Sanctification and Assurance — J.I. Packer

Assurance as a Duty and Gift

My title this morning, friends, is Assurance and Conduct, the third study in our series on the Puritan view of sanctification. James Denny, whom we know as the author of one of the great books on the New Testament, Witness to the Atonement, once said this, that the test, the acid test of any version of Christianity is its attitude to assurance, some regard it as presumption, some regard it as a duty.

The New Testament, says Denny, proclaims it as a fact. In fact, at the time of the Reformation also, assurance was being proclaimed as a fact. And the connection between faith, faith in faith, and assurance, and Christian joy, was being emphasized by Luther and Calvin and their successors.

In the Puritan period, assurance was proclaimed as a duty, because the Puritan pastors recognized that many Christians weren't entering into the experience of their Reformation forebear. What does this mean?

Not, I think, and let me say straight away, that the conception of Christianity had radically changed between Calvin and the Puritans. And some scholars have argued this, I think it's demonstrably untrue.

But it meant, rather, that the Puritans coveted for their congregations the same experience of the Holy Spirit in their own hearts and lives, as they knew that some of the pioneers of the Reformation movement had had.

So that their preaching of assurance as a duty, and at the same time as a gift from God, was simply a way of exhorting their congregations to seek God regarding assurance, and deal with God, and let God deal with them regarding assurance.

And this thought is our lead in. The Puritans were supremely concerned that Christian men should know the blessing of assurance. Right from the start of the Puritan movement in England, in the later years of the Liberalist reign, this was a central concern for the Puritan preachers and pastors, because they found themselves, right from the start, overwhelmed with a certain type of pastoral problem that recurred again and again.

They referred to it as the problem of the afflicted conscience, or of the people who were troubled by melancholy. Those actually are two distinct or related things. We shouldn't quite equate them. Melancholy is a state of depression, spiritual depression, which, as the Puritans understood it, had, at any rate, some physical roots.

When they spoke, on the other hand, of the afflicted conscience, they were thinking of a state of spiritual trouble and depression, which didn't have roots in the physical constitution, but was created wholly by trouble about the truth of God and its application to the life of the individual.

But yet, many people who had afflicted consciences had their condition complicated by melancholy. So the two things, the two classes of troubles, in fact, merged into one, as the Puritans viewed it. And constantly, at the end of the 16th century and on from that time, the Puritan pastors were, one might almost say, besieged.

This is the right word, besieged by many, many people who were troubled in this way, who knew that these Puritan ministers could cope with such trouble, and they came literally from miles and they queued up at the pastor's houses to try and get help and relief for their troubled conscience.

And the Puritans, faced with this class of problems, sought to lead those with whom they dealt, not simply into the reality of saving faith and repentance, but also the reality of assurance. And they often preached about assurance, and they often wrote about assurance, and some of the great Puritan treatises have to do directly with this subject of assurance.

Their little book, which John Owen commended, I think a little extravagantly, but this was Owen's honest judgement, he commended it as having more divinity in it than in all the folios that he'd written.

That's the little book by Thomas Guthrie, entitled The Christian's Great Interest. That is a work about assurance. And one of the books recommended by the tireless Mr. Riesinger at this conference, Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth, is subtitled, A Scriptural Discourse Touching a Well-Grounded Assurance.

The Puritan Warning Against False Peace

Note, by the way, that word well-grounded. Anxious as the Puritans were to lead men and women into the reality of Christian assurance, they were terribly, terribly anxious not to lead them into the disastrous bypass meadow of what they used to call false peace.

Assurance which was not, as they would have said, soundly bottled. Not firmly grounded. Not therefore an assurance that will stand when the great day of testing comes. False assurance, the Puritans believed, was a real danger.

This was one of the ways in which the deceitfulness of sin and the deceitfulness of the fallen human heart expressed itself, men are prone to false peace. Men are prone to indulge themselves in groundless assurance.

Or putting it in the theological way in which the Puritans put it, men are prone to speak peace to themselves when God does not speak peace to them. Why is this? Well the Puritans analysed it in great detail.

It's due to the temper and the propensities which indwelling sin has imparted to the human heart, the human mind, in the realm of spiritual things. Arrogance, conceit about one's own spiritual condition leads to false assurance.

Obstinacy in believing that because you've been in the church all these years it's just not possible that you shouldn't be a Christian. Unwillingness to rethink the matter. Unwillingness to change one's mind.

