SPIR12UAL PEACE AND COMFORT._ 401 as if he had given you no answer before.. You will never want some óccasiön of jealousy and fears as long as you have corruption in your heart) and sin in your life,and a tempter "to be troubling you; but if you will suffer any such wind to shake your peace and comforts, you will be always shaking and fluctuating as a wave of the sea. And you must labor to apprehend not only the un- comfortableness, but the sinfulness alsoof thiscourse., For though the questioning your own sincerityon every small occasion, be not near so great a sin as The questioning of God's merciful nature, or the truth of his promise, or his readiness to show mercy to the penitent soul, or the freeness and fullness of the covenant of grace, yet even this is no contemptible sin. For, 1. You are doing- Sa- tan's work, in denying God's graces, and accusing yourself falsely, and so pleasing the devil in disquieting yourself. 2. You slander God's Spirit, as well as yóur.own soul,.in saying he hath not re- newed and sanctified you, when he bath. 3, This will necessitate you to further unthankfulness; forwho can be thankful for a mercy that thinks he never received it? 4. This will shut your mouth against all those praises of God, and that heavenly, joyful com- memoration of his great, unspeakable love to your soul, which should be the blessed" work of your life. 5. This will much abate your love to God, and your sense of the love of Christ in dying for you, and all the rest of your graces, while you are- still ques- tioning your interest in God's love. 6. It will lay such a dis- couragement on your soul, as will both 'destroy the sweetness of all duties to you, (which 'is ä great evil,) and thereby make you baókward to them and heartless in them; you will have no mind of praying, meditation, or other duties, because all will seem dark to, you, and you will think that every thing makes against you. 7. You rob all about you of that cheerful, encouragingexample and persuasion which they should have from you, and by which you might win many souls to God. And contrarily you are a dis- couragement and hindrance to them. I could mention many more sinful aggravations of your denying God's graces in you on every small occasion, which methinks should -make you be very tender of it, if not to avoid unnecessary trouble to yourself, yet at least to avoid sin against God. And what I have, said ofevidences and assurance, I would have you understand alsoofyour experiences. You must not make use only at the present'Of your experiences, but lay them up for the time to come. Nor must you tempt God so far as to expect new experiences upon every new scruple or doubt of yours, as the Is- raelites expected'newmiracles in the wilderness, still forgetting the old. If a scholar should, in his studies, forget all that he hath read and learned, and all the resolutions of his doubts, which in study he VOL. I 51
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