Chapter 5

How our own hearts are the causes of this darkness: the principles therein which are the causes of it.

To speak more particularly of either:

First, that our own hearts should be the causes and producers of such distress and darkness when the Holy Ghost thus deals with us is at all no wonder; because

1. As we are creatures, there is such a weakness and infirmity in us, as David speaks — by reason of which, if God does but hide himself and withdraw his presence (which supports us in comfort as in being), we are ready presently to fall into these fears of ourselves. The psalmist says of all the creatures: 'You hide your face and they are troubled' (Psalm 104:29) — and this by reason of their weakness and dependence upon God. And no less, but far greater, is the dependence of the new creature upon God's face and presence, that it cannot be alone and bear up itself, but it fails if God hide himself, as Isaiah speaks (chapter 57). Especially now in this life, during the infancy thereof, while it is a child, as God speaks of Ephraim (Hosea 11:1) — then it cannot stand or go alone unless God bears it up in his arms and teaches it to go, as he speaks there (verses 1, 3). And then also, as children left alone in the dark are afraid of bogeymen and they know not what, and are apt to stumble and fall — which is by reason of their weakness — so is it with the new creature in its childhood here in this life. 'It was my infirmity,' says David (Psalm 30:6); and again, 'You did hide your face and I was troubled.'

There is not only such a weakness in us as we are creatures; but,

2. Also an innate darkness in our spirits as we are sinful creatures: since the fall, our hearts of themselves are nothing but darkness, and therefore no wonder if, when God draws but the curtains and shuts up the light from us, our hearts should engender and conceive such horrible fears and doubts. Thus in 2 Corinthians 4:6, the apostle compares this native darkness of our hearts to that chaos and lump of darkness which at the first creation covered the face of the deep, when he says that God who commanded light to shine out of darkness (he refers to the first creation, Genesis 1:1-2) has shined into our hearts — even of us apostles — to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So that no longer than God continues to shine, either the light of comfort or of grace, no longer do our hearts (even of us believers) retain light in them. And if at any time he withholds that light of comfort in his face, when yet he continues an influence of grace: then so far do our hearts presently return to their former darkness; and then does that vast womb of darkness conceive and form all those fears and doubts within itself. Considering withal that our hearts are a great deep also — so deep in darkness and deceitfulness as no plummet can fathom them. 'Deceitful above all things, who can know it?' (Jeremiah 17:9). Darkness covers not the face of this deep only, but it is darkness to the bottom, throughout darkness. No wonder then if, when the Spirit ceases to move upon this deep with beams of light, it casts us into such deeps and darkness as Heman (complaining) speaks of (Psalm 88:6), and frames in itself such hideous apprehensions and desperate conclusions of a man's own estate.

