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SECT. 3. FEARS CONCERNING NOT BEING ELECTED, REMOVED.

There are others who make no doubt of God's power. They believe he can forgive them; but they fear, yea, strongly conclude, that he will not pardon them, and that because they are reprobates, as they say, for they see no signs of election, but much to the contrary.

I answer these thus. When your consciences are first wounded with a sense of God's wrath for sin, it is very like, that before you have believed and repented, you cannot discern any signs of God's favour, but of his anger; for as yet you are not actually in a state of grace, and in his favour. And oftentimes after the Christian does believe, though there be always matter enough to give proof of his election, yet he cannot always see it. If you be in either of these states, suppose the worst, yet you have no reason to conclude that you are reprobates.

It is true, that God, before the foundation of the world, fully determined with himself, whom to choose to salvation by grace, to which also he ordained them; and whom to pass by, and leave in their sins, for which he determined in his just wrath to condemn them. But who these be, is a secret, which even the elect themselves cannot know, until they be effectually called, nay, nor being called, until by some experience and proofs of their faith and holiness, they do understand the witness of the Spirit, which testifies to their spirits, that they are the children of God; and do make their calling and election, which was always sure in God, sure to themselves, 2 Peter i. 5, 10. But in point of reprobation, namely, that God has passed them by, to perish everlastingly in their wickedness, no man living can know it, except he know that he has sinned the sin against the Holy Ghost, that unpardonable sin.

For God calls men at all ages and times, some in