TENTH SEASON
HOW A CHRISTIAN MAY KEEP HIS
HEART FROM DESPERATE CONCLUSIONS
‘The tenth special season to keep the heart with all diligence, is the time of spiritual darkness and doubting, when it is with the soul, as it was with Paul in his dangerous voyage, neither sun, nor moon, nor star appeared for many days; when by reason of the hidings of God’s face, the prevalency of corruption, and the inevidence of grace, the soul is even ready to give up all its hopes and comforts for lost; to draw sad and desperate conclusions upon itself; to call its former comforts vain delusions; its grace hypocrisy. When the serene and clear heavens are overcast with dark clouds, yea, filled with thunders, and horrible tempests; when the poor pensive soul sits down and weeps forth this sad lamentation, My hope is perished from the Lord? Now to keep the heart from sinking in such a day as this, to enable it to maintain its own sincerity, is a matter of great difficulty.’ The tenth case then will be this.
Case 10. How the people of God, in dark and doubting seasons, may keep their hearts from entertaining such sad conclusions about their estates, as destroy their peace, and unfit them for their duty.
There are two general heads, to which the grounds of doubting our sincerity may be reduced. 1. God’s carriage towards the soul, either in the time of some extraordinary affliction, or of some long and sad desertion. Or, 2, The soul’s carriage towards God: and here it usually argues against the truth of its own graces; either 1. From its relapses into the same sins, from which it hath formerly risen with shame and sorrow. Or, 2. From the sensible declining of its affections from God. Or, 3. From the excess of the affections towards creature-comforts and enjoyments. Or, 4. From its enlargements in public and often straitnings in private duties. Or, 5. From some horrid injections of Satan, with which the soul is greatly perplexed. Or, Lastly, from God’s silence, and seeming denial of its long depending suits and prayers.
These are the common grounds of those sad conclusions: now in order to the establishment and support of the heart in this condition, it will be necessary,
1. That you be acquainted with some general truths, which have a tendency to the settlement of a trembling and doubting soul.
2. That you be rightly instructed about the ‘forementioned particulars, which are the grounds of your doubting.
The general truths requisite for poor doubting souls to be acquainted with, are these:
1. That every working and appearance of hypocrisy doth not presently prove the person in whom it is, to be an hypocrite. You must carefully distinguish between the presence and predominancy of hypocrisy: there are remains of deceitfulness in the best hearts; David and Peter had sad experience of it; yet the standing frame and general bent of the heart being upright, it did not denominate them hypocrites.
2. That we ought as well to hear what can be said for us, as against us: it is the sin of upright hearts, sometimes to use an over-rigid and merciless severity against themselves: they do not indifferently consider the case of their own souls: it is in this case, as Solomon speaks in another, There is that maketh himself rich, and yet hath nothing; and there is that maketh himself poor, and yet hath great riches, Prov. xiii. 7. It is the damning sin of the self-flattering hypocrite, to make his condition better than it is: and it is the sin and folly of some upright ones to make their condition worse than indeed it is. Why should you be such enemies to your own peace, to read over the evidences of God’s love to your souls, as a man doth a book, which he intends to confute? Why do you study to find evasions to turn off those comforts which are due to you? It is said of Joseph, that he was minded to put away his espoused Mary, not knowing that that holy thing which was conceived in her, was by the Holy Ghost; and this may be your case. A third truth is this,
3. That many a saint hath charged and condemned himself for that, which God will never charge him with, nor condemn him for. Why hast thou hardened our hearts from thy fear? Isa. lxiii. 17, saith the church, and yet the verse before manifests, that their hearts were not so hardened: Godly Bradford wrote himself an hypocrite, a painted sepulchre; yet doubtless God acquitted him of that charge.