Unwillingness to admit that there might be a reason for doubting one's security. This too leads men into false peace and anchors them there. So does ignorance, said the Puritans. If men don't understand the gospel, if they don't know what faith and repentance and new birth are, well they're in great danger of supposing that they're right with God when they're not right with God.

Equally, sloth and sleepiness as habits of the fallen human mind betray men into false peace. They will not seriously apply to themselves the things that they may hear preached very well and very fully and very clearly concerning what faith and repentance and new birth and the set of a regenerate heart really are.

They hear these things but they won't apply them and they never realize therefore that these things, if applied, would expose them. But for want of that realization, they go on in their false peace. Similarly, fallen man is prone to legalism.

He's prone to suppose that if he's got a form of the practice of godliness of whatever sort, he's all right. And many people in the churches, said the Puritans, and it's surely as true today as it was then, they've got the form all right.

They do all the correct things. They go through all the right notions. And so they're quite sure that they're right with God as truly Christians as anyone else. And they've got assurance. They're quite sure they're all right with God.

And they beam the smiles on their faces. They rejoice at it. But it's false peace, the Puritans would say. And if people who come in that category are ever to be saved then somehow or other, that false peace has got to be taken away from them.

And they've got to learn to rest their life on a better foundation than yet they found. And the Puritans highlighted in their preaching the danger of false peace. Man is prone to it. And when man falls into it, they said, it's utterly disastrous and ruinous for his soul.

They knew men are prone to Phariseeism. They knew men and women are prone to what we might call Ananias and Sapphiraism. They knew that men and women are still prone to fall into the mistake into which Eve was entrapped by the serpent.

They say, if you look at a man's thoughts, and if you look at his life, and if he's willing to expose himself to you so that you can see what manner of person he is, well then it will become obvious that he's not converted from the way that his mind's working, from the way that he's living.

And you'll be able to show him. But the tragedy is that so many people will not expose themselves to you. You ask them questions, you probe, and they simply get offended and won't reply. And so you can't effectively expose to them the groundlessness of their hope and the falseness of their peace.

Well this is how the Puritans saw the problem of false assurance. Self-deception and the fallen human part at this particular point. And so you see the Puritans had a double problem here. On the one hand, they were desperately anxious that men and women coming into faith should also be led into the fullness of assurance.

On the other hand, they were desperately anxious that no one should be allowed to remain in a state of false peace or encouraged to slump into a state of false peace. A double problem then, a Silla and a Charybdis of error both to be avoided.

And the Puritans sought to lead their congregation between these two extremes of error into true faith and true assurance. And they stressed the high privilege of assurance. And they stressed the assurance of the transforming blessing.

And they stressed the assurance that its fullness might often come quite late on in a Christian's life. And that it was a blessing which he would need to seek for specifically from the Lord very often before it came to him.

Tested Faith and the Rarity of Full Assurance

And they thought to explain this and to encourage men to seek the fullness of true assurance. They were in fact a little distrustful if the transports of rapture that accompanied a man's first profession of faith were too great.

When they saw a young convert or a professed convert just bubbling over they didn't immediately write him off but it did occur to them to wonder whether he'd really become acquainted with the depths of sin in his own heart.

They looked to see the roots of humility self-abhorrence going with that overflow of joy and they were a little hesitant and a little anxious when they couldn't clearly see it. They never forgot you see that it was the stony ground hearers in the Lord's parable who received the word with such notable and exuberant joy and they didn't last.

True, sound, thorough converts said the Puritans may start like that but not always, not even usually. Full assurance they said is a rare blessing even amongst adults. It's a great and precious privilege which God doesn't bestow indiscriminately.

I quote from Brooks from that treatise which I've already referred to Assurance is a mercy too good for most men's hearts, right Brooks? God will only give it to his best and dearest friends. And he writes again Assurance is the beauty and top of a Christian's glory in this life.

It's usually attended with the strongest joy with the sweetest comfort and with the greatest peace but it's the crown that few wear. Or again he says Assurance is meat for strong men. Few babes, if any are able to bear it and digest it.

And the Puritans went on to say Full assurance in the sense in which they're speaking of it isn't usually enjoyed except by those who first sought it from God and served God faithfully and patiently for a time without it.

Yes, this was their doctrine. I quote Brooks, no sorry I quote Goodwin this time Assurance comes in as a reward of faith writes Goodwin. A man's faith must fight first and have a conquest and then assurance is the crown and the triumph of faith and what tries faith more than temptations and fears and doubts and reasonings against a man's own estate and that triumphing assurance or Romans 8 37 and following comes after a trial as none are crowned till they have striven.

