SPIRITUAL PEACE. AND COMFORT. 287 lieth in expectation of present death, should actually resolve to forsake sin, or perform duty, without any further change of mind, or habit, or fixedness of this resolution, it would be of no great value, and soon extinguished. Though yet I believe that no unsanctified man doth ever attain to that full resolution for Christ, which bath a complacency in Christ accompanying it, and which may be termed the prevailing part of the. will. Those that seem resolved to-day to be for Christ, and to deny the world and the flesh, and the next day are unresolved again, have cause to suspect that they were never truly resolved. Though the will of agodly man may lie under declinings in the degrees of resolution, yet Christ bath always his habitual resolutions, and usually his actual in a preva- lent degree. x. I add also the grounds (in the fourth mark) on which this resolution must be raised. For false grounds in the understanding will not bear up a true resolution in the will. And therefore we put the articles of our creed before our profession of consent and obedience. Sound doctrine, and soundbelief of it, breeds a sound resolution, and makes a sound heart and life. If a man resolve to obey Christ, upon a conceit that Christ will never put him upon any suffering, (else he would not resolve it,) and that he will give him such brutish pleasures, when he is dead, as Mahomet bath promised to his disciples, this resolution were not sound, yet in many lesser points of doctrine a true Christian may be unsound, andyet soundly cleave to the foundation. He may build hay and stubble possibly; but the foundation mustbe held. xi. Observe well (lest you mistake me) that I speak only of the necessity of your present resolving to forsake all for Christ, if he call you to it ; but I speak not of your absolute promise or pre- diction, that eventually you shall not deny or forsake him. You may be uncertain how you shall be upheld in a day of trial, and yet you may now be resolved or fully purposed in your own mind what to do. To say, ' I will not consent, purpose or resolve, un- less I were certain to perform my resolutions, and not to flagor change again ;' this is but to say, ' I will be no Christian, unless I were sure topersevere. I will not be married to Christ, lest I should be drawn to break my covenant with him.' xii. Also observe, that when 'I speak of your resolving to forsake all for Christ, it is not to cast away your state or life, but to submit it to his dispose, and to relinquish it only in case that he command you so. xiii. And I do not intend that you should be able thus to resolve of yourself without the special grace ofGod ; nor yet without it to continue those resolutions, much less to perform them by actual suffering. i
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