in his new steadfastness, but to be content to wear "doubt's galling chain[1]," until God shall see it healthful for him gradually to be relieved. The fears, and anxiety, whereof he ignorantly complains, and would rid himself by the one or the other system of theology, is a most important, perhaps an essential condition of his cure, otherwise God would not have sent troubles, often so intolerable.
[2]But where is then the stay of contrite hearts?
Of old they leaned on Thy eternal word;
But with the sinner's fear their hope departs,
Fast linked, as Thy great name to Thee, O Lord.
Man desires to have, under any circumstances, certainty of salvation through Christ: to those who have fallen, God holds out only "a light in a dark place," sufficient for them to see their path, but not bright or cheering as they would have it: and so, in different ways, man would forestall the sentence of his Judge; the Romanist by the Sacrament of penance: a modern class of divines by the appropriation of the merits and righteousness of our Blessed Redeemer; the Methodists by sensible experience: our own, with the ancient Church, preserves a reverent silence, not cutting off hope, and yet not nurturing an untimely confidence, or a presumptuous security.
A further question will, probably, occur to many; what is that grievous sin after Baptism, which involves the falling from grace? What the distinction between lesser and greater, venial and mortal sins? or if mortal sins be "sins against the decalogue," as St. Augustine says, are they only the highest degrees of those sins, or are they the lower also? This question, as it is a very distressing one, I would gladly answer