So the Puritans believed it generally was. Assurance in its fullness would come after faith and you'd need to seek it from God as a special blessing and it might well be that you'd have to travel some distance and some distance over rough and testing country before God brought you to the point where triumphing assurance in its fullness became yours.

Assurance in its fullness you see as the Puritans understood it is not essential to faith Brooks says it's a faith's beneeity its well-being rather than its being. It is an aspect of faith if you like a development of faith which normally appears only when faith has been tested when faith has been tried when faith has grown.

That was their point of view. Now before we go any further let's just contrast that with the point of view regarding assurance which I suppose is shared by most of us certainly which is shared by the majority of 20th century evangelicals.

We too believe that assurance is a privilege a duty a gift of God something which a Christian ought to have. But we approach the whole subject don't we in quite a different way from that in which the Puritans approached it.

We are used I suppose most of us to the counselling room routine of holding forth the word of scripture like John 1 12 as many as received him for them gave he power to become the sons of God even those that believe on his name.

And we say to the man who a moment ago was signing a decision card well now you see the promise do you believe it? And the chap says yes. And we say well now have you believed on his name? The chap says yes that's what I was signing the decision card for.

And then we say well don't you see this means that you've become a child of God there's your assurance. Now you can get the job of giving assurance finished in five minutes if you do it that way but you see how different it is from the Puritan approach.

Bare Profession Versus Assurance Tested by Life

For the moment all I ask you to do is to observe just how different it is. We can make the evaluations later just at the moment I'm pointing up the differences. Here's assurance given on the basis of a bare profession of faith perhaps only a few minutes old certainly a profession of faith that hasn't been tested by life.

Here again is assurance being given on the basis of a bare inference you hold up a text of scripture major premise of the syllogism you remind the man that he's believed that he's made a profession of faith minor premise of the syllogism and then you draw the inference.

If it's true that everyone who receives Jesus Christ and believes on his name becomes a child of God and if it's true that you have professed to receive Jesus Christ and believe on his name then, conclusion, you have become a child of God.

And this is assurance given on the basis of a bare inference not necessarily confirmed by the Holy Spirit. And at this point the differences I want to underline are that the Puritans required both the things that we don't require they required that a profession of faith should be tested by life and they were slow to give those with whom they dealt assurance about their assurance and similarly the Puritans were concerned that assurance should be directly a gift of the Holy Spirit directly a matter of spiritual experience and not just something of which the pastor or the counselor assures you by carrying through this kind of reasoning from scripture.

Now as I say we can draw the inferences and make the evaluations later for the moment all I want to say is that quite evidently the Puritans required more before they gave assurance before they gave assurance about assurance than we do.

And the question is well which really is the more scriptural the more wise the more fruitful line of pastoral procedure. We don't of course have to assume at this stage that the Puritans were right in everything they did that differed from what we do and that we're necessarily wrong in everything we do that they didn't.

We can't take that for granted we have to reason it through scripturally in each case well that perhaps we'll be able to do by the time I finish this morning. For the moment though all I'm asking you to do is to notice the difference and to consider with me the questions which are inevitably raised in our minds by considering just how great this difference is.

Now questions of this sort must be answered from scripture and I think that the most fruitful way for us to think through this subject is to think it through from scripture with Puritan references and illustrations rather than to think it through historically in terms of what the Puritans said.

So that's my method and that's how I'm going to lay this exposition out. And I invite you therefore first to consider with me from the scriptures the nature of assurance. And then we'll think about the value of the assurance and then about the work of the Holy Spirit in assurance and then about pastoral problems concerning assurance.

Romans 8 and the Nature of Assurance

Think with me first then about the nature of assurance. What is it? To answer this question I take you again as indeed we, as I did on Monday night to the eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans which Charles Hodge and many other commentators regard as the classic New Testament statements of Christian assurance.

A rhapsody on assurance is Hodge's way of describing it. Here Paul lays out in its fullness the sum and substance of Christian assurance by just going through in sequence all the things of which the Christian is assured.

We are asking what is the nature of assurance? From Romans 8 I suggest two things in answer to this question. First, assurance is a conviction. A conviction for which reasons can be given as distinct from just a feeling of joy and all rightness for which no reason can be given.

The Puritans distrusted emotions which came upon one and yet couldn't be justified by reason or irrational or non-rational states of feeling. William Ames once said that Arminian universal grace that the conviction of Arminian universal grace could simply be the result of a good dinner.