Especially seeing 3. there is so much strength of carnal and corrupt reason in men, ready to forge and invent strong reasons and arguments to confirm those sad fears and darkened apprehensions, and those drawn from those dealings of God's Spirit mentioned. For as it is said of the Gentiles that when 'their foolish heart was darkened' (that is, when left and given over to their own natural darkness) 'they became vain in their imaginations' — or as the original has it, in their reasonings (Romans 1:21) — and this even in those things which God had clearly revealed in his works to the light of nature (of which that place speaks): so may it be said even of those who have been most enlightened, that their hearts are apt to become much more vain in their reasonings about and in the judging of their own estates before God, out of his word and dealings with them, if God once leaves them to darkness. And this that great caution given to professors (James 1:22) gives us to understand, when they are exhorted to take heed that in hearing the word they be not found deceiving themselves by false reasonings — so the original renders it — which is as if we should say, false-reasoning themselves, as we use to say in a like phrase of speech, befooling themselves. And this is spoken of judging of their own estates — concerning which, men are more apt through the distempers and prejudices of self-love to make (to speak in that phrase of the apostle) false syllogisms and to misconclude, than about any other spiritual truth whatever. And in men that lack true faith, the unsound hearers of the word (of whom the apostle there speaks) are thus apt, through carnal reason misapplying the word they hear, to frame and draw from them (as he insinuates) multitudes of false reasons to uphold and maintain to themselves a good opinion of their estates. So on the contrary, in those who have true faith, all that carnal reason (which remains in a great measure unsubdued in them) is apt to raise and forge as strong objections against the work of faith begun, and as peremptorily to conclude against their present estates by the like misapplication of the word — but especially by misinterpreting God's dealings toward them. And they being sometimes led by sense and reason while they walk in darkness, they are apt to interpret God's mind toward them rather by his works and dispensations, which they see and feel, than by his word, which they are to believe. This we may see in Gideon (Judges 6), who, because God worked not miracles as he had formerly for his people but had delivered them into their enemies' hands, from thence reasons against the message of the angel (Christ himself) who had told him, 'The Lord is with you' (verse 12). But he objects: 'Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? Where are all the miracles which our fathers told us of? But now the Lord has forsaken us,' etc. This we may also see in Asaph (or whatever other holy penman of Psalm 73): his heels were well-nigh tripped up in the dark. 'My feet were almost gone,' says he (verse 2) — that is, from keeping his standing by faith, as the apostle speaks (Romans 5); and this by an argument framed by carnal reason from God's dispensation of outward prosperity to wicked men, but on the contrary chastening of him every morning with outward afflictions, as the opposition does there import. And how peremptory is he in his conclusion thence deduced? 'Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain' (verse 13). And what reason has he? 'For all the day long I have been plagued,' etc. (verse 14). He thought his reason strong and irrefutable, else he would not have been so conclusive. But what would this man have said and thought if he had been in Heman's condition? Or in Job's, or David's? If in those shallows of outward troubles which are common to man his faith could not find footing, but he was well-nigh carried away with the common stream and error of wicked men to have condemned himself and the generation of the righteous (verse 15) — how would his faith have been overwhelmed if all God's waves and billows had gone over him, as David complains (Psalm 42:7)? How would he have sunk in Heman's deeps (Psalm 88) or in David's: 'I sink in the deep mire where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me' (Psalm 69:2) — speaking of such waters as came in to his soul (verse 1), even the floods of God's immediate wrath breaking in upon his conscience, overflowing the inward man and not the outward only! How much more peremptorily would he have concluded against himself if this had been his condition? As indeed they and many others of the generation of God's children have done when they have lain under and walked in such distresses.

And the reason of all this is as evident as the experience of it.

1. In general: reason is of itself a busy principle that will be prying into and making false glosses upon all God's matters as well as our own, and trying its skill in arguing upon all his dealings with us. Thus Jeremiah would needs be reasoning with God about his dispensations toward wicked men (chapter 12:1-2) and Job about his dealings with himself (chapter 13:3). And reason being likewise the supreme principle in us by nature and our highest distinction as we are men — therefore no wonder if, when we are left to ourselves to walk in darkness, we walk 'as men,' as the apostle speaks (1 Corinthians 1:3), and, to use Solomon's words, lean to our own wisdom, even because it is our own and was brought up with us. It is our great Ahithophel — and as David says of him, 'our guide with whom we have taken so much sweet counsel' in all our worldly and political affairs, in which only we should make use of its advice. But we too often take it into the sanctuary with us and walk in company with it into the house of God (to allude to what David says there, Psalm 55:13-14) — that is, we suffer it to meddle in matters that pertain to the sanctuary, and to debate and conclude of our spiritual and eternal estates as well as of our temporal. And which is worse, we are opinionated of its judgment therein. 'I thought,' says Asaph in that aforementioned psalm, 'to know this' (verse 16) — that is, he thought to have comprehended and reached God's mind in those his dispensations by the discussions of reason, and so to have concluded rightly from them. Whereas after he had gone into the sanctuary (verse 17) with faith alone, and thereby consulted with the word, he confesses his own wisdom and best reason to have been as ignorant of God's meaning and of those rules he proceeds by in those his dispensations toward his children, even as a beast (verse 22) is of those principles which men walk by, or the intentions they have in their ways. If reason then, when it is so utterly unskillful and mistaken in the premises, will yet be exercising and trying its faculty in reasoning from them — no wonder if the conclusions thence deduced be so wide and wild; and yet with Asaph, 'We think we know this.'

