How much is assurance worth to you?

Continuing with highlights from Richard Rogers's Seven Treatises (1603): here's an inspiring passage on the benefits of Christian assurance. Rogers cites the words of a fellow minister he knew and admired (William Perkins? Richard Greenham? ... he doesn't say) who once discovered the benefits of having a thorough assurance of God's love in Christ, and resolved to maintain his grasp on it every day thereafter.

So many exhortations come at the Christian today, but how often are we told to nurture assurance? Rogers's account is worth reflection:

... I will rehearse a speech of a godly Christian preacher, and one that deserved to be heard, whom I have oft been present with, when he uttered the same.

"While I was persuaded verily," said he, "that I have faith, but yet held it not by the surest grounds, I was glad from time to time, to think that I had it: holding my persuasion thereof, by such evidences as I had before enjoyed, rather than I could tell, for the time present, what sure warrant I had of it: but I took no great pain to confirm it by daily meditating on the promises, neither bestowed any more diligence in and about that, than upon other duties, and therefore was distracted oft times, and unsettled exceedingly.

But when I saw more clearly, how gainful and beautiful a grace it is, and how I must live by it, having no less need of it, than of the air to breath in, I sought more certain ground of it, and that with greater care than I had before. And since I knew that I had it by more infallible arguments and testimonies, I could never be weary of looking to and increasing it (as I had learned how), but for some years space have done, and do every day nourish and strengthen it, and I recreate myself in thinking what benefit I have by it; until my gain thereby, and pleasure therein, do keep me there with delight, more than in all pastime; and the labor which I bestow about it, is so far from toil or wearisomeness, that it is my greatest solace: neither do I think or feel myself to be armed to the well-going through the affairs of the day, before I have prepared myself thereto, by refreshing my soul with considering God’s abundant love and favor towards me, and rest upon it as my own. But when I have done it, I am (by good heed taking) cheerful, and in good estate, all the day after: and so I am (in reverence be it spoken)," said he, "persuaded, that I shall continue to do ..."

"For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith."

1 John 5:4