Assurance and Consecration

ASSURANCE of faith, like all other forms of religious faith considered in distinction from natural faith, is the gift of God. No one has it without the divine blessing. But here, as in every other case of God's dealings, we see no other course but to take the position as almost a self-evident one, that there are reasons in the divine mind for every occurrence or fact and also for every modification of the divine conduct; and that God, in imparting the immense blessing of assurance of faith, does not, and cannot act accidentally. In other words, there is some antecedent fact, some preparatory condition, in connection with which this great blessing takes place. Not a meritorious condition, it is true; nothing which lays God under obligation; but still a preparatory antecedent or condition actually existing in the view of the Divine Mind, and as an indispensable part of the divine arrangement. And that condition, as the matter presents itself to our view, is CONSECRATION. Not a consecration in part, but in whole; a solemn and a permanent giving up of the whole being to God. If with any inferior degree of consecration there may be an inferior degree of faith, there cannot be a perfection or assurance of faith, without a consecration corresponding to it. It must, therefore, be a consecration, such as was described in the chapter on that subject, both of body and of spirit, both of persons and of possessions, ENTIRE, PERMANENT, and IRREVOCABLE.

— The Interior or Hidden Life (2nd edition, 1844) Part1, Chapter 8.