But more particularly: carnal reason is the most desperate enemy to faith of all other principles in man. For until faith is wrought, it is the most supreme principle; but then faith deposes and subjects it, and afterwards does often contradict it — yes, excludes it as unskillful in its matters from being of its counsel. And so deep and desperate is this enmity against faith, that look what is the most special work and business of faith (which is to alter our estates before God and put us into a state of justification and to assure us of it) — therein it shows a more peculiar enmity against faith, by opposing it in that work of it more than in any other. This enmity shows itself both before and after faith is wrought, and the one illustrates the other. For as before faith was wrought, carnal reason shows its opposition by using the utmost of its strength to persuade a man of the goodness of his estate though without faith, thereby to prevent the entrance of faith and our seeking after it at all as not needful to change our estates or to justify us, and thus would keep it wholly out. And therefore in the first working of faith, the Holy Ghost brings faith in by force of open arms as a conqueror, casting down all those strongholds and reasonings (as the word is, 2 Corinthians 10:4) which carnal reason had been long building and fortifying, and so erects faith a throne upon the ruins of them all. Thus in like manner, after faith is thus wrought, all that carnal reason which is left unsubdued does, out of a further revenge of such an overthrow and with a greater degree of enmity, oppose faith still. Only it diverts the war, now mustering up new forces, and turns all the great ordnance a clean contrary way — namely, to persuade a man by all the objections it can raise of the badness of his estate now, as before of the goodness of it, hereby to blaspheme the great work of faith in justifying us. And also, because next to justifying us, the office and errand of faith is to settle in our hearts peace with God and a persuasion of our being in his favor (as Romans 5:1): therefore does carnal reason bend the utmost of its power and acuity to persuade upon all occasions, by all the most specious and seemingly plausible arguments it can start and suggest, that God is not at peace with us nor as yet reconciled to us, merely to contradict faith in what is the principal point it would persuade us of.

So that as in men while unregenerate, carnal reason endeavors by false reasonings to preserve a good opinion of their estates in them: in like manner the very same principle of carnal reason, continuing its opposition to faith, does as much persuade to a bad opinion of their estates when they are once regenerated.

And to conclude this: if in any condition that befalls God's child carnal reason has the advantage and upper ground of faith, it is now when it is in the valley of the shadow of death, as David speaks — when it walks in darkness and has no light. A condition that does afford a most complete topic for carnal reason to frame objections out of; when in respect of God's dealings with him there is a seeming conjunction of all bad aspects threatening perdition and destruction. When faith is under so great an eclipse, and is left to fight it out alone in darkness, and has no second. When on the contrary carnal reason and our dark hearts (which are led by sense) are possessed with the sense — the deepest and most exquisite sense — and impressions of (that which the heart is most jealous of) God's sorest wrath and displeasure; and that felt and argued not mediately and afar off by consequence from outward afflictions, but immediately from God's own hand. 'You have always suspected,' says carnal reason, 'that you were a child of wrath and that you and God were enemies; but now you find it put out of question, and that from God's own mouth, who speaks grievous things against you; you have it also under his own hand, for lo he writes bitter things against you' — that is, in your conscience, as Job speaks (Job 13:26) — 'and holds you for an enemy' (verse 24); and whips you with the same rod of his immediate wrath and displeasure with which he lashes those that are cut from his hand and whom he remembers no more, but are now in hell, as Heman speaks. A time also this is when this present sense of wrath so disturbs and (to use Heman's words) distracts the mind that it cannot listen to faith, which speaks of nothing but what it sees not — even as the people of Israel could not attend to Moses' message of deliverance through the anguish of their present bondage (Exodus 6:9). So no wonder if then carnal reason is most busy and takes this advantage to frame and suggest the strongest objections to the soul while it is in this distress.

Add to all this 4. that as there is such strength of corrupt reason which is thus opposite to faith, so that there are many other principles of corrupt affections in the heart which join and take part with carnal reason in all this its opposition against faith, and which set it to work and back it as much in persuading God's children that their estates are bad, as in securing men unregenerate that their estates are good. And the hand of self-love (which bribes and biases carnal reason, especially in judging of our estates) is found as deep in the one as in the other. And this does yet give further light to this point in hand. For look as before faith is wrought, self-flattery (which is one branch of self-love) bribes and sets carnal reason to work to plead the goodness of their estates to men unregenerate, and causes all such false reasons to take with them which tend to persuade them to think well of themselves. So when once faith is wrought, jealousy and suspiciousness and incredulity (which are other as great offshoots of pride and self-love in us as the former, which begin to sprout and show themselves when that other is lopped off, and which grow up together with the work of faith) — these edge and sharpen the wit of carnal reason to argue and wrangle against the work of faith and grace begun. And all such objections as carnal reason does find out against it are pleasing and plausible to these corrupt principles, for they are thereby nourished and strengthened.

