306 DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING that it were not as clear as the light, and as discernible as the earth under our feet, that most true Christians are weakling, and of the lower forms in the school of Christ! Alas, how ignorant are most of the best ! How little love, or faith, or zeal, or heavenly-minded- ness, or delight in God, have they! How unacquainted with the way of self-examination ! And how backward to it ! And how dull and careless in it ! . Doing it by the halves, as Laban searched Rachel's tent ! How easilyput off with an excuse ! How little acquainted with their own hearts ! Or with Satan's temptations and ways of deceiving ! How much deceitfulness remaineth in their hearts ! How confused are their minds ! And what distrac- tions and tumults,are there in their thoughts! How bold are they in sinning ! And how little tenderness of conscience and care of obeying have they ! How frequently do they wound conscience, proveke God, and obscure their evidences ! And how mutable their apprehensions! And how soon do they lose that assurance which they onbe attained! And upon every occasion quite lose the sight of their evidences ! Yea, and remit their actual resolu- tions, and so lose much of the evidence itself! Is not this the common case of godly people ? O that we could truly deny it. Let their lives be Witness ; Jet the visible neglects, worldliness, pride, impatiency of plain reproof, remissness of zeal, dulness and customariness in duty, strangeness to God, unwillingness to secret prayer and.meditation, unacquaintedness with the Spirit's operations and joys, their unpeaceableness one with another, and their too frequent blemishing the glory of their holyprofession by the un- evenness of their walking, let all these witness, whether theschool of Christ have not most children in it; and very few of them ever go to the university of riper knowledge: and how few of those are fit to begin here the works of their priestlyoffice, which they must live in forever, in the high and joyful praises of God; and of the Lamb, who bath redeemed them by his blood, and made them kings and priests tdGod, that they may reign with him for- ever ! I am content to stand to the judgment of all humble, self- knowing Christians, whether 'this be not true of most of themselves ; and for those that deny it, I will stand to the judgment of th>;ir godly neighbos, who .perhaps know them, better than they know themselves. And then this being all so, the fourth point is undeniable,. That it is but very few . Christians that reach to assurance of salvation. If any think. (as intemperate, hot-spirited men are like enough to charge me) that in all this I countenance the Popish doctrine of doubting and uncertainty, and contradict the common doctrine of the reformed divines that write against them ; 'I answer, 1. That . I do contradict both the Papists that 'deny assurance, and many
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