A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections

And again another benefit that such trials are of to true religion is that they purify and increase it. They not only manifest it to be true but also tend to refine it and deliver it from those mixtures of that which is false which encumber and impede it; that nothing may be left but that which is true. They tend to cause the amiableness of true religion to appear to the best advantage as was before observed; and not only so but they tend to increase its beauty by establishing and confirming it and making it more lively and vigorous and purifying it from those things that obscured its luster and glory.