Samuel Rutherford on the subject of selfies (equivocation). I updated some spelling and formatting (The Covenant of Life Opened, pp. 337–338):
It's easier to believe general truths, than to believe particular truths, in which our selves and our own actings are interested: So spiritual and wily a snare is unbelief, that when we think we are [unbelievingly] fearing our own treachery, we are indeed charging treachery and falsehood upon the Holy Lord. In our sinful pleas with our own state, Ah! I am casten out of his sight (Psal. 31:22; Jona. 2:4), we are overturning the whole Gospel and Covenant of Suretyship and Reconciliation, and we say, God lied to David, and to his Son Christ: contrair to that, Once have I sworn by my Holiness, I will not lie unto David . His seed shall endure for ever, for the Lord once justified thee (Psal. 89:35-36).
We shall find our selves so selfie in controverting with God in the matter of fact touching our selves, Am I in Christ? Or, Am I an Apostate and fallen from Christ? that we are more taken up with a hellish fretting for our falling in a state of condemnation, than we are grieved for the injury of unbelief in traducing the Holy Lord with a lie. There is a taste here of Judas his fiery unbelief, for he complains more, I have sinned, in betraying the innocent blood (Mat. 27:4), than that God is dishonoured, and Christ's love offended: The grief is more for the interest of I, of self, that is entered in the borders of hell, than that his glory who commands believing is overclouded. It were good in such a case to go about two things:
1. Be less moved that self is under these apprehensions, lost and cast away, than that the spotless glory of the Lord suffers: What matter of me, and of self, in comparison of the dishonour done to God? What though I, and millions like me, were tormented, if God were not offended. Now God,
- Who hath bought me.
- Who hath accepted a ransom for me.
- Hath justified me.
- Hath witnessed all these,
Is contradicted in all these: and yet we complain only, Ah I am fallen!
2. Leave the Question concerning your self, whether ye be cast away or no, when you cannot come to a peaceable and quiet close about it, and dwell upon the duty of fiducial relying on Gods general Covenant to David's Son, Christ his engaging with him, and Christ his gracious accepting of the condition.
