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haps some papists mean this, when they deny a certainty. Some also maintain, that Saint Paul's plerophory, or full assurance, is the highest degree of assurance, and that some Christians do in this life attain to it. But Paul calls it full assurance, in comparison of lower degrees, and not because it is perfect. For if assurance be perfect, then all our certainty of knowledge, faith and sense in the premises, must be perfect and if some grace be perfect, why not all? And so we turn Novatians, Catharists, Perfectionists. Perhaps in some, their certainty may be so great that it may overcome all sensible doubting, or sensible stirrings of unbelief, by reason of the sweet and powerful acts and effects of that certainty and yet it doth not overcome all unbelief and uncertainty, so as to expel or nullify them; but a certain measure of them remaineth still. Even, as when you would heat cold water by the mixture of hot, you may pour in the hot so long till no coldness is felt, and yet the water may be far from the highest degree of heat. So faith may suppress the sensible stirrings of unbelief, and certainty prevail against all the trouble of uncertainty, and yet be far from the highest degree.

So that by this which is said, you may answer the question, What certainty is to be attained in this life; and what certainty it is that we press men to labour for and expect?

Furthermore; you must be sure to distinguish betwixt assurance itself, and the joy, and strength, and other sweet effects which follow assurance, or which immediately accompany it.

It is possible that there may be assurance, and yet no comfort, or little. There are many unskilful, but self-conceited disputers of late, better to manage a club than an argument, who tell us, 'that it must be the Spirit that must assure us of salvation, and not our marks and evidences of grace; that our comfort must not be taken from any thing in ourselves; that our justification must be immediately believed, and not proved by our signs of sanctification,' &c. Of these in order. 1. It is as wise a question to ask, ' Whether our assurance come from the Spirit, or our evidence, or our faith,' &c., as to ask, 'Whether it be our meat, or our stomach, our teeth, or our hands, that feed us; or whether it be our eye-sight, or the sun-light, by which

That it is not properly any act of faith at all (much less the justifying act), to believe that my sins are pardoned, or that Christ died in a special sense for me, or that I am a believer, or that I shall be saved-besides what I have said in the Appendix to my Aphorisms of Justification, I refer you for satisfaction to judicious M. A. Wotton 'De Reconcil.' part 1. lib. ii. c. 15. n. 3— 8, p. 87-90, &c.

we see things?' They are distinct causes, all necessary to the producing of the same effect.

So that, by what hath been said, you may discern that the Spirit, and knowledge, and faith, and Scripture, and inward holiness and reason, and inward sense of conscience, have all several parts, and necessary uses in producing our assurance; which I will show you distinctly.

1. To the Spirit belong these particulars. 1. He hath indicted those Scriptures which contain the promise of our pardon and salvation. 2. He giveth us the habit or power of believing. 3. He helpeth us also to believe actually, that the word is true, and to receive Christ and the privileges offered in the promise. 4. He worketh in us those graces, and exciteth those gracious acts with us, which are the evidences or marks of our interest to pardon and life: he helpeth us to perform those acts which God hath made to be the condition of pardon and glory. 5. He helpeth us to feel and discover these acts in ourselves. 6. He helpeth us to compare them with the rule, and finding out their qualifications, to judge of their sincerity and acceptation with God. 7. He helpeth our reason to conclude rightly of our state from our acts. He enliveneth and heighteneth our apprehension in these particulars, that our assurance may accordingly be strong and lively. 8. He exciteth our joy, and filleth with comfort (when he pleaseth) upon this assurance. None of all these could we perform well of ourselves.

2. The part which the Scripture hath in this work, is, 1. It affordeth us the major proposition, that whosoever believeth sincerely shall be saved." 2. It is, the rule by which our acts must be tried, that we may judge of their moral truth.

3. The part that knowledge hath in it, is to know that the foresaid proposition is written in Scripture.

4. The work of faith is to believe the truth of that Scripture, and to be the matter of one of our chief evidences.

5. Our holiness, and true faith, as they are marks and evidences, are the very medium of our argument, from which we conclude.

6. Our conscience and internal sense do acquaint us with both the being and qualifications of our inward acts, which are this medium, and which are called marks.

* I use the word 'evidence' all along in the vulgar sense as the same with 'signs,' and not in the proper sense as the schools do.

7. Our reason, or discourse, is necessary to form the argument, and raise the conclusion from the premises; and to compare our acts with the rule, and judge of the sincerity, &c.

So that you see our assurance is not an effect of any one single cause alone. And so neither merely of faith, by signs, nor by the Spirit.

From all this you may gather,m 1. What the seal of the Spirit is, to wit, the works or fruits of the Spirit in us. 2. What the testimony of the Spirit is, (for if it be not some of the forementioned acts, I yet know it not). 3. What the testimony of conscience is.

And, if I be not mistaken, the testimony of the Spirit, and the testimony of conscience, are two concurrent testimonies, or causes, to produce one and the same effect, and to afford the premises to the same conclusion, and then to raise our joy thereupon; so that they may well be said to witness together. Not one laying down the entire conclusion of itself, "that we are the children of God;" and then the other attesting the same entirely again of itself: but as concurrent causes to the same numerical conclusion.

But this with submission to better judgments and further search.