An expression of the kind of euphoria which a good American steak induces. And the Puritans were well aware that moods and states of feeling and states of euphoria could result from causes which had nothing spiritual about them at all.

So they were insistent that assurance as Romans 8 presents it is a conviction for which reasons can be given and not a feeling for which no reason can be given. I am persuaded says Paul in Romans 8 38 I am persuaded by reasons.

I can give reasons for my conviction. It is a rational conviction. And this conviction appears in the 8th chapter of Romans as an aspect and a quality of self-conscious instructed faith. Here is Paul in this chapter confessing his faith.

It starts as a confession of faith very personal. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Verse 2. And then he extends and speaks in terms of us himself and other true believers with him.

But what he's doing you see throughout the whole chapter the mere layout of it shows is confessing going through sequentially the various things that are true of us who have been set free from the law of sin and death us who have been brought out of the state of sin and the state of spiritual darkness and despair by the grace of Jesus Christ.

And he rises to this final expression of conviction I am persuaded that nothing in heaven or earth is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It's then a conviction which is an aspect of self-conscious faith.

And it is in fact a double conviction and this is how the Puritans analyzed it out it's a conviction first of certain facts certain gospel facts as being truths as being facts and not fictions and secondly it's a conviction of our own personal interests to use the Puritan word in those facts that all these facts apply to me that all these blessings proclaimed in the gospel are mine.

What are the facts? Well there's a whole series of godly blessings reviewed in the eighth chapter of the Romans promises of the covenant of God elements in the salvation of Christ no condemnation the blessing of justification verses 1 and following the gift of the Holy Spirit to indwell verses 9 and following the gift of adoption whereby one becomes the son and heir of God verse 15 and following the knowledge that all circumstances work together for one's good verse 28 and the knowledge that God will see that they do so that if one's afraid circumstances will overwhelm one one has immediately the answer to that fear.

God will never let it happen. God is in charge of circumstances and he'll see that nothing is given you that's too hard for you but that everything that is given for you is for your good because it will have the effect of strengthening your faith and leading you on step by step closer to Christ and closer to glory.

Similarly in the last paragraph of the chapter as we were considering on Monday night Paul elaborates and develops the whole thought that this means God is on our side. No blessing can be withheld from us.

Christ's love is upon us and nothing in time or eternity can ever alter that it starts with no condemnation it ends with no separation. Nothing able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now these are the gospel facts which are true of everyone who is Christ. There is such a reality of justification. There is such a gift of the indwelling spirit. There is such a thing as adoption into God's family.

There is such a thing as particular providence. There is such a thing as the special help of God and the personal love of Christ. These things are not fictions, they're facts. They're realities. And the basis of the conviction which we call assurance is the certainty that these things are facts.

They are realities. Heaven and earth may pass away but these things abide. They are God's facts, nothing can ever change them. The Puritans knew the reality of temptations to atheism, to Sasanianism to unbelief of the Christian faith.

You mustn't suppose that because it was a day a day of Christian culture when you didn't have an organized forces of secularism in philosophy and in ordinary social life in the way that you have today.

You mustn't suppose that on that account everybody was quite clear and quite persuaded that Christianity was true and that there was no problem of doubt and the temptation to unbelief and the denial of the faith just because sin is sin and Satan is Satan.

Men are always tempted in every age to deny the gospel and to deny the reality of God. And the Puritans had to cope with this and they wrote a good deal about it and they preached a good deal with a view to relieving men and helping them to strengthen their faith by argument so that their doubts about the truth of the Christian faith might be resolved.

Things are nothing like of different in this 20th century as compared with the 17th. As some people would suppose our problems were their problems. And at point after point they've gone through the mill.

And they in my judgment have found the answer here then is the first element in the conviction that constitutes assurance. Conviction that the gospel facts are true. And in the second element the conviction of one's own interest in those facts.

The conviction that one is included in the us and the we of Romans 8. The conviction that all these good things which Paul and those for whom he spoke enjoyed are mine by the gift of God. I'm included in this blessed circle.

I'm one of these blessed people. This salvation has come to me. That's assurance. The gospel is true and I'm in it. These are God's facts and they're my blessing. That's the first thing that Romans 8 shows us then about assurance it is a conviction and this is the content of it.

The Holy Spirit’s Witness in Assurance

The second thing Romans 8 shows us about assurance is that assurance is the gift and work of the Holy Spirit. That's quite clear in verse 16 the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

That's the explanation of I am persuaded in verse 38 the fact that in verse 16 the spirit bears witness with our spirit. It's the spirit given assurance that Paul is confessing in that last sentence of the chapter.

