6. Query the sixth. “Whether the same exalted strains and notions, do not tend to weaken the natural and civil relations among men, by leading the inferiors into whose heads those notions are infused to a disesteem of their superiors; while they consider them as in a much lower dispensation than themselves; though those superiors are otherwise sober and good men, and regular attendants on the ordinances of religion?”
I have mentioned before, What those exalted notions are: these do not tend to weaken either the natural or civil relations among men; or to lead inferiors to a disesteem of their superiors, even where those superiors are neither good nor sober men.
Query the seventh. “Whether a gradual improvement in grace and goodness is not a better foundation of comfort, and of an assurance of a gospel new-birth, than that which is founded on the doctrine of a sudden and instantaneous change; which, if there be any such thing, is not so easily distinguished from fancy and imagination; the workings whereof we may well suppose to be more strong and powerful, while the person considers himself in the state of one who is admitted as a [♦]candidate for such a change, and is taught in due time to expect it?”
[♦] “canditate” replaced with “candidate”
Let us go one step at a time.
Q. 1. Whether a gradual improvement in grace and goodness, is not a good foundation of comfort?
A. Doubtless it is, if by grace and goodness be meant the knowledge and love of God through Christ.
Q. 2. Whether it be not a good foundation of an assurance of a gospel new-birth?
A. If we daily grow in this knowledge and love, it is a good proof that we are born of the Spirit. But this does in no wise supersede the previous witness of God’s Spirit with ours, that we are the children of God. And this is properly the foundation of the assurance of faith.
Q. 3. Whether this improvement is not a better foundation of comfort, and of an assurance of a gospel new-birth, than that which is founded on the doctrine of a sudden and instantaneous change?