And the reason why such jealousies and suspicions etc. (which are such contrary dispositions to self-flattery which swayed our opinions of our estates before) should thus arise and be started up in the heart upon the work of faith, and be apt rather to prevail now after faith, is: 1. Because in the work of humiliation (which prepares for faith), all those strongholds of carnal reason being demolished which upheld self-flattery and that false good opinion of a man's estate, and those mountainous thoughts of presumption as then laid low — a man is forever put out of conceit with himself, as of himself. At which time also, 2, he was so thoroughly and feelingly convinced of the heinousness of sin (which before he slighted) and of the greatness and multitude of his sins, that he is apt now (instead of presuming as before) to be jealous of God, lest he might have been so provoked as never to pardon him, and is accordingly apt to draw a misinterpretation of all God's dealings with him to strengthen that conceit. And 3, having through the same conviction the infinite error and deceitfulness of his heart before (in flattering him and judging his estate good when it was most accursed) so clearly discovered and discerned — he thereby becomes exceedingly jealous and afraid of erring on that hand still, and so is apt to lend an ear to any doubt or scruple that is suggested. Especially 4, he being withal made apprehensive both of that infinite danger to his eternal salvation there may be in nourishing a false opinion of the goodness of his estate if it should prove otherwise — because such a false conceit keeps a man from saving faith — whereas to cherish the contrary error in judging his estate bad when it is in truth good tends but to his present discomfort; so that he thinks it safer to err on that hand than the other. And 5, being also sensible of what transcendent concern his eternal salvation is of (which he before slighted), this rouses suspicion (which in all matters of great consequence and moment is always doubting and inquisitive) and also keeps it waking, which before lay asleep. And all these being now startled and stirred up do not only provoke carnal reason unsatisfiedly to pry into all things that may seem to argue God's disfavor or the unsoundness of our hearts, but also give entertainment to and applaud all such objections as are found out, and make up too hastily false conclusions from them.

Last of all, as there are these corrupt principles of carnal reason and suspiciousness in us to raise and foment these doubts and fears from God's dealings toward us: so there is an abundance of guilt within us of our false dealings toward him. And we have consciences which remain in part defiled, which may further join with all these and increase our fears and doubtings. And as we are dark and weak creatures, so guilty creatures also. And this guilt, like the waves of the sea or the swellings of the Jordan, does begin upon these terrible storms from God to rise and swell and overflow in our consciences. As in David (Psalm 38): when God's wrath was sore upon him (verses 1-2), then also he complains, 'My iniquities are gone over my head' (verse 4). There is much guile and falseness of heart, which in those disturbances (when our consciences do boil within us and are stirred and heated to the bottom) does like the scum come up and float aloft. Thus in David, when he was under the rod for his sin of murder, as the guilt of his sin so the guile of his spirit came up, and he calls for 'truth in the inward parts' (Psalm 51:6). For as his sin (verse 2), so his falseness of heart was ever before him; and with an eye to this he spoke that speech (Psalm 32): 'Oh blessed is that man in whose spirit is no guile, and to whom the Lord imputes no sin.' Thus he spoke when God had charged upon him the guilt of his sin and discovered to him the guile of his spirit (verses 4-5). And this guile does oftentimes so appear that our consciences can hardly discern anything else to be in us; it lies uppermost and covers our graces from our view. And like as the chaff when the wheat is tossed in the fan comes up to the top, so in these commotions and winnowings of spirit do our corruptions float in our consciences, while the graces that are in us lie covered under them out of sight; and the dark side of our hearts (as of the cloud) is turned toward us and the light side from us. And indeed there are in the best of us enough humors which, if they be stirred and gathered in our consciences, may alone cast us into these burning fits of trouble and distress. So that while God's Spirit shall withhold from us the light of our own graces, and our own consciences represent to us the guilt and corruptions that are in our best performances, our hearts may conclude ourselves to be hypocrites, as Mr. Bradford in some of his letters does of himself, and others of the saints have done. Yes, so that even our own consciences — which are the only principle now left in us which should take part with and encourage faith, and witness to us (as the office of it is) the goodness of our estates — in this may join with the former corruptions against us, and bring in a false evidence, and pronounce a false judgment. Even conscience itself, which is ordained as the urine of the body to show the estate of the whole (and therefore is accordingly called good or evil as the man's state is), is apt in such disturbances to change and turn color, and look to a man's own view as bad as the state of a very hypocrite.