By this also you may see, that the common distinction of certainty of adherencé, and certainty of evidence, must be taken with a grain or two of salt." For there is no certainty without evidence, any more than there is a conclusion without a medium. A small degree of certainty hath some small glimpse of evi

1 Therefore, that saying of Cajetan is not so much to be valued, as by some of our divines it is. Certitudine fidei quilibet scit certò se habere donum infusum fidei, idque absque formidine alterius partis. Except he take certitudo fidei in a very large, improper sense.

m Read Gataker's 'Shadows without Substance,' pp. 83, 84, who opens this solidly, as he useth in other things. Sed cave de doctrina quam plurimorum theologorum, qui testimonium Spiritus Sancti intelligunt esse per specierum infusionem, et non per intellectus emendativam illuminationem. Ita vir alioquin magnus, Chamierus, tom. 3, lib. xiii. c. 17. s. 5. ait, haud tute, Hoc (Sp. testimonium) dico esse verbum Dei. Et ita appellari in Scripturis: in quibus revelationes illæ, quæ fiebant prophetis, per internum et arcanum motum Spiritus perpetuo appellantur nomine verbi Dei: nec differebat ab ista energia modo: quia, viz. in prophetis erat extraordinarius, at in fidelibus ordinarius. But you may most clearly see the nature of the Spirit's testimony in the most excellent discourses of two learned men in another case, i. e. Rob, Baron. Apol.' p. 733; and Amyraldus in Thes. Sal.' vol. i. p. 122.

n The distinctions used in the schools, of certitudo fidei and certitudo evidentia, I deny not: but that hath a quite different sense from this as it is used.

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dence. Indeed, 1. The assent to the truth of a promise: 2. And the acceptation of Christ offered with his benefits, are both before and without any sight or consideration of evidence, and are themselves our best evidence, being that faith which is the condition of our justification; but before any man can, the least assurance, conclude that he is the child of God, and justified, he must have some assurance of that mark or evidence. For who can conclude absolutely that he will receive the thing contained in a conditional promise, till he know that lie hath performed the condition? For those that say, "There is no condition of the new covenant,' I think them not worthy a word of confutation.

And for their assertion," that we are bound immediately to believe that we are justified, and in special favour with God; it is such as no man of competent knowledge in the Scripture, and belief of its truth, can once imagine. For if every man. must believe this, then most must believe a lie, for they shall never be justified, yea, all must at first believe a lie; for they are not justified till they believe; and the believing that they are justified, is not the faith that justifieth them. If only some men must believe this, how should it be known who they be? The truth is, that we are justified, is not properly to be believed át all; for nothing is to be believed which is not written: but it is nowhere written that you or I am justified: only one of these premises is written, from whence we may draw the conclusion, that we are justified, if so be that our own hearts do afford us the other of the premises. So that our actual justification is not a matter of mere faith, but a conclusion from faith and conscience together. If God have nowhere promised to any man justification immediately, without condition, then no man can believe it: but God hath nowhere promised it abso

• Therefore I say not that our first comfort, much less our justification, is procured by the sight of evidences; but our assurance is.

Their common error, 'that justifying faith is nothing else but a persuasion, more or less, of the love of God to us,' is the root of this and many more mis-` takes. To justify us, and to assure us that we are justified, are quite different things, and procured by different ways, and at several times usually. Pes sime etiam doctiss. Keckerm. 'System. Theol.' lib. iii. c. 7. s. 7. asserit, Quod statim eo momento quo absolutio ejusmodi sit, cordibus electorum Deus immittit Nuncium illum sententiæ latæ, viz. Spiritum Sanctum, qui eos de gratia Dei certos reddat, atque ita conscientiæ pacem ipsis conciliat. Ita et p. 417, seq. Et eodem modo plurimi transmarin. theolog. Vid. Aquin. ad 1. sent. dist. 15. art. 1-3. q. 112, et Scotum ad 3.; sent. dist. 23. q. unica. Bonavent. 1. sent. q. 17. Biel in 2. sent. dist. 27. q. 3.

lutely; therefore, &c. Nor hath he declared to any man, that is not first a believer, that he loveth him with any more than a common love; therefore, no more can be believed but a common love to any such. For the eternal love and election are manifest to no man before he is a believer.

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Sect. IV. 2. Having thus showed you what examination is, and what assurance is, I come to the second thing promised, to show you, that such an infallible certainty of salvation may be attained, and ought to be laboured for, though a perfect certainty cannot here be attained and that examination is the means to attain it. In which I shall be the briefer, because many writers against the papists on this point, have said enough already. Yet somewhat I will say: 1. Because it is the common conceit of the ignorant vulgár, that an infallible certainty cannot be attained. 2. And many have taught and printed that it is only the testimony of the Spirit that ean assure us; and that this proving our justification by our sanctification, and searching after marks and signs in ourselves for the procuring of assurance, is a dangerous and deceitful way. Thus we have the papists, the antinomians, and the ignorant vulgar, conspiring against this doctrine of assurance and examination. Which I maintain against them by these arguments.

1. Scripture tells us we may know, and that the saints before us have known their justification, and future salvation. (2 Cor. v. 1; Rom. viii. 36; John xxi. 15; 1 John v. 19, iv. 14, iii. 14-24, and ii. 3-5; Rom. viii. 14, 19,36; Eph. iii. 12.) I refer you to the places for brevity.

2. If we may be certain of the premises, then may we also be certain of the undeniable conclusion of them. But here we may be certain of both the premises. For, 1. "That whosoever believeth in Christ shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life," is the voice of the Gospel; and therefore that we may be sure of; that we are such believers, may be known by conscience and internal sense. I know all the question is this, whether the moral truth, or sincerity of our faith, and other

Yet I believe that their divines have some of them made the difference betwixt us and the papists seem wider than it is, as do these words of one of them: Ex hoc unico articulo quantumvis minuto à plerisque reputari queat, universus papatus et Lutheranismus dependet. Martinus Eisengrenius initio 'Apol. de Cer. Salv.' And so have some of our divines on the other side, as Luther in Gen. 41. Etiamsi nihil præterea peccatum esset in doctrina pontificia, justas habemus causas cur ab ecclesia infideli nos sejungeremus.