Faith Seeking Assurance is in the Puritan Treasures for Today series and is adapted from Burgess’s original writings on assurance entitled Spiritual Refining, first published in London in 1652. The following extract is taken from the last chapter Assurance versus Presumption:

How a Godly Man May Have Assurance:

What should the godly person do when he has grace but lacks assurance? Though grace is in him, he does not know it, but thinks the opposite. In Luke 24:16, the resurrected Christ appeared to His disciples. Though He draw near to them and talked to them, yet our text says “Their eyes were holden that they should not know him.” So with many a gracious heart, Christ may be spiritually present in the soul. Grace may even be present, yet the person cannot feel it. Though the Son of Righteousness is in his heart, he walks in darkness.

Continue to Depend Upon God:

To such a one we say, let him walk in a faith of adherence and dependence upon God even if he is not sure of these evidences. This is what Scripture calls trusting, rolling, leaning, and staying the soul upon God. David in many of his psalms says that he only has this plank to stand upon the in the great ocean. Though assurance is a duty, and we must press after it, it is not what justifies us. You may belong to GOd and have an interest in His promises even though you feel no evidence of it. Isaiah 50:10 says , “Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God.” SO if you see your soul as a parched land, a withered branch, or a dried tree, consider what God requires of you. This dependence of faith is far more noble than assurance of faith.

We should continue to exercise holy duties and love God because of the sensible sweetness and delight they bring, but also because in dependence we learn to trust God even more when we have no sense or feeling of that. As it is a greater act of love to God to love Him even when He afflicts us or blesses us with no outward mercies, so it is a greater act of obedience to wait and depend on God when we feel our own unworthiness and load of sin than when the goodness of our heart is cleared up to us.

Faith Seeking Assurance by Anthony Burgess, published by Reformation Heritage Books