RULES FOR OBTAINING FORGIVENESS. ß85 turbance; then this is their assurance. But this life. is not a season to be always taking wages in; our work is not yet done, we are not always to abide in this mount ; we must down again into the battle, fight again, cry again, complain again. Shall the soul be thought now to have lost its assurance ? Not at all: it had before assurance with joy, triumph, and exultation ; it has it now with wrestling, cries, tears, and supplications : and a man's assurance may be as good, as true, when he lies on the earth with a sense of sin, as when he is car- ried up to the third heaven with a sense of love and foretaste of glory. In brief, this assurance of salvation is such a gracious evangelical persuasion of acceptance with God in Christ, and of an interest in the promises of preservation unto the end, wrought in believers by the Holy Ghost, in and through the exercise of faith, ap, for the most part, produces these effects following. 1. It gives delight in obedience, and draws out love in the duties that we perform to God. So much assurance of a blessed end of their labors and duties, and pressing after universal renovation of mind and life, as may make them cheerful and give love and delight in the pursuit of what they are engaged in, is needful for the saints, and they are not often left without it ; and where this is, there is gospel-assurance. To run as men uncertain, to fight as those that beat the air, to travel as not any way persuaded of a comfortable 'entertainment at the journey's end, is a state in which God does not fre- quently leave his people. And when he does, it is a sea- son wherein he receives very little glory from them, and they very little increase of grace in themselves. Many things interpose, many doubts and entangling
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