To Richard Tompson Date: LONDON July 25, 1755. SIR, It would be a pleasure to me to write more largely than my time will now permit. Of all the disputants I have known, you are the most likely to convince me of any mistakes I may be in, because you have found out the great secret of speaking the truth in love. When it is thus proposed, it must surely win its way into every heart which is not purposely shut against it. That you may deafly see wherein we agree or wherein we differ, I have sent you the Minutes of some of our late Conferences. Several concessions are made therein, both with regard to Assurance and Christian Perfection; some difficulties cleared, and a few arguments proposed, though very nakedly and briefly. When you have read these, you may come directly to any point of controversy which may still remain; and ff you can show me that any farther concessions are needful, I shall make them with great pleasure. On the subject of your last I can but just observe, first, with regard to the assurance of faith, I apprehend that the whole Christian Church in the first centuries enjoyed it. For though we have few points of doctrine explicitly taught in the small remains of the ante-Nicene Fathers, yet I think none that carefully reads Clemens Romanus, Ignatius, Polycarp, Origen, or any other of them, can doubt whether either the writer himself possessed it or all whom he mentions as real Christians. And I ready conceive, both from the Harrnonia Confessionurn and whatever else I have occasionally read, that all the Reformed Churches in Europe did once believe 'Every true Christian has the divine evidence of his being in favor with God.' So much for authority. The point of experience is touched upon in the Conferences. As to the nature of the thing, I think a divine conviction of pardon is directly implied in the evidence or conviction of things unseen. But if not, it is no absurdity to suppose that, when God pardons a mourning, broken-hearted sinner, His mercy obliges Him to another act to witness to his spirit that He has pardoned him.

I know that I am accepted; and yet that knowledge is sometimes shaken, though not destroyed, by doubt or fear. If that knowledge were destroyed or wholly withdrawn, I could not then say I had Christian faith. To me it appears the same thing to say, 'I know God has accepted me,' or "I have a sure trust that God has accepted me.' I agree with you that justifying faith cannot be a conviction that I am justified; and that a man who is not assured that his sins are forgiven may yet have a kind or degree of faith which distinguishes him not only from a devil but also from an heathen, and on which I may admit him to the Lord's Supper. But still I believe the proper Christian faith, which purifies the heart implies such a conviction. I am, sir, Your Servant for Christ's sake.