And the reason of this is also as evident as is the experience of it. Even because conscience remains in part defiled in a man that is regenerate: and though we are sprinkled from an evil conscience in part, yet not wholly. So that though our persons are fully discharged from the guilt of our sins through the sprinkling of Christ's blood before God, yet the sprinkling of that blood upon our consciences whereby we apprehend this is imperfect. And the reason is, because this very sprinkling of conscience, whereby it testifies the sprinkling of Christ's blood and our justification thereby, is but part of the sanctification of conscience as it is a faculty whose office and duty is to testify and witness our estates. And therefore as the sanctification of all other faculties is imperfect, so of conscience also herein. And hence it is that when God's Spirit forbears to witness with conscience the goodness of our estates, and ceases to embolden and encourage conscience by his presence and the sprinkling of Christ's blood upon it against the remaining defilement: that then our consciences are as apt to fall into fears and doubts and self-condemnings. Even as much as when he withdraws the assistance of his grace, those other faculties are to fall into any other sin. And therefore as the law of sin in the other members may be up in arms and prevail so far as to lead us captive to sin: so may the guilt of sin in our consciences remaining in part defiled, by the same reason, prevail against us and get the upper hand, and lead us captive to fears and doubtings, and cast us into bondage.

How our own hearts cause this darkness: the principles within us that produce it.

To speak more specifically about each:

First, it should be no surprise that our own hearts are the causes and producers of such distress and darkness when the Holy Spirit deals with us in this way, because:

1. As creatures, we have such weakness and frailty in us — as David acknowledges — that if God merely hides Himself and withdraws His presence (which sustains us in comfort as it sustains us in being), we immediately fall into these fears. The psalmist says of all creatures: 'You hide Your face and they are troubled' (Psalm 104:29) — and this because of their weakness and dependence on God. The new creature is no less dependent on God's face and presence — in fact, far more so. It cannot stand alone; it fails when God hides Himself, as Isaiah describes in chapter 57. Especially in this life, during infancy — while it is still a child, as God describes Ephraim in Hosea 11:1 — it cannot stand or walk on its own unless God holds it up in His arms and teaches it, as He says there in verses 1 and 3. And just as children left alone in the dark are afraid of imagined terrors and prone to stumble and fall — because of their weakness — so it is with the new creature in its childhood here in this life. 'It was my weakness,' says David (Psalm 30:6); and again, 'You hid Your face and I was troubled.'

There is not only such weakness in us as creatures, but:

2. There is also an inborn darkness in our spirits as sinful creatures. Since the fall, our hearts are by nature nothing but darkness — so it is no wonder that when God merely draws the curtain and shuts out the light, our hearts generate such horrible fears and doubts. In 2 Corinthians 4:6 the apostle compares this native darkness of our hearts to the formless void of darkness that covered the face of the deep at creation, when he says that God who commanded light to shine out of darkness (referring to Genesis 1:1-2) has shined into our hearts — even ours as apostles — to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So only as long as God continues to shine — either with the light of comfort or of grace — do our hearts retain any light. And if at any point He withdraws the light of comfort from His face, while still continuing an influence of grace, our hearts immediately return to their former darkness. That vast interior of darkness then conceives and gives shape to all those fears and doubts within itself. Our hearts are also a great deep — so deep in darkness and deceitfulness that no plumb line can reach their bottom. 'Deceitful above all things — who can know it?' (Jeremiah 17:9). Darkness does not merely rest on the surface of this deep; it goes all the way down — darkness to the very bottom. No wonder, then, that when the Spirit ceases to move over this deep with beams of light, it casts us into such depths of darkness as Heman describes in Psalm 88:6, forming within itself such dreadful perceptions and desperate conclusions about a person's own standing before God.

