280 FORGIVENESS OF SIN. who have any assurance, because they have not this confidence, or are more free to mention the opposition they meet with than the support they enjoy. And thus assurance is thought to be a grace not earnestly to be sought after, because it is so rarely to be obtained, most of the saints going to heaven well enough without it. But the fact is otherwise. The importance of it, not only as it is our life of comfort and joy, but also as it is the principal means of the flourishing of our life of holiness, has been already shown. Yea, in times of trial, which are the proper seasons for the effectual working and manifestation of assurance, it appears that many, yea, that most of the saints of God are made partakers of this grace and privilege. I shall then, 1. Show what things are not only con- sistent with assurance, but are even necessary conco- mitants of it, which yet, if not duly weighed and consi- dered, may seem to prevent a man's comfortable per- suasion of his condition before God; and, '2. Speak of its nature especially as manifesting itself by its effects. 1 A deep sense of the evil of sin, and of the guilt of one's own sin, is no way inconsistent with gospel-assu- rance, of acceptance with God through Christ, and of forgiveness in him. By a sense of the guilt of sin I understand two things : 1. A clear conviction of sin by the Holy Ghost, saying to the soul, Thou art the man ; and 2.. A sense of the - displeasure of God, or the wrath due to sin, according to the sentence of the law. Both these David expresses in that complaint, "My life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing; my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed. Psalm 31 : 10. His iniquity was before
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