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SECT. 5. MEANS TO ATTAIN QUIETING CONFIDENCE IN GOD, AND FREEDOM FROM PERPLEXING CARES.

That you may leave anxious caring, and be brought to cast all your care on God,

(1.) Deny yourself, and your own wisdom, Prov. xxiii. 4; be not wise in your own conceit, nor presumptuous of your wit, skill, or means.

(2.) Get sound knowledge, faith, hope, and confidence in God, Rom. viii. 32; live by faith, for the preservation both of body and soul, Heb. x. 38, 39. Get not only faith in his promise, but in his providence also. When you shall see no way or means of gaining the good you desire, or of keeping you from the evil which you fear, or of delivering you from the evil you feel, then call to mind, not only the promises of God, viz. I am with you, Joshua i. 5; I will not leave nor forsake you, Heb. xiii. 5; all things work together for good, Rom. viii. 28; and many such like; but believe also that God will provide means to bring to pass what he has promised, though yet you see not how. When you can say, with faithful Abraham, God will provide, Gen. xxii. 8, it will cast out fear and doubt. But if, with Abraham, Gen. xii. 11, xvi. 2, you believe God's promises in the main, but not God's providence in the means; you will then be tempted to seek out, and use unlawful means to obtain the thing promised, as he did; or faint in waiting, as many others have done. For we see the like in David, 1 Sam. xxvi. 10, 11, when he had faith in God's providence, he could say of Saul, The Lord shall smite him, or his day shall come to die, or he shall descend into the battle and perish. The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth my hand against the Lord's anointed. But when he doubted of God's providence, then he saith, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul, 1 Sam. xxvii. 1.

(3.) Give all diligence to make your calling and election sure; for when you know assuredly that God