Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ESSAY V. CONFIDENCE IN GOOD ESTATE. It is easy for a hypocrite to deceive himself with "false hopes and carnal presumptions.' You may be strongly persuaded that you are a Christian; but this persuasion does not make you so. You may cherish the most unwavering confidence of your personal interest in the great salvation, while you have no part nor lot in this matter. The confidence of a man's own good estate is attained in different ways. Both the confidence itself and the mode of attaining it are often scriptural. A man may be persuaded that he is a Christian, because lie has reason to believe that he possesses the Spirit of Christ. Hereby Kwow We, that we dwelt in him and, he in vs, because he hath given us of his Spirit. A man may be persuaded that he is a child of God, because he discerns in himself those graces that are peculiar to the childlike character. He may have received the spirit of adoption, whereby he cries Mba, Father. The spirit itself, saith the apostle, beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. A persuasion arising from such evidence, is well grounded. Such a persuasion cannot be too confident. It not only may, hut ought to rise to the full assurance of hope. It did in Job. "I know" saith he, "that my Redeemer liveth; and though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall 1 see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." It did in David. As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when 1 awake in thy likeness." It did in Asaph. "Thou shalt guide me," saith he, "with thy counsel,, and afterwards receive me to glory," It did in the Apostle. '! Am Persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,...