And this is a Puritan point too. Inferential assurance. Bare inferential assurance is not really what the New Testament means by assurance says the Puritan assurance is more than that assurance is a God-given conviction of one standing in grace stamped on the mind and heart by the Holy Spirit supernaturally in just the same sense in which the truth of the gospel says was stamped on the mind supernaturally in the days when faith was born.

And assurance spirit given assurance of the Puritan carries with it the same immediate certainty as does this initial conviction. This inescapable conviction which comes to all those who are brought to living faith that the gospel facts really are true and they're inescapable and I must face them and I must respond to them.

And the Christ of the gospel is real and I must have dealings with him for he is speaking to me. So Brooks writes. Assurance is the reflex act of a gracious soul whereby he clearly and evidently sees himself in a gracious, blessed and happy state.

It is a sensible feeling and an experimental discerning of a man's being in a state of grace. Operative words here are sensible and experimental. What Brooks means is that this is assurance. An assurance that is conscious an assurance that is accompanied by feeling because it's an assurance stamped on the heart by the Holy Spirit.

It won't exist until it pleases God to give it. The young convert's position as the Puritans understood it is this as he believes and obeys in the light of his spirit-given conviction that the facts of the gospel are true he will certainly know a measure of peace and joy because real believing will at once bring an element of real comfort as Goodwin says in his quaint way no man looks upon Christ but cometh off more cheerily.

Or as Sibbes put it there's a voice of God's spirit speaking peace to his people upon their believing. There is then a measure of assurance right from the start normally seen anyway. And the young Christian may think and hope and with some warrant that he is a child of God.

But he can't. This is the Puritan point that he cannot say in the unqualified sense of John's first epistle in the unqualified sense of Romans 8 -16 that he knows his sonship until the spirit has set this certainty home on his heart.

And this normally will be after believing perhaps some time after rather than at the moment. Not necessarily so but commonly so said the Puritans in Romans 8. Paul speaks of it as a distinct as a distinct work of the spirit.

And after all Paul dealt with with the entry into saving faith. Saving faith as long ago as Romans 3 and Romans 4. Until the spirit has set assurance home on the man's soul. Well he hasn't yet. He hasn't yet entered into the fullness of it as Romans 8 describes it.

Still he says. Or sometimes he says as he reads Romans 8. Oh I wish I were there. Can I be sure. And as long as he's still in the state of saying can I be sure he hasn't quite got there. The spirit hasn't quite brought him there said the Puritans.

This assurance is a gift of the spirit and it's something which normally comes after conversion. Well there's a nature of assurance according to Romans 8. And according to the Puritans a conviction of one's interest in the gospel faith given by the witness of the Holy Spirit in a man's heart.

We may find it difficult to get the full point of this. I wonder if we do. I think some of us may be so used to notional assurance as I called it that we've just never thought of assurance as being the positive radiant exuberant thing which Romans 8 declares it to be and which the Puritans knew it to be.

Are we perhaps defining the word assurance as something less wonderful than the New Testament shows it to be. Are our sights high enough. Let's ask ourselves that question as we go along from the nature of assurance.

The Value of Assurance for Christian Joy and Holiness

Now we move to consider secondly the value of assurance to some. Of course in Christian history assurance has always appeared as presumption. The Puritans meant assurance in the full Romans 8 sense including assurance of one's eternal security in the love of Christ.

And Arminians for instance have always said that this is bad theology because no man here and now can guarantee that he will persevere to the end in the love of Christ. It depends on him and if he's wise he will bend on it.

And the Church of Rome of course had always carried this line of reasoning one stage further and said that assurance and confidence of final glory is positively sin and to be discouraged where you find it.

But you only have to read through Romans 8 once to see that this is not in fact the apostolic way of looking at it. You only have to read through Romans 8 once to see that assurance in the sense that we've described it is in truth the mainspring of peace and hope and joy in their positive Christian sense the sense in which indeed our sermon last night was pointing us to it.

You know where you stand with God the grace of Christ has come to you. You see what it means. You see it means that you're safe you're secure. You're with God in his love an air of his glory. And nothing can ever change that.

And it so thrills you it so thrills you that you've got to go back to God in praise and rejoicing. And your whole life now really is bubbling over and bubbling over for good reason. Somebody asked a question yesterday.

