HOW CHRIST IS MADE USE OF AS THE LIFE, BY ONE THAT IS SO DEAD AND SENSELESS, AS HE CANNOT KNOW WHAT TO JUDGE OF HIMSELF, OR HIS OWN CASE, EXCEPT WHAT IS NAUGHT.
We spake something to this very case upon the matter, when we spoke of Christ as the Truth. Yet we shall speak a little to it here, but shall not enlarge particulars formerly mentioned. And therefore we shall speak a little to those five particulars; and so,
1. Shew what this distemper is. 2. Shew whence it proceedeth, and how the soul cometh to fall into it. 3. Shew how Christ, as the Life, bringeth about a recovery of it 4. Shew how the soul is to be exercised, that it may obtain a recovery; and, 5. Answer some questions or objections.
As to the first, Believers many times may be so dead, as not only not to see and know that they have an interest in Christ, and to be uncertain what to judge of themselves, but also be so carried away with prejudices and mistakes, as that they will judge no otherwise of themselves than that their case is naught; yea, and not only will deny or miscall the good that God hath wrought in them by his Spirit, but also reason themselves to be out of the state of grace, and a stranger to faith, and to the workings of the Spirit: and hereupon will come to call all delusions, which sometime they had felt and seen in themselves, which is a sad distemper, and which grace in life would free the soul from.
This proceedeth (which is the second particular) partly from God's hiding of his face, and changing his dispensations about them, and compassing them with clouds, and partly from themselves and their own mistakes: as,
1. Judging their state, not by the unchangeable rule of truth, but by the outward dispensations of God, which change upon the best.
2. Judging their state by the observable measure of grace within them, and so concluding their state bad, because they observe corruption prevailing now and then, and grace decaying, and they perceive no victory over temptations, nor growth in grace, &c.
3. Judging also their state by others; and so they suppose that they cannot be believers, because they are so unlike to others, whom they judge true believers. This is also to judge by a wrong rule.
4. Judging themselves by themselves, that is, because they look so unlike to what sometimes they were themselves, they conclude that their state cannot be good, which is also a wrong rule to judge their state by.
5. Beginning to try and examine their case and state, and coming to no close or issue, so that when they have done, they are as unclear and uncertain what to judge of themselves, as when they began; or,