I.] TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE. 85
healing and recovery it hath had of wounds and from backslidings, with all the spiritual intercourse it ever had with God, to confirm and strengthen itself in the beginning of its confidence to the end.^ And, —
Thirdly, In the testimony that it doth give, from its walking with God, and the fruits of righteousness, it is very far and remote from giving it only, or chiefly, or indeed at all, from those ways, works, and fruits, which are exposed to the eyes of men, and which in others they who have that testimony may behold. It resolves itself herein into the frame, principles, and life of the hidden man of the heart, which lies open and naked to the eyes of God, but is lodged in depths not to be fathomed by any of the sons of men.^ There is no comparison to be instituted between the obedience and fruits of righteousness in others, whereby a believer makes a judgment of them, and that in himself from whence the testimony mentioned doth flow ; that of other men being their visibly practical conversa- tion, his being the hidden, habitual frame of his heart and spirit in his ways and actings: so that though, through the falling of them, he should be occasioned to question his own faith as to trial and exami- nation, yet nothing can thence arise sufiicient to enforce him to let go even that part of his comfort which flows from the weakest wit- ness and one of the lowest voices of all his store. He eyes others without doors, but himself within.
Fourthly, Whereas 1 John iii. 7, " Little children, let no man de- ceive you, he that doeth righteousness is righteous," is produced, and two things argued from thence, — first, that the caveat, " Be not de- ceived," plainly intimates that true believers may very possibly be deceived in the estimate of a righteous man; and, secondly, that this is spoken of a man judging himself; and that, emphatically and exclusively, he and he only, is to be judged a righteous man.
Ans. First, I say, that though I grant the first, that we may very easily be, and often are, deceived in our estimate of righteous persons, yet I do not conceive the inference to be enforced from that expres- sion, " Let no man deceive you," the Holy Ghost using it frequently, or what is equivalent thereunto, not so much to caution men in a du- bious thing, wherein possibly they may be mistaken, as in a way of detestation, scorn, and rejection of what is opposite to that which he is urging upon his saints, which he presseth as a thing of the greatest evidence and clearness; as 1 Cor. vi. 9, xv. 33; Gal. vi. 7. Neither is any thing more intended in this expression of the apostle than in that of 1 Cor. vi. 9, " Be not deceived : the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God." So here, no person not giving himself up to the pursuit of righteousness in the general drift and scope of his life
1 Job XXXV. 10; Ps. Ixxvii. 5-9; Isa. xl. 28-31; Cant. iii. 1, 2, v. 4, 5; Ps. xlii. 6-11; Hos. ii. 7, xiv. 2, 8 ; Heb. iii. 14.
2 Isa. xxxviii. 3; Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24; Rev. iii. 1; 1 Pet. iii. 4; 2 Cor. i. 12.
86 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
(cases extraordinary and particular acts being always in such rules excepted) is, or is to be, accounted a righteous man.
Secondly, Also it may be granted (though the intendment of the place leads us another way) that this is so far a rule of self-judging, that he whose frame and disposition suits it not, or is opposite unto it, cannot keep up the power or vigour of any other comfortable evi- dence of his state and condition ; but that it should be so far extended as to make the only solid and pregnant foundation that any man hath of assurance and consolation to rise and flow from the testi- mony of his own conscience concerning his own regular walking in ways of righteousness (seeing persons that " walk in darkness and have no light" are called to " stay themselves on God,"' Isa. 1. 10, and when both " heart and flesh faileth," yet " God is the strength of the heart," Ps. Ixxiii. 26), is no way clear in itself, and is not by Mr Good- win afforded the least contribution of assistance for its confirmation.
To return, then, from this digression : A temptation and an of- fence we acknowledge to be given to the saints by the apostasy of professors; yet not such but [that] as the Lord hath in Scripture made gracious provision against their suffering by it or under it, so it leaves them not without sufficient testimony of their own accept- ance with God, and sincerity in walking with him. This, then, was the state of old ; thus it is in the days wherein we live.
As the practice and ways of some, so the 'principles and teachings of others, have an eminent tendency unto offence and scandal. In- deed, ever since the Reformation, there have been some endeavours against this truth to corrode it and corrupt it. The first serious attempt for the total intercision of the faith of tnie believers, though not a final excision of the faith of elect believers, was made by one in the other university, who, being a man of a debauched and vicious conversation (no small part of the growing evils of the days wherein he lived), did yet cry out against the doctrines of others as tending to looseness and profaneness, upon whose breasts and teachings was written " Holiness to the Lord" all their days.^ Afterward, Arminius and his Quinquarticulan followers^ taking up the matter, though they laboured with all their might to answer sundry of the argu- ments whereby the tnith of this doctrine is demonstrated, yet for a season were very faint and dubious in their own assertions, not daring to break in at once upon so great a treasure of the church of God;^ and therefore in their Synodalia they are forced to apologize