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ual desertions, when God, for his neglect of keeping his peace with him, is hidden from him for a time, and when in his displeasure he looks angrily, and writes bitter things against him. Likewise, when he is in some violent and prevalent temptation, and thereby cast into a kind of spiritual swoon, and in such like cases. But a man must not judge himself to be dead, because when he is asleep, or in a swoon, he has no feeling, or sense of life.

(2.) Whether is it necessary that a man should find all these marks of uprightness in him, if he be upright?

No. Although, if he were in a condition to judge and try himself thoroughly, he might find them all in him; yet if he find most, or but some of these, he should comfort himself with those, until he find the rest.

Take heed therefore that you do not as many, who when they hear and see many signs given of this, or any other needful grace, if they cannot approve themselves by all, will make a question whether they have the grace or no. One may give you twenty signs of natural life, as seeing, hearing, talking, breathing, &c. What though you cannot prove yourself by all? Yet if you know you feel, or breathe, or move, you know you are alive by any one of them.

(3.) What is to be done when you cannot find that you are upright, whereas heretofore sometime you did hope that you were?

Do not presently conclude you are an hypocrite; but look back unto former proofs of uprightness. And though you have, for the present, lost your evidence and assurance of heaven, yet give not over your possession of what you have had, nor your hope. A man that has once had possession of house and lands, if his estate be questioned, will seek out his evidence; and, suppose that he has laid aside, or lost his evidence thereof, yet he is not such a fool as to give over his possession, or his right; but will seek till he find his evidences, or if he cannot find them, will search the records, and get them from thence. So must you in this case; you must seek for evidence again, Psa. li. 12.