These paragraphs should be written in gold. O! may these precious words
be written on my heart!

1. That we all need to be redeemed, and that therefore we are all in
captivity to an evil:

2. That there is a Redeemer:

3. That the redemption relatively to each individual captive is, if not
effected under certain conditions, yet manifestable as far as is fitting
for the soul by certain signs and consequents:--and

4. That these signs are in myself; that the conditions under which the
redemption offered to all men is promised to the individual, are
fulfilled in myself;

these are the four great points of faith, in which the humble Christian
finds and feels a gradation from trembling hope to full assurance; yet
the will, the act of trust, is the same in all. Might I not almost say,
that it rather increases with the decrease of the consciously discerned
evidence? To assert that I have the same assurance of mind that I am
saved as that I need a Saviour, would be a contradiction to my own
feelings, and yet I may have an equal, that is, an equivalent assurance.
How is it possible that a sick man should have the same certainty of his
convalescence as of his sickness? Yet he may be assured of it. So again,
my faith in the skill and integrity of my physician may be complete, but
the application of it to my own case may be troubled by the sense of my
own imperfect obedience to his prescriptions. The sort of our beliefs
and assurances is necessarily modified by their different subjects. It
argues no want of saving faith on the whole, that I cannot have the same