tit DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING your own sincerity and its consequents.. Nay, and though that affiance be wanting, which is a part of faith, yet it is but an hinder- ing of the exercise. of it, for want of a necessary concomitant con- dition ; for the grace of affiance is in the habit, and virtually is there, so that it is not formally distrust or unbelief any more than your not trusting God in your sleep is distrust. If a frienddo prom- ise to give you an hundredpounds, on condition that you thankfully accept it ; if you now do believe him, and do thankfully accept it ; but yet through some vain scruple shall think, my thankfulness is so small, that it is not sincere, and therefore I doubt I do not per- form his condition, and so shall never have the gift; in this case, now, you do believe your friend, and you do not distrust him prop- erly ; but you distrust yourself, that you perform not the condition; and this hindereth the exercise of that confidence or affiance in your friend which is habitually and virtually in you. Just so is it in our present case. The same may be said of desperation, which is a privation of hope ; when we have believed the truth of the gospel, and accept- ed Christ offered, we are then bound to hope that God will give us the benefits promised: so hope is nothing but a desirous expec- tation of the good so promised and believed. Now, if you begin to distrust whether God will make good his promise or no, either thinking that it is not true, or he is not able, or bath changed his mind since the making of it, and on these grounds you let go your hopes, this is despair. If, because that Christ seems to delay his coming, we should say, I have waited in hope till now, but now I am out of hope that ever Christ will come to judge the world, and glorify believers, I will expect it no longer; this is despair. And it bath its several degrees more or less as unbelief hath. Indeed the schoolmen say that affiance is nothing but strengthened hope. Affiance in the properest sense is the same in substance as hope; only it more expresseth a respect to the promise and promiser, and indeed is faith and hope expressed in one word. So that what I said before of distrust is true of despair. If you do continue to be- lieve the truth of the gospel, and particularly of Christ's coming and glorifying his saints, and.yet you foil* he will not glorify you, because you think that you are not a true believer or saint ; this is not desperation in the proper sense. Fordesperation is the priva- tion of hope, where the formal cause, the heart and life of it, is wanting. But you have here hope in the habit, and virtually do hope in Christ ; but the act of it, as to your own particular salva- tion, is hindered, uponan accidental mistake. In the fore-mention- ed example, if your friend promise to give you an hundred pounds on conditionof your thankful acceptance, and promiseth to come at such an hour and bring it you ; if now you stay till the hour be
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