5oo aefmon z, good Confcience. There are two ways whereby a belie- ver may come to quietnefs in his Confcience, t . By the ex- ercife of fan &ification, which prevents a challenge ; and that is it which the apoffle fpeaks of here, and Ails 2q. i6. and it is that which we mean in the do &rine. 2. When he fails and mifcarries, there is a recovering of quietnefs and of the teftimony of Confcience, by the exercife of repentance, and faith fprinkling the Confci- ence with the blood of Jefus ; which flows not fo much indeed from the man's holinefs and tendernefs for;pre- venting of a challenge, as from juftification, and the right that the foul gets to pardon of fin thereby, wherein the blood of Chirf} removes the challenge,. and quiets the Confcience : And a foul may have the one of thefe, when to its fenfe it wants the other, or hath indeed but little of it ; it may have fome comfortable clearnefs of inrereff, or at leaf( the faith of it, when it has in fome refpe& an ill Confcience ; A s we may fee David had, Pfal. 51. So, upon the other hand, we conceive it is not impoflible for a believer to have force tendernefs, and a teftimony thereof from his Confcience, when he is much in the dark as to his intereft in God. 2dly, From Paul's knitting of thefe two together, viz. a good Confcience, and the qualification of it, an [weft walk ; obferve, That fuch as would confidently affert and affume to themfelves this teftimony, that they have a good Confcience, would do it on well qualified grounds and evidences. Therefore the apoffle here does not content, himfelf (imply to affert it ; and, generally, wherever he affert this, he holds out fomething of his pra &iee, Mew- ing thereby, that he was not miftaken nor prefumptu- eus in his afferting of it., If we confider the extremities that men are difpofed to run into in this matter, Tome too foon and too eafily affuming to themfelves this tefti- mony of a good Confcience ; others again, in a manlier, fhunning and fhiftings all things that may give them clear - nefs, as if it were iinpoffible to be win at ; we will find that there is good reafon to qualify it thus, fo as the gol- den mediocrity, or mids betwixt thefe extremes may be duly obièrved. More
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