Brethren, if Paul, with all his light, all his labours, all his holiness, all his love, felt that heaven, was, after all, not his sure inheritance, how can any among us count themselves to have secured it, to have become perfect? And yet, not a few do! I am not alluding now to those who are called Calvinists, to those who believe that salvation will infallibly be conferred on a few, chosen without regard to their former, or care for their after life; and that they who believe this doctrine are certainly of the chosen few (every Calvinist, according to his own creed, is sure of salvation)—to those who fancy that a peculiar flutter of strange feelings in the breast which they felt at a certain moment of some day or night, perhaps long past, was the impression of GOD’S seal upon them; a seal which cannot be broken, which has marked them GOD’S for ever; and that all they have to do in anticipation, in preparation for glory, is to talk and think about man’s depravity, and GOD’S electing grace. No! I am alluding to such as are most of you, brethren; who have probably never concerned yourselves about supposed absolute decrees, and irresistible grace, and final perseverance; who do not claim to be objects of any signal conversion; who have felt, and feel no ecstacy and rapture which betoken sure acceptance; and of you, I say, that many of you count yourselves to have apprehended, to know as much, to have done as much, to feel as much, to be as perfect, as you need, and to have a sure hope of salvation. None of you have a definite theory of this kind; none of you, if I took you apart and said, “Are you sure of heaven?” would dare to answer, “yes,” or to feel that you might answer, “yes;” but many of you, nevertheless, do persuade yourselves, that it is even so; many of you so spend your lives as though you had already apprehended, as though there were nothing which you had yet to attain.