Especially since 3, there is so much strength of carnal and corrupt reasoning in people, always ready to forge strong arguments and confirm those fearful apprehensions — particularly those drawn from the Spirit's dealings just described. The apostle says of the Gentiles that when 'their foolish heart was darkened' — that is, when left to their own natural darkness — 'they became vain in their imaginations,' or as the original has it, in their reasonings (Romans 1:21), and this even regarding things God had clearly revealed through nature. In the same way it may be said even of those who have been most enlightened: their hearts are prone to become far more irrational in their reasoning about and judging their own standing before God — drawing from His word and His dealings with them — once He leaves them in darkness. The caution given to believers in James 1:22 points to this, where they are urged not to deceive themselves through false reasoning — so the original renders it — that is, talking themselves into falsehood, as we might say in a similar phrase: fooling themselves. This applies specifically to judging their own standing before God, which people are more prone to miscalculate — through the distortions and biases of self-love — than any other spiritual truth. In people who lack true faith, the unsound hearers of the word (of whom the apostle there speaks) are prone, through carnal reason misapplying what they hear, to build up many false arguments for maintaining a high opinion of themselves. Conversely, in those who have true faith, all the carnal reason that remains unsubdued is prone to raise just as strong objections against the work of faith already begun, and to draw just as decisive conclusions against their present standing — particularly by misreading God's dealings with them. Being sometimes led by sense and reason while they walk in darkness, they interpret God's attitude toward them by what they see and feel rather than by what His word calls them to believe. We see this in Gideon in Judges 6: because God was not working miracles as He had for Israel in the past, and had allowed them to fall into their enemies' hands, Gideon reasoned against the message of the angel — Christ Himself — who had said to him, 'The Lord is with you' (verse 12). Gideon objects: 'Oh my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? Where are all the miracles our fathers told us about? But now the Lord has forsaken us,' and so on. We see the same in Asaph (or whoever the holy author of Psalm 73 is): his feet nearly slipped in the dark. 'My feet had almost stumbled,' he says (verse 2) — that is, from holding his ground by faith, as the apostle speaks in Romans 5. This happened through an argument built by carnal reason from God's arrangement of outward prosperity for the wicked, contrasted with God's daily chastening of him through outward afflictions, as the context there implies. How decisive is the conclusion he draws from it: 'Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain' (verse 13). And his stated reason: 'For all day long I have been stricken' and so on (verse 14). He must have thought his reasoning strong and airtight, or he would not have been so confident in his conclusion. But what would this man have said and thought had he been in Heman's condition, or in Job's, or in David's? If in those shallows of outward troubles — which are common to all people — his faith could not find footing and he nearly went along with the common error of the wicked and condemned himself and the whole generation of the righteous (verse 15), how would his faith have fared if all of God's waves and breakers had rolled over him, as David complains in Psalm 42:7? How would he have sunk in Heman's depths (Psalm 88) or in David's: 'I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the floods engulf me' (Psalm 69:2) — describing waters that came into his soul (verse 1), the very floods of God's immediate wrath breaking into his conscience and overwhelming the inward man, not just the outward? How much more decisively would he have concluded against himself in that condition? As indeed Heman, David, and many others among God's children have done when they have lain under and walked in such distress.

And the reason for all of this is as plain as the experience of it.

1. In general: reason is by nature a busy faculty that intrudes into God's affairs as much as our own, always trying its hand at arguing about His dealings with us. Jeremiah felt compelled to reason with God about His dealings toward wicked men (Jeremiah 12:1-2), and Job about His dealings with himself (Job 13:3). Since reason is also the highest principle in us by nature — our greatest distinction as human beings — it is no wonder that when we are left to ourselves in darkness, we walk 'as men,' as the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 1:3, and lean to our own wisdom, as Solomon describes — because it is our own, and it has been with us from the beginning. It is our great Ahithophel — and as David says of him, 'our guide with whom we have taken such sweet counsel' in all our worldly and practical affairs, where we rightly make use of its counsel. But we too often bring it into the sanctuary with us and walk with it into the house of God — to use David's language in Psalm 55:13-14 — that is, we allow it to meddle in sacred matters and to debate and pronounce judgment on our spiritual and eternal standing, just as it does on our temporal affairs. Worse still, we trust its verdict there. 'I thought,' says Asaph in that same psalm, 'to know this' (verse 16) — meaning, he thought he could grasp God's mind in those dealings through rational analysis and reach a sound conclusion. But after he went into the sanctuary (verse 17) with faith alone, consulting the word, he confesses that his own wisdom and best reasoning understood God's purposes and the principles by which He governs His children no better than a beast (verse 22) understands the intentions and reasoning of people. If reason, then, when it is so completely mistaken about the premises, still insists on exercising its faculty by drawing conclusions from them — it is no wonder that those conclusions are so wide of the mark. And yet, with Asaph, we think we know.

