CHAPTER XXVIII.
SPECIAL CASES AND DIRECTIONS FOR LOVE TO GODLY PERSONS AS SUCH.
Tit. 1. Cases of Conscience about Love to the Godly.
Whom we must take for godly I answered before, chap. xxiv. tit. 1. quest. v.
Quest. I. How can we love the godly when no man can certainly know who is sincerely godly?
Answ. Our love is not the love of God, which is guided by infallibility; but the love of man, which is guided by the dark and fallible discerning of a man. The fruits of piety and charity we infallibly see in their lives; but the saving truth of that grace which is or ought to be the root, we must judge of according to the probability which those signs discover, and love men accordingly.
Quest. II. Must we love those as godly, who can give no sensible account of their conversion, for the time, or manner, or evidence of it?
Answ. We must take none for godly, who show no credible evidence of true conversion, that is, of true faith and repentance: but there is many a one truly godly, who through natural defect of understanding or utterance, are not able in good sense to tell you what conversion is, nor to describe the manner in which it was wrought upon them, much less to define exactly the time or sermon when it was first wrought, which few of the best christians are able to do; especially of them who had pious education, and were wrought on in their childhood. But if the covenant of grace be wisely opened to them according to their capacity, and they deliberately, and soberly, and voluntarily profess their present assent and consent thereto, they do thereby give you the credible evidence of a true conversion, till you have sufficient contrary evidence to disprove it. For none but a converted man can truly repent and believe in God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, according to the baptismal covenant.
Quest. III. But what if he be so ignorant that he cannot tell what faith, or repentance, or redemption, or sanctification, or the covenant of grace is?
Answ. If you have sufficient evidence that indeed he doth not at all understand the essentials of the sacramental covenant, you may conclude that he is not truly godly; because he cannot consent to what he knoweth not: ignorantis non est consensus; and if you have no evidence of such knowledge, you have no evidence of his godliness, but must suspend your judgment. But yet many a one understandeth the essentials of the covenant, who cannot tell another what they are; therefore his mind (in case of great disability of utterance) must be fished out by questions, to which his yea or no will discover what he understandeth or consenteth to: you would not refuse to do so by one of another language, or a dumb man, who understood you, but could answer you but by broken words or signs: and very ill education may make a great many of the phrases of Scripture, and religious language, as strange to some men, though spoken in their native tongue, as if it were Greek or Latin to them, who yet may possibly understand the matter. A wise teacher by well composed questions may (without fraud or formality) discern what a man understandeth, though he say but yea or no; when an indiscreet, unskilful man, will make his own unskilfulness and uncharitableness the occasion of contemptuous trampling upon some that are as honest as himself. If a man's desires and endeavours are to that which is good, and he be willing to be taught, and use the means, it must be very gross ignorance indeed, and well proved, that must disprove his profession of faith. If he competently understand what it is to believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, he understandeth all that is absolutely necessary to salvation. And his yea or no may sometimes signify his understanding it.
Quest. IV. Must I take the visible members of the church, because such, for truly godly?