Weren't the Puritans too preoccupied with sin. I answered as I'd been told to answer in a sentence. No they weren't. It was suggested to me afterwards that the question needed a larger answer than that.

Well the larger answer is that the Puritans had their sights trained on assurance and most of them lived in the joy of assurance. And what if we were to use this word preoccupied them was not sin though they certainly knew that one would be very unwise not to face the reality and the pervasiveness of sin.

But what preoccupied them was the glory of God's grace. They lived their life in the joy and the delight of knowing that this grace was theirs. That was their mood that was their temper. I think perhaps when we read their sermons you know we miss this partly because we don't recognize it when we see it.

This kind of assurance is such a strange thing these days. We read it shining through the things that the Puritans write shining through Brooks shining through Thomas Watson shining through Richard Sibbes I mention those three particularly shining through Bunyan as well shining through Owen too but not perhaps quite so brightly as in those writers shining through Thomas Goodwin.

And yet we read these men and we rise from our reading and say weren't they preoccupied with sin. We just can't see what's there. I see there's a Baptist in the house but I hope under God I'll have you Presbyterians doing it before we finish.

Well this is the value of assurance as the Puritans understood it. The peace, the hope, the joy that assurance brings to the heart is just unspeakable. It's not, they said an incentive to slackness any more than Paul's assurance as set out in Romans 8 was an incentive to slackness in his life.

The very thought with him is absurd and so it's absurd of any other Christian says the Puritan knowledge of how much God has loved you doesn't make you slack in serving him. What it does is to make you love him more and make you more responsive and more wholehearted and more vigorous in spending and being spent in doing his will just as in holy matrimony to keep saying to each other I love you doesn't make the other partner indifferent but has the opposite effect.

So, said the Puritans God's grace in assurance whereby repeatedly he says to the soul I love you doesn't make us indifferent and presumptuous and careless but rather it thrills us the more and makes us the more responsive.

And so the Puritans wrote that when supernatural assurance in its fullness dawns it transforms a man's whole Christian life. It's a new conversion says Goodwin. It will make a man different from himself and what he was before in that manner also almost as conversion just before he was converted as a new addition of all a man's graces.

It sounds startling but Goodwin means what he says and he goes on to develop the thought assurance he says increases faith. Faith in its phrase receives a new degree and its invigoration of faith which said the Puritans is the mother of grace from which all other aspects of Christian character flow.

This invigoration of faith results in a new release of spiritual energy at every point in a man's Christian life. In the first place it deepens his communion with the triune God in meditating on what Goodwin calls the plot the plan of redeeming love.

And so Goodwin writes in assurance a man's communion communion and converse is sometimes with the Father then with the Son then with the Holy Ghost. Sometimes that is the heart is drawn out to consider the Father's love in choosing and then the love of Christ in redeeming.

And so the love of the Holy Ghost that searches for these things of God and reveals them to us and take it all the pains with us. And says Goodwin we should never be satisfied until we've attained this until all three persons as it were make their abode with us and we sit in the midst of them while they all manifest their love to us.

This is John's communion 1 John 1 -4 our communion is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ and this is the highest that ever Christ promised in His life. In His last sermon John 14 when you remember He says that the Father and He would come to the soul of the man who loved Him and kept His commandments and the Father and the Son through the Spirit and with the Spirit would manifest themselves to Him.

There's a favourite passage with Goodwin who often develops this thought. So incidentally does John Owen read his treatise of communion with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In volume 2 of his collected works only $48 was set only $3 a volume.

And that isn't all says Goodwin. The coming of assurance also quickens the spiritual understanding by it, quote the eye of the soul is strengthened to see further into God's truth and all God's truths are more clearly known by this.

Also assurance makes a man bold and powerful in prayer above what he was before and it makes him holier quote Goodwin again all assurance that is true assurance makes a man holy. And Brooks writes. Nothing makes the heart more in the love, study, practice and growth of holiness than the glorious testimony of the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore assurance makes a man tireless in Christian service writes Goodwin when once the love of God is shed abroad in a man's heart it makes a man work for God ten times more than before. The Puritans are sometimes accused of having not been strong enough.

Somebody said this to me in this conference. Surely the Puritans weren't strong enough on the duty of individual witness and soul winning. Well here's Brooks assurance will strongly put a man upon the winning of others.

A soul under assurance is unwilling to go to heaven without company. And finally assurance brings with it the joy unspeakable and full of glory of 1 Peter 1 .8 which is one of Goodwin's favorite texts in this connection.