More specifically: carnal reason is the most deadly enemy to faith of all the principles in a person. Before faith is worked in us, it is the supreme principle; but faith deposes and subjects it, and afterward repeatedly contradicts it — even excluding it as incompetent in matters that belong to faith. So deep and fierce is this hostility toward faith that whatever is the most central work of faith — changing our standing before God, placing us in a state of justification, and assuring us of it — carnal reason shows its sharpest hostility precisely there, opposing faith in that work more than in any other. This hostility shows itself both before and after faith is worked, and each phase illuminates the other. Before faith is worked, carnal reason does everything it can to convince a person that his condition is good even without faith — thereby preventing faith from being sought at all, as though nothing were needed to change his standing or justify him, and so shutting it out entirely. Therefore, in the initial working of faith, the Holy Spirit brings faith in by force, like a conqueror, demolishing all those strongholds and proud reasonings (as the word is in 2 Corinthians 10:4) that carnal reason had long been building and fortifying, and erects faith on a throne built from their ruins. In the same way, after faith is worked, all the carnal reason that remains unsubdued — driven by a deeper revenge for that defeat and with a greater degree of hostility — continues to oppose faith. Only now it shifts the war, mustering new forces and turning all its heavy weapons in the opposite direction: persuading a person, by every objection it can raise, that his condition is bad — whereas before it insisted his condition was good. This is its way of attacking the great work of faith in justifying us. And because the next office of faith, after justifying us, is to settle peace with God in our hearts and a confidence that we are in His favor (Romans 5:1): carnal reason therefore bends all its power and ingenuity to persuade us on every occasion — by the most plausible and seemingly compelling arguments it can produce — that God is not at peace with us and has not yet been reconciled to us. This is precisely to contradict faith in the central thing it would persuade us of.

So while in unregenerate people carnal reason works by false reasoning to maintain a high opinion of their standing — once they are regenerated, that same carnal reason, continuing its opposition to faith, works just as hard to persuade them of a bad opinion of their standing.

If carnal reason ever has the upper hand over faith in any condition that befalls a child of God, it is now — in the valley of the shadow of death, as David calls it — walking in darkness with no light. This condition supplies carnal reason with the richest possible material for forging objections. All of God's dealings seem to line up against the person, as though every sign points toward ruin and condemnation. Faith is under its greatest eclipse, left to fight alone in the dark without any second. Meanwhile, carnal reason and the darkened heart — led by feeling — are gripped by the deepest and most acute sense of what the heart most fears: God's severest wrath and displeasure. And this is felt not at a distance, inferred indirectly from outward afflictions, but immediately, from God's own hand. 'You have always suspected,' says carnal reason, 'that you were a child of wrath and that you and God were enemies; but now you find it confirmed beyond doubt, and from God's own mouth, who speaks grievous things against you — you even have it under His own hand, for He writes bitter things against you' — that is, in your conscience, as Job says in Job 13:26 — 'and counts you as His enemy' (verse 24); and He whips you with the same rod of His immediate wrath with which He lashes those who are cut off from His hand and whom He no longer remembers, but are now in hell, as Heman describes. This is also a time when the present sense of wrath so disturbs and — to use Heman's word — distracts the mind that it cannot attend to faith, which speaks of nothing but what it cannot see. This is just like the people of Israel, who could not listen to Moses' message of deliverance because of the anguish of their present bondage (Exodus 6:9). No wonder, then, that carnal reason is most active at this very moment and seizes the opportunity to frame and press the strongest possible objections against the soul while it is in this distress.

Add to this a fourth point: along with the strength of corrupt reason opposing faith, there are many other corrupt affections in the heart that join with carnal reason and reinforce it. They drive it and back it up just as powerfully in persuading God's children that their standing is bad as they do in securing the unregenerate in the false belief that their standing is good. The hand of self-love — which bribes and biases carnal reason, especially in judging one's own standing — is found just as deep in the one as in the other. This sheds further light on the point at hand. Before faith is worked, self-flattery (one branch of self-love) bribes and sets carnal reason to work, pleading the goodness of the unregenerate person's standing, causing every false argument in favor of a good self-opinion to land convincingly. But once faith is worked, jealousy, suspicion, and unbelief — which are equally powerful offshoots of pride and self-love, and which begin to surface and grow as the former self-flattery is cut back — sharpen carnal reason's wit and urge it to argue and fight against the work of faith and grace that has begun. Every objection carnal reason discovers against that work is welcome and persuasive to these corrupt principles, because they are fed and strengthened by them.

