1 Luke i. 15 ; Rom. vi. 19, 22 ; 2 Cor. vii. 1 ; Eph. i. 4, iv. 24 ; 1 Thess. iii. 13, iv. 7; Heb. xii. 14, xar' a\n6uay, Kara, lo^cev; Prov. XXX. 12; Isa. Ixv. 5; John vii. 48, 49, ix. 40, 41 ; 1 Thess. v. 3 ; Matt. xxv. 29 ; 2 Pot. ii. 20, 21 ; John vi. GG.
2 2 Pet. ii. 1 ; Act. Synod. Dec. Sent., art. 6, pp. 2G6, 2G7, etc.
3 lleb. vi. 4; 1 Sam. x. 10; 2 Pet. ii. 20; 1 Kings xxi. 27; 2 Cor. vii. 10; Matt, xxvii. 3, 4, xiii. 20, 21 ; Mark vi. 20; 2 Kings x. 16; Hosea vi. 4 ; 2 Tim. ii. 20; John vi. 34 ; Acts xxvi. 28 ; Matt. vii. 26, 27 ; Rev. iii. 1 ; Mark iv. 16, 17.
I.] GROUNDS OF JUDGING OF MEN's SPIRITUAL CONDITION. 91
the strongest forts of the opposers of this truth. Some men are truly ready to think that they never had experience of the nature of true faith or hohness, who can suppose it to consist in such hke common gifts and graces as are ascribed to this sort of men. Yet, as was said before, if these may not pass for saints, if our adversaries cannot prove these to be true behevers, in the strictest notion and sense of that term or expression, acturti est, — the very subject about which they contend is taken away; such as these alone are concerned in the arguments from Heb. vi. 4-6; 2 Pet. ii. 1, etc. Yea, all the testi- monies which they produce for the supportment of their cause from antiquity flow from hence, that their witnesses thought good to allow persons baptized and professing the gospel the name of believers, and of being regenerate (that is, as to the participation of the outward symbol thereof); whom yet they expressly distinguish from them whose faith was the fruit of their eternal election, which they con- stantly maintained should never fail.
Of such as these Mr Goodwin tells us, cap. ix. sect. 7, pp. 107, 108, " That if there be any persons under heaven who may, upon suffi- cient grounds, and justifiable by the word of God, be judged true believers, many of the apostates we speak of were to be judged such. All the visible lineaments of a true faith were in their faces, as far as the eye of man is able to pierce; they lived godly, righteously, and soberly in this present world. Doth any true believer act zealously for his God ? — so did they. Is any true believer fruitful in good works ? — they were such. Yea, there is found in those we now speak of, not only such things as upon the sight and knowledge whereof in men we ought to judge them true believers,^ but even such things, farther, which we ought to reverence and honour, as lovely and majestic characters of God and holiness. Therefore, it is but too importune a pretence in men to deny them to have been true believers."
If the proof of the first confident assertion, concerning the grounds of judging such as afterward have apostatized to be true behevers, were called into question, I suppose it would prove one instance how much easier it is confidently to affirm any thing than soundly to confirm it. And perhaps it will be found to appear, that in the most, if not all, of those glorious apostates of whom he speaks, if they were thoroughly traced and strictly eyed, even in those things which are exposed to the view of men, for any season or continuance, such warpings and flaws might be discovered, in positives or negatives, as are incompatible with truth or grace.^ But if this be granted, that they have " all the visible lineaments of a true faith in their faces, as far as the eye of man is able to judge, and therefore men were
1 " Adde hos de quibus hie agimus, non vulgares et plebeios, sed autesignanos et eximios ac eminentes fuisse." — Rem. Act. Synod., jk 267.
2 Ps. Ixxviii. 34-36 ; Job xxvii. 9, 10 ; 2 Kings x. 29 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 31 ; Tit. i. 16,
92 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
bound to esteem them for true believers," doth it therefore follow that they were such indeed? This at once instates all secret hypo- crites in the ancient and present churches of Christ into a condition of sanctification and justification; which the Lord knows they were and are remote from. Shall the esteem of men translate them from death to life, and really alter the state wherein they are? Whatever honour, then, and esteem we may give to the characters of holiness and faith enstamped, or rather painted on them, — as it is meet for us to judge well of all who, professing the Lord Christ, walk in our view in any measure suitable to that profession, and with Jonadab to honour Jehu in his fits and hasty passions of zeal, — yet this, alas ! is no evidence unto them, nor discovery of the thing itself, that they are in a state of faith and holiness. To say that we may not be bound to judge any to be believers and godly, unless they are so indeed and in the thing itself, is either to exalt poor worms into the throne of God, and to make them " searchers of the hearts and triers of the reins" of others, who are so often in the dark as to themselves, and never in this life sufficiently acquainted with their own inward chambers; or else at once to cut off and destroy all communion of saints, by rendering it impossible for us to attain satisfaction who are so indeed, so far as to walk with them upon that account in " love without dissimulation," Rom. xii. 9. Doubtless the disciples of Christ were bound to receive them for believers of whom it is said that they did believe, because of their profession so to do, and that with some hazard and danger, though He who " knew what was in man" would not trust himself with them, because the root of the matter was not in them, John ii. 23, 24.