1. However the believer is to be much moved at, and affected with his sins and provocations, which he committeth after God hath visited his soul with salvation, and brought him into a covenant with himself, yet he must not suppose, that his sins after justification do mar his state; as if thereby he were brought into a non-justified state, or to a non-reconciled state. It is true, such sins, especially if gross, whether in themselves, or by reason of circumstances, will darken a man's state, and put him to search and try his condition over again. But yet we dare not say, that they make any alteration in the state of a believer; for once in a justified state always in a justified state. It is true likewise, that as to those sins, which now he hath committed, he cannot be said to be acquitted or justified, till this pardon be got out by faith and repentance, as is said; yet his state remaineth fixed and unchanged; so that though God should seem to deal with such in his dispensations, as with enemies, yet really his affections change not; he never accounteth them real enemies; nay, love lieth at the bottom of all his sharpest dispensations. If they forsake his law, and walk not in his judgments; if they break his statutes and keep not his commandments, he will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, nevertheless his loving-kindness will he not utterly take from them, nor suffer his faithfulness to fail; his covenant will he not break, nor alter the thing that has gone out of his lips, Psalm lxxxix. 30-34. And again, though after transgressions may waken challenges for former sins, which have been pardoned and blotted out, and give occasions to Satan to raise a storm in the soul, and put all in confusion, yet really sins once pardoned cannot become again unpardoned sins. The Lord doth not revoke his sentence, nor alter the thing that is gone out of his mouth. It is true likewise, that a believer, by committing of gross sins, may come to miss the effects of God's favour and good will, and the intimations of his love and kindness; and so be made to cry with David, Psalm li. 8, "Make me to hear joy and gladness;" and ver. 12, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation," &c. Yet that really holdeth true, that whom he loveth he loveth to the end; and he is a God that changeth not; and his gifts are without repentance. Yea, though grieving of the Spirit may bring souls under sharp throes, and pangs of the spirit of bondage, and the terrors of God, and his sharp errors, the poison whereof may drink up their spirits, and so be far from the actual witnessings of the Spirit of adoption; yet the Spirit will never be again really a spirit of bondage unto fear, nor deny his own work in the soul, or the soul's real right to, or possession of that fundamental privilege of adoption,--I say, that the soul is no more a son, nor within the covenant.