378 RIGHT REJOICING. mere passionate fears be heard ; and let not the devil, the enemy of your peace, be heard but peruse your evidences, and still re- member, as the sum of all, that the will is the man, and what you would be that you are before the Lord. If you cannot see the sincerityof your hearts, go to your faithful, able guides, and 'open the case fo them, and let not passion prevail against the scripture and reason which they bring. Yea, if in your trouble you cannot, by all their helps, perceive the uprightness of your hearts, I must tell you, you may stay yourselves much upon their judgment of your state. Though it cannot give you full assurance, it may justly help to silence much of your self-accusations, and give you the comfort of probability. If a physician that feels not what you feel, shall yet, upon your speeches and other evidences, tell you that he is confident your disease is not mortal, nor containeth any cause of fear, you may rationally be much encouraged by his judgment, though itgive you no certainty of life. As wicked men through contempt, so many ggdly people through melancholy, do lose much of the fruit of the office of the ministry, which lieth much in this assisting men to judge of the life or death of their souls. ' Alas!' say they, 'he feels not what I feel he used to judge charitably, and he knoweth not me so well as I know my- self.' But when you have told him faithfully, 'as you do your physician, what it is that youknow by yourself, he is able to pass a far sounder judgment of your life or death than yourselves can do, for all your feeling for he knows better what those symp- toms signify, and what is used to be the issue of such a case as yours. Be not, then, so proud or willful as to refuse the judgment of your faithful pastors, about the, state of your souls, in a confi- dence on your own.. And look not for spore, as necessary to your comforts, than God hath made necessary. Is it nothing to have a title to eternal life, unless you be also as holy as you desire? Yea, is it nothing to have a desire to be more holy? Will you have no comfort, as long as you have distractions, or dullness, or such like imperfection in duty; and till you have no disease of soul to trouble you, that is, till you have laid by flesh, and arrived at your perfect joy? Dare not to disobey the voice of God : " Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye' righteous ; and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart ;" Psalm xxxi?. l h " Rejoice evermore ;" 1 Thess. v. 16. Let it be something that heaven cannot weigh down that shall suppress thy joy. Art thou in poverty, and is not heaven suf- ficient riches? Art thou in disgrace, and shalt thou not have honor enough in heaven ? Art thou in danger from the injustice or the wrath of man, and is he not almighty that bath undertaken tó justify thee ? Rom. viii. 33, 34. Dost thou languish under pain-
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