fp ;4: pf. 122 FORGIVENESS OF SIN. should be at his sovereign disposal. This gives glory to God; a duty which the impatience of these poor souls will not allow them to perform. It is weak: it is weakness, in any condition, that makes men restless and weary. The state of adherence is as safe a condition as the state of assurance; only it hath more combats and wrestling attending it. It is not, then, fear of the event, but weakness and weariness of the combat, that makes men anxiously solicitous about an immediate deliverance. Let, then, the sinentangled soul remember always this order of the Gospel that we have under considera- tion. First, exercise faith on forgiveness in God; and, when the soul is fixed therein, it will have a ground and foundation on which it may stand securely in applying it to itself. Drive this principle, in the first place, to a stable issue, upon gospel-evidences; answer the objec- tions that lie against it, and then you may proceed. In believing, the soul makes a conquest upon Satan's ter- ritories. Do, then, as they do who are entering on an enemy's country, secure the passage, fortify the strong holds as you go on, that you be not cut off in your pro- gress. Be not as a ship at sea, which passes òn, and is no more possessed of the water it has gone through than of that to which it is not yet arrived. But so it is with a soul that rests not on these foundationprinciples; he presses forwards, and the ground crumbles away un- der his feet, and so he wilders away all his days in un- certainties. Would men but establish this principle in their. souls, and secure it against assaults, they might proceed, thoughnot with so much speed as some do, yet with more safety. Some, ,pretend at once to come into full assurance. I wish it'may prove more than a mere pre- sumption. It is to no purpose for him to strive to fly who cannot yet walk; to labor to come to assurance in him- self, who never.>w411. believed forgiveness in God.
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