust or Guile of Spirit, Psal. 31.1, 2. which the Lord by sore and long Shakings about their Call and Sanctification, would first winnow out, or because there is a perverse Frowardness of Spirit, whereby because they feel not that Measure of Sanctification which they would, do therefore vilify, and so come to deny what indeed they have; because they feel a Law of Sin in their Members, leading them away Captive; will not, with Paul, take Notice of the Law of their Minds, whereby that inner Man delights in the Law of God, and mourns bitterly under the Body of Death, by which they might see with Paul, that there is no Condemnation to such, Rom. 8.1. To conclude, whatever is the Cause of this Crookedness of Judgment, I do believe that the general Cause is, want of Attendance and standing unto the Judgment of the Scriptures in this Controversy: For if this was stood unto, Men would not produce their own Experience, viz. that they could never find any Evidence from Sanctification, but they have met with it in another Way, by the immediate Witness of the Spirit only; nor would Men cry it down, because Grace being mixed with so much Corruption, it can hardly be discerned, and so will be alway left in doubts, and that ⟨p. 225⟩