The reason why these jealousies and suspicions — which are so contrary to the self-flattery that shaped our self-opinion before — should arise in the heart at the working of faith and be apt to take over is this: 1. In the work of humiliation that prepares for faith, all those strongholds of carnal reason that upheld self-flattery and the false good opinion of one's standing are demolished, and the mountains of presumption are leveled — a person is permanently stripped of all confidence in himself as such. 2. At that same time, he was so thoroughly and keenly convicted of the seriousness of sin (which he had previously shrugged off) and of the greatness and number of his sins, that instead of presuming as before, he is now prone to be suspicious of God — fearing that God may have been so provoked as to never pardon him — and is accordingly ready to twist every one of God's dealings to confirm that fear. 3. Through that same conviction, the infinite error and deceitfulness of his own heart was so clearly exposed — having previously flattered him and told him his standing was good when it was most accursed — that he now becomes deeply afraid of still erring in that same direction, and is therefore ready to lend an ear to any doubt or objection that is raised. 4. He is also made acutely aware of the infinite danger to his eternal salvation that lies in holding a false good opinion of his standing — because such a false view keeps a person from saving faith — whereas entertaining the opposite error and judging his standing bad when it is actually good tends only to present discomfort. He therefore thinks it safer to err on the side of doubt than on the side of presumption. 5. He is also now deeply aware of how unspeakably important his eternal salvation is — something he had previously dismissed — and this awakens suspicion (which always doubts and probes in matters of great consequence) and keeps it alive, where before it had slept. All of these, now stirred and roused, not only drive carnal reason to pry relentlessly into everything that might suggest God's disfavor or the unsoundness of the heart, but also give a warm reception to every objection that is found, and lead to hasty and false conclusions based on them.

Finally, in addition to the corrupt principles of carnal reason and suspicion that stir up these doubts and fears from God's dealings with us, there is an abundance of guilt within us — guilt from our own failures toward God. We have consciences that remain in part defiled, and these may further join with all the other forces and deepen our fears and doubts. We are not only dark and weak creatures — we are also guilty ones. This guilt, like waves of the sea or the rising of the Jordan in flood, begins to surge and overflow in our consciences when these terrible storms from God break upon us. David describes this in Psalm 38: when God's wrath was heavy upon him (verses 1-2), he also cried, 'My iniquities have gone over my head' (verse 4). There is much deceit and falseness of heart that, in those upheavals — when our consciences boil within us and are stirred and heated to the bottom — rises like scum to the surface. This is what happened to David when he was under God's rod for his sin of murder: along with the guilt of his sin, the deceitfulness of his spirit came up, and he cried out for 'truth in the inward parts' (Psalm 51:6). His sin (verse 2) was always before him, and so was his falseness of heart; and with that in view he wrote in Psalm 32: 'Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no deceit, and whose sin the Lord does not count against him.' He wrote that when God had charged him with the guilt of his sin and laid bare the deceitfulness of his spirit (verses 4-5). This deceitfulness sometimes appears so completely that our consciences can hardly see anything else in us — it lies on top and covers our graces from our own view. Just as chaff rises to the top when wheat is tossed in a fan, so in these shakings and siftings of spirit, our corruptions float in our consciences while the graces within us lie buried beneath them and out of sight. The dark side of our hearts — like the dark side of a cloud — is turned toward us, and the light side away. Indeed, even the best of us carry enough within us that, if stirred and gathered in the conscience, could alone throw us into these burning bouts of trouble and distress. So when God's Spirit withholds from us the light of our own graces, and our own consciences present to us the guilt and corruption in our best actions, our hearts may conclude that we are hypocrites — as Mr. Bradford does of himself in some of his letters, and as others among the saints have done. Yes — even our consciences themselves, which are the one remaining principle that should take the side of faith and bear witness (as their office is) to the goodness of our standing — may in this condition join with the other corruptions against us, bring in a false testimony, and pronounce a false verdict. Even conscience itself, which is designed like the body's indicator of health to reflect the condition of the whole — and is accordingly called good or evil according to the person's true state — is prone in such disturbances to change and darken, and to appear to the person's own view as dark as the conscience of a true hypocrite.

And the reason for this is as plain as the experience of it. Conscience remains in part defiled even in a regenerate person — though we are sprinkled from an evil conscience in part, we are not sprinkled from it completely. So though our persons are fully discharged from the guilt of our sins before God through the sprinkling of Christ's blood, the sprinkling of that blood upon our consciences — by which we perceive this — is imperfect. The reason is that this very sprinkling of conscience, by which it testifies to the sprinkling of Christ's blood and to our justification thereby, is itself part of the sanctification of conscience as a faculty whose office is to testify and witness our standing. Since the sanctification of all our faculties is imperfect, so is this. Therefore, when God's Spirit withdraws His witness from conscience regarding the goodness of our standing — when He ceases to embolden and encourage conscience by His presence and the sprinkling of Christ's blood against the remaining defilement — our consciences are just as prone to fall into fears, doubts, and self-condemnation. This is exactly as prone as our other faculties are to fall into any other sin when He withdraws the assistance of His grace from them. Therefore, as the law of sin in our members may gain the upper hand and lead us captive to outward sin, so the guilt of sin in our consciences — remaining in part defiled — may by the same logic gain the upper hand and lead us captive to fears and doubts, casting us into bondage.